Sherman Yellen
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Sherman Yellen (born 1932 in New York City) is an Emmy Award-winning playwright. He graduated from Bard College 1953 and his first play was New Gods For Lovers, which was produced at the HB Playhouse in New York. This play, entered in a playwrighting competition, won the Hallmark Award, and he began to write television drama for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, and for NBC television, creating such shows as Cry of Angels and Beauty and the Beast (Emmy nomination and Christopher Award). His American Civil War television drama, Day Before Battle, was written in collaboration with his friend, playwright Peter Stone, and appeared on Studio One. He went on to write notable adaptations of such literary classics as Great Expectations, Dr.Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, Phantom of the Opera and The Last Giraffe - a contemporary show about the Rothschilds giraffe, as well as the PBS series The Adams Chronicles (Emmy Award) and An Early Frost (Emmy Award).
Yellen's work in Broadway theatre includes his Tony nominated libretto for the musical, The Rothschilds, with music by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick; Rex - a musical about the life and loves of Henry VIII with music by Richard Rodgers, and Strangers a biographical drama about Sinclair Lewis. His satirical sketch, Delicious Indignities was a highlight of the ground breaking erotic revue, Oh! Calcutta! He later incorporated the music of popular songwriter Jimmy McHugh into a new musical about young journalists in Paris in 1927, Lucky in the Rain, which had a successful run at the Goodspeed Opera. His collaboration with the late composer Wally Harper on Say Yes created a light hearted musical comedy about the 1939 New York World's Fair, produced in 2000 by The Berkshire Theatre Festival. It was later revised as This Fair World where it was performed at Stages, the festival of new musicals in Chicago. In this and in "Josephine Tonight!" a musical biography of the early life of Josephine Baker produced by Theatre Building Chicago, Yellen was both librettist and lyricist for composer Harper.
Yellen's most recent work is December Fools a comedy-drama about a musical comedy composer's widow and her contentious daughter; two women locked into the past who are struggling with each other in the present, produced by Abingdon Theatre Arts in New York, and Josephine Tonight produced by Theatre Building Chicago, a musical which The Chicago Sun-Times called a "shining new musical."
