Theatre Register

Lesser Samuels

Shows · Lesser Samuels

Book Writer 1894–1980

Lesser Samuels (26 July 1894 – 22 December 1980) enjoyed a 20-year career as a Hollywood screenwriter. He is best known for back-to-back Oscar nominations for the racial drama No Way Out in 1950 and Billy Wilder's lacerating critique of tabloid journalism Ace in the Hole the following year. Samuels also wrote and served as associate producer on the notorious Biblical flop The Silver Chalice - a film which its star Paul Newman deemed one of the low points of his career - in 1954. Samuels co-authored the book for the 1960 Frank Loesser musical Greenwillow.

Also credited on1 work

Greenwillow

These come off the person record, which names a work and not a production. So we can say this name is attached to the work and we cannot say which staging, or in what capacity. For a composer or a writer that is the whole career we hold; there is no cast list to find them in.

In the literature2 passages

  • It featured a slight plot set in an imaginary village on the banks of the Meander River, with Perkins as young wanderer Gideon Briggs. The slight novel on which it was based had frustrated celebrated composer Frank Loesser, who’d determined to transform it into his own Brigadoon . He eventually sought outside help; screenwriter Lesser Sam…ebooks/Hadleigh, Boze/Broadway Babylon - Boze Hadleigh.txt
  • It was a show of firsts: Anthony Perkins made his musical theatre debut as Gideon, and to accommodate the star, George Roy Hill, who had directed Perkins in Look Homeward, Angel, was hired to direct his first musical. Though Loesser began work on the show alone (after it was turned down by Lerner and Loewe, perhaps because of similarities…ebooks/Mandelbaum, Ken/Not Since Carrie_ Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops - Ken Mandelbaum.txt

Passages naming this person, found by keyword across 178 books. A keyword match is not a biography, and a common name will pull in the wrong one.

What this page does not know

  • What this person played. No cast list we hold records a character against a performer.
  • Any staging. This name appears in no production cast list we hold — 1,877 of 7,139 people are in that position, most of them writers, composers and designers rather than performers.
  • Any portrait. 1,626 of 7,139 people have one, so this is the usual case rather than the exception.
  • Which of the credits above the roles on this record — book writer — apply to. The roles sit on the person and never on a credit, so a director who also acted looks the same here as one who did not.

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