Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene

July 17, 2021

From “Crime in the Streets” to “West Side Story”

Watched a clumsy but fascinating film called Crime in the Streets. It started as a 1955 live TV play by Reginald Rose presented by the Elgin Hour, directed by Sidney Lumet. A young John Cassavetes starred as Frankie, a member of a street gang called the Hornets. Robert Preston was featured as an idealistic social Continue reading

1950s TV Drama, Broadway, film adaptation, Golden Age of Television, movies, New York

12 Angry Men, Crime in the Streets, David Winters, Dead End, Don Siegel, James Whimore, Jon Cassavetes, Mark Rydell, Reginald Rose, Robert Preston, Sidney Lumet, Street Scene, The Defenders, West Side Story
July 2, 2021

Ride Share

In 1992, a former cab driver named Will Kern drew on his experience to whip up a bracing entertainment called Hellcab. An actor played the driver and an ensemble of six played something in the neighborhood of 30 passengers who occupied the back seat during one shift on Christmas Eve. It didn’t pretend to be Continue reading

Chicago theater, drama, film adaptation, playwriting, television

Alan Bennett, Hellcab, Judgment at Nuremberg, Kamal Angelo Bolden, Marty, Philco Playhouse, Playhouse 90, Reginald Edmund, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Ride Share, Simeilia Hodge-Dallaway, Talking Heads, The Days of Wine and Roses, The Miracle Worker, The Trip to Bountiful, Twelve Angry Men, Will Kern
June 21, 2021

Living Up to the Dream

I’m close to the end of Bauhaus – A New Era, a German TV miniseries that tells a story of Walter Gropius and his relationship with a student, Dörte Helm, against the background of the arts school Gropius founded in Weimar after WWI. It’s currently running on MHZ Choice, a streaming channel that features foreign-language Continue reading

television

Alan Ehrenhalt, architecture, Bauhaus, Dörte Helm, German art, J.K. Rowling, Lars Kraume, Lin-Manuel Miranda, MHZ Choice, Tom Wolfe, Walter Gropius
April 11, 2021

Hemingway

I think the first time I became aware of Ernest Hemingway was in the wake of his death. In 1961, my dad took me by L to the Bryn Mawr, a discount movie theater on Chicago’s north side, to see a reissue of Gone With the Wind. I guess I had just turned eleven. I Continue reading

drama, playwriting, Uncategorized

Bryn Mawr Theater, Chicago L, Father, Gone With the Wind, Hemingway, Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, Mother, Novels, PBS, Short stories, Teaching writing, writing
March 25, 2021

Remembering Preston Jones

In the mid-1970s, I was assigned a piece by an in-flight magazine distributed on American Airlines. The story focused on three playwrights who first came to the theater community’s attention in regional theaters. The three playwrights were David Mamet, Marsha Norman and Preston Jones. I interviewed all three by phone. I was friendly with Mamet Continue reading

Broadway, drama, playwriting, television, theater, Uncategorized

Cloris Leachman, David Mamet, Delbert Mann, George Grizzard, Henry Fonda, Horton Foote, Marsha Norman, Preston Jones, regional theater, Texas Trilogy
March 11, 2021

Encountering Rose Franken

Continuing to wander through obscure corners of American playwriting, I have stumbled across a forgotten phenomenon. A writer named Rose Franken created a character who appeared first in a series of stories for Redbook, then in a series of eight novels, then as the leading figure in a Broadway play, then as the lead in Continue reading

Broadway, drama, film adaptation, movies, New York, playwriting

Another Language, Claudia (movie), Claudia (play), Claudia and David (movie), Dorothy Maguire, Helen Hayes, John Golden, Phyliss Thaxter, Rose Franken, William Brown Meloney
November 6, 2020

Both Your Houses

I was determined to witness the moment when Joe Biden overtook the Orange Thug in Pennsylvania. I plopped down on the sofa in the living room under the illusion that this might happen at 2AM (which is about the time I usually go to sleep). I didn’t want to watch TV nonstop, so I thought Continue reading

Broadway, drama, film adaptation, playwriting, Pulitzer Prize, theater

Both Your Houses, Frank Capra, Jean Arthur, Jim Carrey, Jimmy Stewart, Joeseph Biden, Joseph McBride, Lewis R. Forster, Maxwell Anderson, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Political Play, Richard Nixon, Sidney Buchman
November 3, 2020

Election Day Distraction

Don’t know if it’s true for anybody else, but I’m just trying to get this day out of the way. Latest avoidance tactic, an hour or so at the City Diner with my dog at my feet, reading some chapters in Jan Herman’s biography of William Wyler, A Talent for Trouble, about Wyler shooting Mrs. Continue reading

Broadway, drama, film adaptation, Pulitzer Prize, television, Uncategorized

Abraham, Bill Bryden, City Diner, City Hall, democracy, Directors Guild of America, Ex Libris, Film Forum, Frederick Wiseman, Green Mansions, In Jackson Heights, Ira Krutch, Isaac, Jan Herman, Mrs. Miniver, National Theatre of Great Britain, New York Public Library, Ol’ Man Adam an’ His Chillun, PBS, Rex Ingram, Roark Bradford, television, The Bible, the Blitz, The Golden Age of Television, The Mysteries, Tony Harrison, William Wyler
October 17, 2020

Two Contrasting Plays

I continue my casual tromp through plays of the past, alternating reading from an anthology of early Pulitzer Prize-winners and an anthology of postwar African-American plays. The two most recent plays I’ve encountered, by coincidence, are about flawed Black authority figures. The Amen Corner (published in 1954, premiered in 1965) by James Baldwin is about Continue reading

Broadway, drama, off-Broadway, playwriting, Pulitzer Prize, theater

African-American drama, Arnaud d’Usseau and James Gow, Black theater, Deep are the Roots, Ibsen, In Abraham’s Bosom, James Baldwin, Paul Green, The Amen Corner
September 19, 2020

TROUBLE IN MIND — Alice Childress

I continue to read plays from the past I’ve never gotten to see. Mostly, as I’ve said before, I’m alternating between an anthology of plays that won the Pulitzer Prize early on and an anthology of post-war plays by Black writers. Finally caught up with Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress. It’s been going through Continue reading

Broadway, drama, New York, off-Broadway, playwriting, Uncategorized

Alice Childress, American Enterprise, Arthur Kennedy, Chicago, George Pullman, Glenn Ford, HUAC, Jane Addams, Juano Hernandez, Scottsboro Boys, Trouble in Mind

About Me

I’m a playwright, journalist, theater historian, teacher and sometime director, dramaturg, songwriter and performer. This looks like a list, but they all feel part of the same impulse to me — to be useful in the theater. (I’ve also done some writing for screen and audio.) Feel free to contact me at jeffreysweet.playwright@gmail.com.