Schneider, Alan, 1917-1984

Director Alan Schneider was born Abram Leopoldovich Schneider in Kharkov Russia on December 12, 1917 (There is some confusion surrounding the date--the true date being December 11.) He arrived in New York with his parents, Leopold Victorovich Schneider and Rebecka Samilovna Malkin Schneider, both physicians, on July 4, 1923 and spent his childhood in Maryland where his parents worked in tuberculosis sanatoriums. Mr. Schneider received a B.A. magna cum laude in political Science from the University of Wisconsin in 1939 and an M.A. in Dramatic Literature from Cornell University in 1941.

He began his professional career as a teacher and director at Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. in 1941. He served on the faculty (with Walter Kerr) for eleven years and received his first professional directing assignment there for a production of William Saroyan's Jim Dandy . During World War II, he worked for various government agencies and acted in a Broadway flop called Storm Operation by Maxwell Anderson in 1944.

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