Elmer Rice - Biography - Early Years

Early Years

Rice was born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein at 127 East Ninetieth Street in New York City, New York. A few months later, in 1893, his parents moved to a large new flat on Madison Avenue. He was named (somewhat altered) after his two grandfathers, as was the custom at the time, but he disliked the name Elmer and the facetious comments it provoked. His younger brother, Lester, died when Elmer was about three, making him, in effect, an only child. Both he and his mother felt the loss deeply and he always missed his companion and playmate. His grandfather was a political activist in the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states. After the failure of that revolution, he was given the choice of imprisonment or exile. He chose to emigrate to the United States where he became a successful businessman. He spent most of his retirement years living with the Rice family and developed a close relationship with his grandson Elmer. He was a staunch atheist and this may have influenced Rice himself, who refused to attend Hebrew school or to have a Bar Mitzvah. A pacifist, he also decided that he would refuse to serve in the First World War if drafted but was not. Rice's father was an epileptic and as a result, Elmer seldom invited friends home for fear that his father might have a seizure in their presence. The family always worried when he was late getting home, for fear that he had had an epileptic fit on the street and been taken to hospital, a not uncommon occurrence. Although he knew that his father loved him, he disliked his quarrelsome personality. He found him physically unappealing and disliked displays of affection from him, "for children are repelled by ugliness, and I found him ugly." His grandfather and his Uncle Will, both of whom boarded with the family, made up for what his father lacked. He spent much of his childhood reading and wrote, "Nothing in my life has been more helpful than the simple act of joining the library." He became an avid reader of plays and a keen theatregoer.

He did not complete high school due to his family's financial situation, brought on by his father's ill health, and he took a number of jobs before deciding to go to law school. This required first obtaining a high-school diploma which he did by taking the necessary examinations given by the New York State Board of Regents.

In spite of finding law school extremely boring and reading plays in class because they could be finished within two hours, he graduated from New York Law School in 1912 and began a short-lived legal career. He was cynical about the legal profession and resigned in 1914. He was alarmed by the fact that when asked, all the attorneys in his office said that they would strive to have a client acquitted in a murder case, even if they knew he was guilty.

He turned to writing, and his first play, the melodramatic On Trial (1914), was the first American stage production to employ the flashback technique of the screen. On Trial, a murder mystery, was a tremendous success and ran for 365 performances in its first run in New York. It then went on tour throughout the United States with three separate companies and was produced in Argentina, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Scotland and South Africa. At the age of twenty-one, it earned its author $100,000. Few of his later plays received as much acclaim. The play was adapted for the cinema three times - in 1917, 1928 and 1939.