Iris Rainer Dart is an American author and playwright for television and the stage. Her most notable novel is Beaches, which was made into a 1988 film of the same name. She has also written several stage musicals as well as for television shows, such as The Sonny and Cher Show.
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Rainer Dart was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was an actress as a youth with the Curtaineers, an inter-racial theater group at the Settlement house, at the Pittsburgh Playhouse and The White Barn Theatre. She also went to classes at the Pittsburgh Playhouse as a child.[1] She is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in theater.[1]
In an interview (Summer 2007), when asked the question:"Has the Jewish cultural dynamic in your upbringing influenced what and how you write?", Dart replied "Unquestionably. I grew up in a household where both my parents were immigrants – my mother from Russia, father from Lithuania – and they spoke more Yiddish in my house than English, so it was just a [sic] completely a part of who I was."[2]
Dart has written nine novels, including Beaches.[1] She wrote for The Sonny and Cher Show variety show in the 1970s.[1] She got the idea to write about a woman "loosely based on 'the no holds barred outrageous person' that she found in Cher. The character became "Cee Cee Bloom" in her ...novel Beaches later made into the iconic film of the same name starring Bette Midler."[3]
She wrote the book and lyrics for the 2009 stage musical, Laughing Matters, for the Pasadena Playhouse, California.[4] Her next work is the Roundabout Theatre Broadway production of her new musical, The People in the Picture, opening on April 28, 2011 and closing on June 19, 2011, and starring Donna Murphy.[5]
She is married to Stephen Dart, a California businessman, the mother two adult children and the grandmother two.[3]
Source: Fiction Database[6]