Celebrated playwright and magnetic wit Wendy Wasserstein has been firmly rooted in New York’s cultural life since her childhood of Broadway matinees, but her appeal is universal. However, with low stock prices and an inflation-induced appreciation in the value of corporate assets, the conditions were ripe for a wave of corporate acquisitions and mergers that would cause a significant revival of Wall Street and the economy of New York City. Bruce and Wendy Wasserstein were born in Brooklyn in 1948 and 1950 to Morris and Lola Wasserstein. Every four or five years thereafter until her death in 2006, Wendy would have a new play produced about a woman her age and the trials and tribulations of her life at that time. She graduated from Mount Holyoke with a degree in history in 1971, studied creative writing at City College, and earned a masters degree in fine arts in 1976 from the Yale School of Drama where she studied playwriting. Bulletin of the Orton Society. In addition to her daughter, Wasserstein was survived by her mother and three siblings—Abner Wasserstein, businessman Bruce Wasserstein (died in 2009) and Wilburton Inn owner Georgette Wasserstein Levis (died in 2014).[3]. He and Claude had three more children. She wrote the screenplay for the film The Object of My Affection, which starred Jennifer Aniston. Family Life. Sandra, who died at the age of 60 in 1997, was a highly-successful marketing executive. She received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles. Steven Engelhart Retiring From Adirondack Architectural Heritage, African American History At The National Archives, The Unpleasant Side of Life With Horses in Cities. Wendy and the Lost Boys is a fascinating biography that ferrets out some of the secrets and sorrows that Wendy Wasserstein hid beneath her giggly, lovably self-deprecating public persona. The Wendy Wasserstein Papers, 1954–2006, are available to researchers at the Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections. Shrewdly able to assess corporate situations and formulate strategy, he also had the brash confidence to project plans to others and at times intimidate adversaries, and no reluctance to work the 70-hour weeks that were required in such transactions. in creative writing from City College of New York in 1973,[1] and an M.F.A. Although Bruce, as a recent graduate from Harvard Law and Business School with a prestigious post graduate Knox fellowship, could look forward to a secure position at an elite Manhattan law firm, Wendy’s situation upon graduation was more problematic. In 1996 she appeared as the guest caller "Linda" on the Frasier episode "Head Game". The first woman playwright to win a Tony Award, Wendy Wasserstein was a Broadway titan. [16] The baby was three months premature and is recorded in Wasserstein's collection of essays, Shiksa Goddess. Room 26: Wendy Wasserstein’s Writing Room. The authorized biography of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein. Her mother, an amateur dancer, grew up in Poland and moved to the United States when her father was suspected of being a spy. Wendy Wasserstein was born in Brooklyn, New York on October 18, 1950, the youngest of four children. From 1988 until 2000, Bruce continued to run Wasserstein Perella, which was one of the leading investment advisory firms specializing in M&A. While at Yale, she co-wrote a musical with fellow student Christopher Durang, When Dinah Shore Ruled the Earth.[1]. Wasserstein "once described her mother as being like 'Auntie Mame'". "Wendy Wasserstein felt unloved her entire life and desperately wanted a child. [11], Wasserstein also wrote the books to two musicals. Your email address will not be published. Meanwhile in 1977, Wendy’s first full-length play “Uncommon Women and Others” was performed at the Marymount Theater on East 71st Street, a few blocks from where she had grown up, to rave reviews. She died of lymphoma in 2006. This was not the best time to be graduating from college for a young New Yorker. The acquirer would then frequently fire the company’s existing management and replace it with managers experienced in corporate restructuring who were loyal to the new owners. Wasserstein is described as an author of women's identity crises. Rack, L. (1981). Required fields are marked *. [7], Wasserstein's first production of note was Uncommon Women and Others (her graduate thesis at Yale), a play which reflected her experiences as a student at, and an alumna of, Mount Holyoke College. While the new location was closer to Morris’s office in the ribbon business and probably to better dance classes for Lola, it is hard to believe that the move across the East River was not part of Morris’ grand plan to provide an opportunity for his younger children, Bruce and Wendy, to more easily assimilate into the upper reaches of New York society. Young Bruce Wasserstein, who had been trained in law at Harvard Law School and Cravath Swaine & Moore, in business at Harvard Business School and by Morris Wasserstein at home, and in press relations on the Michigan Daily, had the ideal background for this kind of work. The late playwright Wendy Wasserstein was a woman of many facets – some even her closest friends weren’t aware of before her death from cancer in 2006, at 55. Wendy Wasserstein was born in New York City on October 18, 1950. Bruce Jay Wasserstein (December 25, 1947 – October 14, 2009) was an American investment banker, businessman, and writer. in fine arts from the Yale School of Drama in 1976. Critics hailed it as one of the first plays to focus primarily on middle-aged women; it won Wasserstein the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in American Theatre. She married Morris Wasserstein, an inventor and businessman who died in 2003. Wonderful article–detailed, flows well, and gets at the core of these fascinating siblings’ lives! Wendy's oldest siblings, Sandra and Abner, were actually her half-siblings/cousins, offspring of her mother's first husband, George Wasserstein, who died … December 23, 2020 by James S. Kaplan 2 Comments. Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: art, Economic History, Financial History, Manhattan, New York City, Theatre. Meanwhile Bruce, returning from a Knox fellowship to England where he wrote a dissertation on government merger policy, was hired as an associate by Cravath Swaine & Moore, one of New York’s most prestigious corporate law firms and the one that probably represented more Fortune 100 corporations than any other. Wasserstein was determined to control her own narrative, seldom an easy task for any public figure. Wasserstein was named the President's Council of Cornell Women Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large in 2005. New York: Garland. and a full version of the play was produced in 1977 Off-Broadway with Glenn Close, Jill Eikenberry, and Swoosie Kurtz playing the lead roles. Both died suddenly and somewhat prematurely — Bruce in October 2009 at the age of 61 of a reported aneurism and Wendy at the age of 55 in January 2006 reportedly of lymphoma, but not before they had reached the pinnacle of their chosen professions — Bruce in finance and Wendy in the theater. It was subsequently completed by Christopher Durang, set by Deborah Drattell, and is in development with Lauren Flanigan.[when?]. Wendy Wasserstein's father was Morris Wasserstein Wendy Wasserstein's mother was Lola Wasserstein Wendy Wasserstein's children: Wendy Wasserstein's daughter is Lucy Wasserstein Subscribe! 13", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wendy_Wasserstein&oldid=991271314, 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights, 21st-century American dramatists and playwrights, American women dramatists and playwrights, Jewish American dramatists and playwrights, All articles with vague or ambiguous time, Vague or ambiguous time from November 2018, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2020, Internet Off-Broadway Database person ID same as Wikidata, Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers, Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers, Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 29 November 2020, at 05:19. family to New Jersey in 1931, then moved to Brooklyn and the Upper East Side. At the time, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) under the then changed economic and regulatory environment, was in a sense a new field in which very few had experience. The play essentially established Wendy, who was 27 at the time, as one of New York’s most promising young playwrights, and also showcased such young actresses as Glenn Close, Meryl Streep, Jill Eikenbery and Swoosie Kurtz. Wasserstein, who was not married, never publicly identified her daughter's father. In depicting Heidi as troubled over career and family, Wendy Wasserstein inadvertently fed a media hype, a new feminine mystique about the either/or choices in a woman's life. Her plays, which explore topics ranging from feminism to family to ethnicity to pop culture, include The Sisters Rosensweig, Isn't It Romantic, An American Daughter, Old Money, and her last work, which opened in 2005, Third.[9]. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Her play, The Heidi Chronicles, won the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize. She won the hearts of so many fans because her witty, wise, and poignant plays spoke for all Uncommon Women. [3] The news of Wasserstein's death was unexpected because her illness had not been widely publicized outside the theater community. Certainly Morris and Lola were immensely proud of both Bruce and Wendy’s professional accomplishments. Born in Brooklyn on October 18, 1950, to Morris and Lola (Schleifer) Wasserstein, Wendy was the youngest of four children, of whom one was a son. Both Bruce and his father, Morris, viewed this position as a step up both socially and potentially economically. Wife of Morris W. Wasserstein and George Wasserstein. Wendy Wasserstein (October 18, 1950 – January 30, 2006) was an American playwright. During her career, which spanned nearly four decades, Wasserstein wrote eleven plays, winning a Tony Award, a Pulitzer Prize, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk Award, and an Outer Critics Circle Award. At the time Cravath was representing First Boston Corporation, an investment bank that had just hired Joseph Perella to head up an investment advisory service to do mergers. Having moved across the East River to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where they lived the rest of their lives (except for brief sojourns in college and graduate schools), in a sense Bruce and Wendy never looked back. The clan included playwright Wendy Wasserstein, banker Bruce Wasserstein, business executive Sandra Meyer and Abner Wasserstein, an advocate for the disabled. Rather than following her siblings to the University of Michigan, Wendy attended Mount Holyoke College and graduated in 1971. The Sisters Rosensweig is a contemporary play by Wendy Wasserstein, first performed in 1992.It follows the complicated lives of three middle-aged Jewish-Americans. When Morris was Bruce’s age, a firm like Cravath would likely not have hired a Jewish boy like Bruce, who would have been consigned to the family textile business or strictly Jewish law firms. The play was workshopped at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in 1977,[8] The play was subsequently produced for PBS with Meryl Streep replacing Close. Associated With. Frequently this was done through a “hostile” tender offer in which the shareholders of the target would be offered a price per share that usually represented a premium over the trading price to permit the acquirer to obtain control. There is also no question that Bruce and Wendy contributed significantly to the city’s success in the period from 1980 to 2009 in two important sectors of its economy. Letter to Wendy Wasserstein, Wendy Wasserstein Papers, Series 2 Correspondence (Folder 2) Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, South Hadley MA. Lola Wasserstein reportedly inspired some of her daughter's characters. Our Aunt Wendy Wasserstein was a beloved playwright who was known for being the female voice of her generation. Their lives and professional successes, as well as their personal tribulations, are in certain respects emblematic of life in New York in this period, and also of the influences and attitudes forged from their immigrant Jewish parents in the preceding period. The deal made Bruce — who had previously been only well-to-do — a very rich man. "Wendy Wasserstein: Her premature baby goes home", City University of New York, City College, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/mountholyoke/mshm325_main.html, "Wendy Wasserstein, Playwright Who Dramatized the Progress of a Generation of Women, Is Dead at 55", "Wendy Wasserstein Dies at 55; Her Plays Spoke to a Generation", "Wendy Wasserstein Pulitzer-Prize Winning Playwright, to Speak", "At the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's Critics Institute 5Q4 Dan Sullivan", "Making Trouble: Three Generations of Funny Jewish Women", "Playwright Wendy Wasserstein to be remembered in Schwartz Center symposium", "The Newest Wasserstein Creation Comes Home", "Wendy Wasserstein Gets Spotlight in a New Biography", "Wasserstein World Premieres, 'Welcome to My Rash' and 'Third', Play DC Through Feb. 15", Audio: Wendy Wasserstein at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2005, Wasserstein biography at Jewish Women Encyclopedia, "Wendy Wasserstein, The Art of Theater No. Previously most acquisitions were friendly, involved an exchange of stock and were handled by a company’s existing corporate advisers. with expertise in effectuating such transactions. In a case of life imitating art she at the age of 49 by in vitro fertilization gave birth to a child, Lucy Jane, and thus in her 50s became a single mother of a young child. When her daughter was 2, a terrible chronology began: Wasserstein became ill in 2001. By a combination of shrewd investments as well as his years of outsized Wall Street salaries, Forbes in 2009 listed his net worth as $2.5 billion and named him as the 147th richest man in America. This article was first published by the Museum of American Finance. Bruce Wasserstein, the financier and corporate takeover adviser, and his sister Wendy Wasserstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author, were among the most accomplished and famous New Yorkers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. “Uncommon Women” was a play about a reunion of a group of Mount Holyoke graduates. As he was involved in more and more major deals, his reputation as one of the premiere — if not the premier — experts in this area grew, and increasingly more business came to him and Perella. Series 13:Audiovisual Materials, 1954-2006 In the early 1990s he divorced Chris Parot, his second wife and the mother of his three children, and then married Claude Becker, a film producer 20 years younger than he was. [14], Wasserstein gave birth to a daughter in 1999[15] when she was 48 years old. After a purported falling out with Dresdner, Bruce was invited in 2002 to become the CEO of Lazard Freres, when Felix Rohayton and other leaders of that advisory firm thought the firm needed one of the “Great Men” of Wall Street to survive and continue into the next generation. Wasserstein was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, the daughter of Morris Wasserstein, a wealthy textile executive, and his wife, Lola (née Liska) Schleifer, who moved to the United States from Poland when her father was accused of being a spy. In addition to her daughter, Ms. Wasserstein is survived by her mother, Lola Wasserstein; her … Sandra, who died at the age of 60 in 1997, was a highly-successful marketing executive. When Wendy died, her daughter was adopted by Bruce, and when he died, in 2009, his ex-wife Claude Becker became her guardian. Both Bruce and Wendy Wasserstein were in a most profound sense children of New York City in the late 20th century. As the co-head of the mergers and acquisitions group at First Boston, Wasserstein began to specialize in advising on hostile takeovers, which proved to be highly lucrative work. Probably the high point in this series was “The Heidi Chronicles,” first performed in 1989, about Heidi Holland, a 40-year-old art professor and strong follower of the women’s movement who finds that despite her significant professional success, she is somewhat stranded socially and emotionally. [12] Pamela's First Musical, written with Cy Coleman and David Zippel, based on Wasserstein's children's book, received its world premiere in a concert staging at Town Hall in New York City on May 18, 2008. After working with him on several transactions, Perella hired him to work with him at First Boston at twice the salary he was making at Cravath. Wendy Wasserstein died … In 1999, at age 48, Wasserstein had a daughter, Lucy Jane, born three month prematurely. [1] Claims that Schleifer was a playwright are probably apocryphal, as contemporaries did not recall this and the assertion only appeared once Wasserstein had won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Photo of Bruce Wasserstein, Chairman and CEO of Lazard Freres, in 2008; and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein at the Whitney Museum of American Art gala, 2000. Thus Bruce Wasserstein became one of the few figures from the takeover boom of the 1980s to survive intact into the 21st century. In addition, she wrote the screenplay for the 1998 film The Object of My Affection, which starred Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd. Morris Wasserstein had come to the United States from Poland in 1927. Wasserstein’s father was a textile manufacturer. [1][3] In 1990 she received an honoris causa Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Mount Holyoke College[6] and in 2002 she received an honoris causa degree from Bates College. Her family lived in Brooklyn until she was 12 and then moved to Manhattan. However, the relaxation of antitrust and other regulatory restrictions, along with the depressed stock prices at which many corporations were selling, made an exchange of stock of the acquiring company for stock of the acquired company less attractive. “Uncommon Women” was reviewed by a theater critic for The New York Times and other papers just like a Broadway show, even though it never played on Broadway (it was later performed on PBS). "%0D %0D %0D the book though says she was somewhat ambivilent about having a child. It is quite unusual that two siblings should obtain preeminence in such disparate fields. Parmelee, E. (1969). She gave birth to her daughter Lucy in 1999. [16][17], Wasserstein was hospitalized with lymphoma in December 2005 and died at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on January 30, 2006 at the age of 55. Like most successful prominent figures, Bruce and Wendy Wasserstein were a product of the times and place in which they grew up and lived — in their case New York City from 1950 to 2009. They were native New Yorkers who lived there all their lives, and their upbringing both in Brooklyn and Manhattan undoubtedly contributed significantly to their later successes. Miami, written in collaboration with Jack Feldman and Bruce Sussman, was presented at Playwrights Horizons in 1985–1986, and starred among others, Marcia Lewis, Phyllis Newman, Jane Krakowski, and Fisher Stevens. Bruce also had difficulties relating to family matters, but of a different kind. Their success was achieved through a combination of shrewd insight and highly effective self-promotion, and the good fortune to live through a period of economic and social revival in New York City, in which they were active participants. As Julie Salamon observes in her penetrating new biography of the dramatist, Wendy and the Lost Boys, Wasserstein “became a celebrity by turning her life over to the public domain.” When it came to her wide social circle, however, Wendy was the youngest of five siblings, including brother Bruce Wasserstein, a well-known investment banker. At the time Bruce joined Cravath, Wall Street, like the rest of New York’s economy, was in the doldrums. [3] "Her heroines—intelligent and successful but also riddled with self-doubt—sought enduring love a little ambivalently, but they did not always find it, and their hard-earned sense of self-worth was often shadowed by the frustrating knowledge that American women's lives continued to be measured by their success at capturing the right man. Undoubtedly aware that had he stayed in Poland he might have been killed during the Holocaust 15 years later, he would pass down to his children a deep appreciation of and gratitude for the opportunity to live in America. He would also have a fierce desire for his children to assimilate into America and New York and would instill in them a strong ambition to succeed at the highest levels of American and New York society. But that was only the beginning. Death: June 16, 2007 (89) United States. The play provided a formula which she would consistently follow in her writing for the rest of her career. Word around town was that Chao was fine with his decision to adopt Wendy Wasserstein’s daughter, Lucy Jane, and have her come live at 927 Fifth after Wendy’s death. Armed with an “A” average from City College and Joseph Heller’s enthusiastic recommendation, she was then accepted at the Yale Drama School, where she began in the fall of 1973. Family Papers consists of three undated typed student papers written by Wasserstein's brother Bruce Wasserstein, a 1961 McBurney School yearbook belonging to Bruce Wasserstein, whose name is inscribed on the front end paper; clippings, correspondence, and an obituary for Wasserstein's sister Sandra. (1976) The advantages of being dyslexic. The characters, including Holly Kaplan, the daughter of a Jewish New York textile manufacturer, were thinly disguised descriptions of Wendy and her best friends from college five years after graduation.

Clam Jason Mitchell X200 Thermal Flip Over Shelter, House Of Cb Tops, 15th Punjab Regiment, Title 20 California, Led Light For Video Shooting Price, Green Chiropractic Hours,