Albee, Edward, 1928-....

Playwright. Alan Schneider b. 1917, d. 1984.

American author, director and producer, Edward Albee has won numerous awards for his plays.

Edward Albee, playwright.

Dramatist.

Edward Albee (1928- ) is an American author and playwright.

American author.

Edward F. Albee III was born March 12, 1928 in Washington D.C. The adopted son of Reed A. Albee (owner of a theatrical circuit) and Frances Cotter Albee, he was educated at Valley Forge Military Academy (1943-1944), Choate School (1944-1946), Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut 1946-1947), and Columbia University (1949). His breakthrough dramatic work, The Zoo Story, was first performed in tandem with Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape in West Berlin in 1959. Career highlights range from his most famous work, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962), to his three Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners, A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1991).

Alexander LaFayette Chew Wilder was born on February 16, 1907, in Rochester, New York. He grew up in New Jersey, Long Island, and New York City, and attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, where he studied composition and counterpoint. His career as a composer began in 1930, when he was one of the co-writers of the song “All the King's Horses” for the musical revue Three's a Crowd.

Over the next fifty years, Wilder wrote several hundred popular songs, among them “It's so Peaceful in the Country,” “I'll Be Around,” and “All the Cats Joined In.” (Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Marlene Dietrich, and Anita O'Day are among the artists who recorded Wilder songs.) He also composed sonatas for the bassoon, flute, and tuba, works for the piano, a concerto for saxophone and chamber orchestra, five operas, and a ballet; and published two books: Letters I Never Mailed (1975), and, with James T. Maher, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 (1972).

Wilder lived at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan for nearly fifty years. He died of lung cancer in Gainesville, Florida, in December 1980.

Edward Franklin Albee III was born on March 12, 1928, probably in Virginia, and adopted by Reed A. and Frances (Cotter) Albee shortly after his birth. The Albees, a wealthy family with theatrical connections, lived in Larchmont, New York. Albee grew up alienated by his parents' lifestyle and struck out on his own, moving to Greenwich Village, NY, after three semesters at Trinity College. He had various jobs; his favorite was as a messenger for Western Union, before achieving his first success in 1959 with a German language production in Berlin of his play, The Zoo Story . His best known work, which scandalized Broadway in 1962 and established him as America's most acclaimed young playwright, is Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? .

In 1963 Albee, with Richard Barr and Clinton Wilder, began producing new plays by new playwrights at a theater they rented in Greenwich Village and thus were a part of the burgeoning Off-Off Broadway movement. In 1964 Albee created the Edward Albee Foundation, a summer retreat at Montauk, Long Island, which provides living and working space for six artists. Albee has taught playwriting at various colleges and often directs his own plays. After the 1960s his writing became less prolific and less well received. For many years he has been more popular in Europe than in America. However, he has won numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize three times: for A Delicate Balance in 1967, Seascape in 1975 and Three Tall Women in 1994.