Bella and Samuel Spewack

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Samuel Spewack
Columbia College
Spouse(s)Bella Cohen
(1922–1971, his death)
Bella Cohen
Washington Irving High School
Spouse(s)Samuel Spewack
(1922–1971, his death)

Bella (25 March 1899 – 27 April 1990) and Samuel Spewack (16 September 1899 – 14 October 1971) were a husband-and-wife writing team.

Samuel, who also directed many of their plays, was born in

Columbia College
.

Lives and careers

The oldest of three children of a single mother, Bella Cohen was born in

reporter for The World, and the couple married in 1922. Shortly afterwards, they departed for Moscow
, where they worked as news correspondents for the next four years.

After returning to the

Academy Award nomination for Best Original Story for My Favorite Wife in 1940. The 1933 film The Solitaire Man was based on their 1927 play of the same name. They also penned a remake of Grand Hotel, entitled Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), which starred Ginger Rogers. In the summer of 1943, he accompanied LT Burgess Meredith to England to co-write the U.S. Army training film A Welcome to Britain
which educated arriving troops on cultural differences between Americans and the British.

The Spewaks were in the midst of their own marital woes in 1948 when they were approached to write the book for

Tony Awards
, one for Best Musical, the other for Best Author of a Musical. Kiss Me, Kate proved to be their most successful work.

In 1965, Sam collaborated with Frank Loesser on a musical adaptation of the 1961 Spewack play Once There Was a Russian. Entitled Pleasures and Palaces, it closed following its Detroit run and never opened on Broadway.

Bella was a successful

Camp Fire Girls and Girl Scouts of the USA, and claimed to have introduced the idea of selling cookies for the latter as a means of raising revenue for the organization.[4]

A Letter to Sam from Bella, a one-act play by Broadway director Aaron Frankel, is based on the Spewacks' personal papers from the Theater Arts Collection of Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Their best known straight play was My Three Angels, which is still sometimes performed, and was adapted as the film We're No Angels.

Additional Broadway credits

References

  1. ^ https://viaf.org/viaf/116812223/
  2. ^ "Samuel Spewack Education & Community". James A. Michener Art Museum. Retrieved 31 October 2007.
  3. ^ Bella Spewack at Jewish Women's Archive
  4. ^ "History of Girl Scouts of the USA – FundingUniverse".

External links

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