Spofford (play)

Last updated
Spofford
Written by Herman Shumlin
Date premiered14 December 1967
Original languageEnglish

Spofford is a 1967 play based on the novel Reuben, Reuben by Peter DeVries. Melvyn Douglas appeared in the original Broadway run. [1]

<i>Reuben, Reuben</i> 1983 American film directed by Robert Ellis Miller

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Melvyn Douglas American actor

Melvyn Douglas was an American actor. Douglas came to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man, perhaps best typified by his performance in the 1939 romantic comedy Ninotchka with Greta Garbo. Douglas later played mature and fatherly characters, as in his Academy Award–winning performances in Hud (1963) and Being There (1979) and his Academy Award–nominated performance in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). In the last few years of his life Douglas appeared in films with supernatural stories involving ghosts. Douglas appeared as "Senator Joseph Carmichael" in The Changeling in 1980 and Ghost Story in 1981 in his final completed film role.

The play was profiled in the William Goldman book The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway .

William Goldman American novelist, screenwriter and playwright

William Goldman was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. He won Academy Awards for his screenplays Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President's Men (1976). His other works include his thriller novel Marathon Man and comedy/fantasy novel The Princess Bride, both of which he adapted for the film versions.

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The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway is an account of the 1967–68 season on and off Broadway by American novelist and screenwriter William Goldman. It was originally published in 1969 and is considered one of the best books ever written on American theater. In The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called the book “Very nearly perfect. ... It is a loose-limbed, gossipy, insider, savvy, nuts-and-bolts report on the annual search for the winning numbers that is now big-time American commercial theatre.”

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