Edward Chodorov was born on April 17, 1904 in New York City. Over the course of his career as a playwright, screenwriter, producer, and director, he wrote and produced over 50 motion pictures and plays. He describes himself as “a parochial sort of guy about the theatre” and says that he “feel[s] sorry for people who don’t work in it. I wonder how they manage to get along and have any fun.” His father, Harry Chodorov, was an actor and a businessman, and was for years a distinguished member of Jacob Adler’s Yiddish theatre company. In telling his family history, though, Chodorov makes sure to emphasize that their theatrical roots extend further back to his ancestors in Russia. His great-grandfather owned an inn just outside of Kiev, where in order to attract more customers he opened an adjoining little theatre.
Edward was born in Manhattan, but the Chodorov family moved to Brooklyn and he attended Erasmus Hall High School. When his family decided to move back to Manhattan, Edward would take the subway an hour and a half each way so he could continue to attend that Erasmus High. The school had a strong theatrical tradition that struck a cord with him – as Jane Cowl (a successful early American actress and playwright) and the Talmadge sisters (the famous movie star sisters of the early 20th century) both attended the school. All through high school and, later, in college at Brown University, whenever he had a paper to write he would write it in dialogue instead of prose if he could get away with it, saying that writing prose made him “feel like a fool.”
He got his professional start in the theatre as a stage manager. Moss Hart, successful playwright of such plays as The Man Who Came to Dinner (produced by TACT in 1995), Light Up the Sky (produced by TACT in 1977), and the screenplay version of “A Star Is Born”, and got him a job working on the Broadway production of the smash hit Abie’s Irish Rose at the Theatre Republic (now the New Victory on 42nd Street) in 1922. From there Chodorov next worked as a publicity agent with Colombia Pictures, and later worked as a stage manager for a theatrical company that toured South Africa. His very first play, Wonder Boy, was produced by Jed Harris in 1932. It received mixed reviews and closed rather quickly – the show required 55 stage hands and had an enormously complicated set and was, no doubt, very expensive to run. His collaboration with Harris led to a debate between them in which Chodorov stated that thrillers were easy to write. Harris challenged that opinion, so Chodorov dashed off to write one. The result was Kind Lady, which he completed in just three weeks. Chodorov adapted it from a short story called “The Silver Mask,” written by author Hugh Walpole. Walpole, Australian by birth but raised in England, had published the story in Harper’s Bazaar four years before Chodorov discovered it and developed his adaptation. The play was an instant hit and got Chodorov his first Hollywood writing job.
Chodorov spent the next eight years working for Hollywood on and off, but said that he never really did “cotton” to it (his own word). About the choice a writer makes to work in Hollywood at all, Chodorov says, “I have one main complaint to make against today’s critics: they don’t give the well-meaning play that doesn’t come off enough of a cultural, literary handling. They should be sharply called to task to remind them of their functions as critics of an old, established art, not a carnival show. If they don’t like a play, they attack the personal character of the writer – treat him like a criminal who’s committed rape. So he does the obvious thing. He goes to Hollywood to bask in wonderful anonymity, where he won’t feel like a sinner for writing.”
Kind Lady was treated very well by the critics when it opened on Broadway at the Booth Theatre on April 23rd, 1935. Grace George, a leading Broadway actress who had been in retirement for two years preceding her return to the stage in Chodorov’s play, received much praise for her work as the kind lady of the title. Her retirement was due to a long period of mental imbalance and strain, which her husband, William A. Brady, commented on in a private interview. He said, “Grace was stricken in 1933, nervous breakdown, recovered very slowly. The physicians said only one more play could help her. My God, I thought she’d have to read away the rest of her life!” But apparently she didn’t, choosing Kind Lady as the play that would bring her back from what seemed an inevitable decline. The part proved very successful both for her career and for her health, and reviews wrote favorably of her performance, saying that “in moments of pathetic defeat and bewilderment Miss George was quietly tear-arousing and when, in one of the play’s eeriest scenes, the cold conspirators closed in upon her, she is what Marc Connelly used to call immense.” Henry Daniell played Henry Abbott, the crook that manipulated and deceived Miss George’s character; he was said to have “performed with what seemed to be an artist’s joy in his work.” Overall, the play itself was praised as being “mystery melodrama skillfully presented” and a “curiously effective drama”. Eventually, the play was made into a film, the first version (released in 1935) starring Aline MacMahon and receiving mixed reviews. Later, in 1951, a highly successful version was released starring Ethel Barrymore, Maurice Evans, and a very young Angela Lansbury in a supporting role.
Edward’s brother, Jerome, was also a playwright and screenwriter. He is best remembered for the book to the musical Wonderful Town, and the play adaptation of The Ponder Heart. Edward and Jerome occasionally worked together as well – they share the screenwriting credit to Those Endearing Young Charms, a film made in 1945 starring Robert Young and Laraine Day.
After a very full career, Edward Chodorov died of illness on October 9, 1988 in New York, the city of his birth. He was 84 years old. He once said of himself, “I don’t feel I’ve done anything in the theatre. I think I’ll develop very late. With luck, I may write a couple of good plays some day.” Looking back, it looks as if he certainly did so.
