Norman Beim is a Jewish-American playwright, actor, and director. Beim was born on October 2, 1923 in Newark, N.J. Originally intending to be a novelist, Beim attended Ohio State University from 1941 to 1942 and left to serve in the United States Army Field Artillery from 1942 to 1945 during World War II. While fighting in Germany, Beim was awarded second prize in the National Theater Conference competition for his first one-act play, Inside, which was first produced in 1951. After returning from the war, Beim continued writing and also worked as an actor.
Beim has won numerous awards for his plays, including the Robert J. Pickering Award, the David James Ellis Award, the Maxim Mazumdar Award, as well as the Samuel French Short Play Award for The Deserter . Beim's plays have been produced nationally and internationally. In the 1980s, Pygmalion and Galatea was produced in the Netherlands, as well as the play Success, which was also produced in Bruges, Belgium.
As an actor, Beim appeared in the Broadway production Inherit the Wind, which ran from 1955 to 1957, and Off-Broadway productions such as Coriolanus in 1954 and Black Visions in 1972. Beim also did some acting in television and film. Beim published two novels, Hymie and the Angel in 1999 and Zygielbaum's Journey in 2011, in addition to ten collections of his plays. Beim's play collections have been used as textbooks for an English course at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. In the 2000s, Beim worked as a resident playwright for two seasons at the Off-Broadway Turtle Shell Theatre in New York City, where several of his plays have run. Beim's plays continue to be produced in theaters around the country as of 2012.
From the guide to the Norman Beim papers, 1957-2007, (The New York Public Library. Billy Rose Theatre Division.)
