Sidney Kingsley

Kingsley was born Sidney Kirschner in New York. He studied at Cornell University, where he began his career writing plays for the college dramatic club. He joined the Group Theater for the production of his first major work. In 1933 the company performed his play Men in White. Set in a hospital, the play dealt with the issue of illegal abortion, 1930s medical and surgical practices, and the struggle of a promising physician who must choose to dedicate his life to medicine or devote himself to his fiancée. The play was a box-office smash.

File:Men-in-White-Flyer.jpg

File:Darkness at Noon Handbill - NARA - 5729935-cropped.jpg

Kingsley followed this success with the play Dead End in 1935, a story about slum housing and its connection to crime. The play was fairly successful, being filmed and eventually spawning the film troupe The Dead End Kids. Kingsley's two successes were followed by his 1936 anti-war play Ten Million Ghosts and his 1939 work The World We Make, which were both flops and had short runs.

In 1943, Kingsley had success with the historical drama The Patriots, which told the story of Thomas Jefferson and his activities in the young American republic and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Kingsley continued writing for the theater late into his career, adapting Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon for the stage in 1951, and writing Lunatics and Lovers in 1954 and Night Life in 1962.

In addition to his work for the stage, Kingsley wrote a number of scripts for Hollywood productions, mostly based on his own work. He later also wrote the scripts and templates for numerous television series and television films.

Despite reaching the rank of lieutenant in the United States Army during World War II, soon after, in 1951, Kingsley's name was placed on the Hollywood Blacklist by HUAC, which ended his film career.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/21/obituaries/sindney-kingsley-playwrite-is-dead-at-88-creator-of-dead-end-and-men-in-white.html|title=Sindney Kingsley, Playwrite, Is Dead at 88; Creator of 'Dead End' and 'Men in White'|first=Peter B.|last=Flint|work=The New York Times |date=March 21, 1995 }}{{Cite web|url=https://www.terramedia.co.uk/reference/documents/red_menace_in_hollywood.htm|title=The 'red menace' in Hollywood|website= Terra Media}}

His marriage to actress Madge Evans in 1939Derby Daily Telegraph, July 26, 1939 lasted until her death in 1981. The couple lived together in their 18th century Oakland, New Jersey, home for 42 years.

Meeting him in 1957, Michael Korda described Kingsley as "a short, powerfully built man with broad shoulders, a big head, and rough-hewn features that made him look like a bust by Sir Jacob Epstein".{{Cite book|title=Another Life: A Memoir of Other People|last=Korda|first=Michael|publisher=Random House|year=1999|isbn=9780679456599|pages=[https://archive.org/details/anotherlifememoi00kord/page/14 14–24]|quote=That was true enough, I thought, though not very nice of Sidney to say. "What's the lesson?" I asked. "Ah, the lesson. Never forget that people who pay a writer always have much, much more money and power than he does, whether it's a publishing house, a movie studio, or a television network. With that in mind,"--his voice changed to a fair imitation of W.C. Fields--"'Never give a sucker an even break.' You can go now."|url=https://archive.org/details/anotherlifememoi00kord/page/14}} Kingsley hired Korda as an assistant to do research for a screenplay he was writing for CBS on the Hungarian Revolution which was never produced.

In 1964, Kingsley was elected president of the Dramatists Guild of AmericaThe Stage, December 30, 1965 and in 1983, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/10/theater/theater-hall-of-fame-gets-10-new-members.html|title=Theater Hall of Fame Gets 10 New Members|work=New York Times|date=May 10, 1983}}

Kingsley died of a stroke on March 20, 1995, aged 88, in his home in Oakland, New Jersey.Flint, Peter B. [https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/21/obituaries/sindney-kingsley-playwrite-is-dead-at-88-creator-of-dead-end-and-men-in-white.html?pagewanted=all "Sidney Kingsley, Playwright, Is Dead at 88; Creator of Dead End and Men in White"], The New York Times, March 21, 1995. Accessed May 25, 2016. "Sidney Kingsley, who brought the gritty drama of mean city streets into the theater in plays including Dead End and Detective Story and who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for his first Broadway play, Men in White, died yesterday at his home in Oakland, N.J."

• 1933: Men in White
• 1935: Dead EndBelfast News-Letter, March 10, 1936Torbay Express and South Devon Echo, January 3, 1939
• 1936: Ten Million Ghosts
• 1939: The World We Make
• 1943: The Patriots
• 1949: Detective Story
• 1951: Darkness at Noon (stage & TV adaptation)The Stage, January 17, 1963
• 1954: Lunatics and Lovers
• 1962: Night Life

• Sidney Kingsley: Five Prizewinning Plays. Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH 1995. {{ISBN|0814206654}} ([https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/1811/31658 Digitized] full access on the publisher's page)

^film never produced

• 1934 Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama for Men in White.

{{Reflist}}

• {{IBDB name}}
• {{IMDb name|455549}}
• [http://www.spartacus-educational.com/USAkingsley.htm Page at Spartacus Educational]
• [https://library.osu.edu/collections/spec.tri.sk Sidney Kingsley Papers - Ohio State University Libraries]

{{PulitzerPrize DramaAuthors 1926-1950}}

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Category:1906 births

Category:1995 deaths

Category:American male screenwriters

Category:Cornell University alumni

Category:Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners

Category:Jewish American dramatists and playwrights

Category:Edgar Award winners

Category:Writers from Queens, New York

Category:Townsend Harris High School alumni

Category:20th-century American dramatists and playwrights

Category:American male dramatists and playwrights

Category:People from Oakland, New Jersey

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:Screenwriters from New York (state)

Category:Screenwriters from New Jersey

Category:20th-century American screenwriters

Category:Writers from Bergen County, New Jersey