Mosel, Tad

Playwright and biographer Tad Mosel was born George Ault Mosel, Jr. on May 1, 1922 in Steubenville, Ohio to Margaret and George Ault Mosel. With his older brother, James, he was raised in Larchmont and New Rochelle, New York.

Mosel attended Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts and New Rochelle High School and knew from the age of sixteen that he wanted to write for the theater. From 1940 to 1943, he attended Amherst College, where he majored in English and wrote his first play, The Happiest Years (1942). A member of the class of 1944, he left college to serve in the Army Air Forces Weather Service, both in the U.S. and the South Pacific. Mosel left the service in 1946, having earned the rank of sergeant. He returned to Amherst College where he was president of the campus dramatic group, the Masquers, receiving his B.A. degree in 1947. Around this time, Mosel also became director of the Longmeadow Players in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Determined to become a playwright, he entered Yale Drama School in 1947. Mosel left in 1949 to join the Broadway cast of the play At War with the Army by James B. Allardice, in which he played a lost private who never utters a word while he tries to find his company. He remained with the show for almost a year.

Mosel had his first teleplay, Jinxed, produced on Chevrolet Tele-Theater in 1949. In 1951, he began working to enter the M.A. degree program at Columbia University, where John Gassner was a strong influence. From 1951 to 1953, Mosel was also employed as a clerk selling tickets for Northwest Airlines. For his M.A. degree requirement, he wrote The Lion Hunters, a play rejected at first by his Columbia faculty advisor, but subsequently produced Off Broadway at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1952.

During this time, Mosel was writing plays for television, several of which were televised on the critically acclaimed CBS program Omnibus in 1953. These included two stories by James Thurber: The Figgerin’ of Aunt Wilma and This Little Kitty Stayed Cool . (Carol Channing and Elliott Reid were in the cast of the latter.) Mosel’s agent, Priscilla Morgan, brought his teleplay, The Haven, to the attention of the now legendary television producer, Fred Coe. The Haven was aired on Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse in 1953 and again in 1961 on the United States Steel Hour, starring Shirley Booth and Gene Raymond.

Throughout the “Golden Age of Television” in the 1950s, Mosel’s plays could be seen regularly on programs featuring the best in American drama. The Decision of Arrowsmith, based on Sinclair Lewis’s novel, aired on CBS Medallion Theatre in 1953 and starred Henry Fonda. For the Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse, Mosel’s works included Ernie Barger Is Fifty and Other People’s Houses (1953), Guilty Is the Stranger with Paul Newman (1954), and The Lawn Party (1954), with Geraldine Fitzgerald in the cast. Mosel adapted Robert E. Sherwood’s play, The Petrified Forest, for television in 1955; Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Henry Fonda, and Jack Klugman appeared in the Producer’s Showcase production on NBC. Two of his works televised on Studio One include The Five-Dollar Bill (1957) and The Presence of the Enemy (1958) with E.G. Marshall. Mosel wrote four original plays for Playhouse 90 : The Playroom (1957) with Mildred Dunnock, Tony Randall, and Patricia Neal, If You Knew Elizabeth (1957), The Innocent Sleep (1958) with Hope Lange and Buster Keaton, and A Corner of the Garden (1959) with Eileen Heckart and Gary Merrill.

In 1958, Fred Coe asked Mosel to adapt James Agee’s novel A Death in the Family for the stage. All the Way Home, Mosel’s play, opened at the Belasco Theatre on November 30, 1960. Directed by Arthur Penn, the cast included Colleen Dewhurst, Arthur Hill, Lillian Gish, and Aline MacMahon. The play was ready to close before the end of the first week, but was saved by a national “plug” by Ed Sullivan in his newspaper column. It became known as “the miracle on Forty-fourth Street” and went on to win the New York Drama Critics Circle award. In May 1961, Mosel won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and used the prize money to throw a party for the cast, crew, producers, and entire staff of the play. In 1963, he wrote the screenplay for the film version.

Continuing to write for television in the 1960s, Mosel’s works include That’s Where the Town’s Going ( Westinghouse Presents, 1961) with Kim Stanley, The Invincible Teddy Roosevelt ( Our American Heritage, 1961) with George Peppard, and Secrets ( CBS Playhouse, 1968) with Barbara Bel Geddes, Arthur Hill, and Eileen Heckart. He also wrote the book for a musical version of his television play Madame Aphrodite, with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. The production opened December 29, 1961 at the Orpheum Theatre and closed after thirteen performances.

Mosel wrote the screenplays for the film Dear Heart (1964), based on his television play The Out-of-Towners, and for Up the Down Staircase, the 1967 film based on Bel Kaufman’s book. He traveled to the U.S.S.R when the film was screened at the Fifth International Film Festival in Moscow in 1967. With André and Dory Previn, in 1968 Mosel also worked on a musical version of Great Expectations (unproduced) by Charles Dickens, for film and stage.

As the author of two episodes he wrote for the PBS series The Adams Chronicles (1975-1977), Mosel received two Emmy nominations. With Gertrude Macy, he wrote Leading Lady: The World and Theatre of Katharine Cornell, a biography published by Little, Brown in 1978. Mosel’s play, Here Lies Lucy Clough received its world premiere at Kenyon Festival Theater (Kenyon College, Mount Vernon, Ohio) in 1984.

Mosel was a visiting critic at Yale School of Drama and has taught at University of North Carolina, University of Pennsylvania, and the New School for Social Research. He has been awarded honorary degrees by the College of Steubenville, the College of Wooster, and Kenyon College. Mosel has served on the board of the Jane Austen Society. He lives in Concord, New Hampshire.

From the guide to the Tad Mosel papers, 1935-1991, (The New York Public Library. Billy Rose Theatre Division.)