Dale Wasserman (November 2, 1914 – December 21, 2008) was an American playwright,[1] perhaps best known for his book, Man of La Mancha.
Early life
Dale Wasserman was born in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, the child of Russian Jewish immigrants Samuel Wasserman and Bertha Paykel, and was orphaned at the age of nine. He lived in a state orphanage and with an older brother in South Dakota before he "hit the rails". He later said, "I'm a self-educated hobo. My entire adolescence was spent as a hobo, riding the rails and alternately living on top of buildings on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. I regret never having received a formal education. But I did get a real education about human nature."[2]
Career
Wasserman worked in various aspects of theatre from age 19. His formal education ended after one year of high school in Los Angeles. It was there that he began work as a self-taught lighting designer, director and producer. He started as stage manager and lighting designer for musical impresario Sol Hurok, and for the Katherine Dunham Company where he claimed to have invented lighting patterns imitated later in other dance companies. In addition to the U.S., he produced and directed in locations such as London and Paris.
In the middle of directing a Broadway musical, which he later refused to name, Wasserman abruptly walked out, later saying he "couldn't possibly write worse than the stuff [he] was directing" and left his previous occupations to become a writer. "Every other function was interpretive; only the writer was primary." Matinee Theatre, the TV anthology which presented his first play, Elisha and the Long Knives, received a collective Emmy for the plays it produced in 1955, the year Elisha and the Long Knives was telecast on that series (it was originally broadcast in 1954 on Kraft Television Theatre, another anthology). Wasserman wrote some 30 more television dramas, making him one of the better-known writers in the Golden Age of Television. "Man of La Mancha," which first appeared as a straight play on TV, is frequently and erroneously called "an adaptation" of Don Quixote but is not. It is a completely original work that uses scenes from "Don Quixote" to illuminate Miguel de Cervantes' life. Don Quixote was Cervantes' Man of La Mancha; it was Cervantes himself who was Dale Wasserman's Man of La Mancha. Man of La Mancha ran for five years on Broadway and continues worldwide in more than 30 languages.
Dale Wasserman adapted Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest into a play by the same title which ran for six years in San Francisco and has had extensive engagements in Chicago, New York, Boston and other U.S. cities. Foreign productions have appeared in Paris, Mexico, Sweden, Argentina, Belgium, and Japan. Kesey is said to have told Wasserman that but for the play, the novel would have been forgotten.
Recently, research by Howard Mancing, a Cervantes scholar and Professor of Spanish Literature at Purdue University, uncovered an earlier use of the line "To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe," which was made famous in Wasserman's Man of La Mancha. The lines were actually invented for publicity matter that accompanied an earlier stage adaptation of Don Quixote by the American playwright Paul Kester, first performed in 1908. The phrase "To each his Dulcinea", featured in Wasserman's play, was also first used in the Kester play.[3]
At the time of his death, Dale Wasserman had, arguably, some fine and thought-provoking work ready to be produced: "Players in the Game", set in 1316 Prague, poses the question: Is fiery, incorruptible zealotry necessarily to be preferred to benign corruption—the operative word here being "benign"? "Montmartre" is a musical set in early 20th century Paris; the two main protagonists are Kiki, the most sought-after model of her day (an actual person), and a cynical mature man being confronted by his idealistic younger self.
Personal life
Reclusive by nature, Wasserman and his wife, Martha Nelly Garza, made their home in Arizona ("because it's the one state which refuses to adopt Daylight Saving Time"). Dale's first marriage, to actress Ramsay Ames, ended in divorce.[4] He married Martha Nelly in 1984. She survives him, is his executrix/executor and holds the rights to all his work.
2001 How I Saved the Whole Damn World — A sailor on a drunken spree welds items from a junkyard into the mast of his ship. A plane flying overhead explodes, creating an all-powerful weapon and, indirectly, world peace.
Boy On Blacktop Road — An investigation takes place related to the arrival and subsequent disappearance of a young boy.
Dale Wasserman's did not begin his writing career until 1954; his first offering, "Elisha and the Long Knives," which was acclaimed as one of the best television scripts of the year [Irving Settel] was shown in 1955. Any dates below that are earlier than 1955 are the dates the series began, not when Dale's work was shown on them.
1961 The DuPont Show of The Month: The Lincoln Murder Case (Wasserman received his only Emmy nomination for this television play, but did not win)
1961 The Power and the Glory (some sources claim that director Marc Daniels won an Emmy for this, but this is not verified either by the Emmy Awards website or the Internet Movie Database)
1963 The Richard Boone Show (NBC) — "Stranger". At night, on a coastal road, a boy is nearly hit by a car. The car's passengers, stopping to see if the boy is all right, are disturbed by his strange behavior. See Boy On Blacktop Road above.
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (December 2008)
"As to awards, I have received the usual quota of Emmys [Wasserman is mistaken here; according to the Emmy Awards website [1], he received only one Emmy nomination], Tonys, Ellys and Robbys and, for all I know, Kaspars and Hausers. I'm unsure of the number because I don't attend awards ceremonies and so receive the knick-knacks by mail if at all. Ah, yes, one exception: when the University of Wisconsin offered an Honorary Doctorate, I did appear in cap and gown to address the audience in the football stadium at Madison, because a scant quarter-mile from where I was being Doctored, I had hopped my first freight at the age of 12. Irony should not be wasted."
^Dale Wasserman, 94; Playwright Created 'Man of La Mancha'" obituary by Dennis McLellan of the Los Angeles Times printed in The Washington Post December 29, 2008.
^Mancing, Howard (2008), Groundland, Mark (ed.), "The Origin of "The Impossible Dream"", "Aqui se imprimen libros": Cervantine Studies in Honor of Tom Lathrop, University, MI: Department of Modern Languages, University of Mississippi, pp. 79–90
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