Israel Horovitz obit

Death of American playwright Israel Horovitz, the most adapted author of French theater

 

He was not on the list.

The American playwright Israel Horovitz, author of dozens of plays for internationally successful theaters, died Monday at the age of 81, we learned from his agent in Paris on Wednesday.

Figure of "off Broadway", he died of cancer at home in New York (United States), said the same source.

Born in Massachusetts, he was the most adapted American playwright in the history of French theater, where he performed in the most important theaters of the country, with plays interpreted by Gérard Depardieu, Pierre Arditi or Line Renaud. , like the hit "Très chère Mathilde", sold out in Marigny in 2009.

In total, he wrote more than 70 plays, some of which have been translated into around thirty languages, such as "The First", "The Indian Seeks the Bronx" or "Somewhere in this Life".

He was known for his style ranging from realism to parable, from fable to myth.

His pieces have been brought to the screen by Al Pacino, Jill Clayburgh and Diane Keaton.

He has also written some thirty screenplays for the cinema including "Des fraises et du sang", Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1970 or, more recently, "My old lady", (2015) with Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas , which he also directed and which was shot in 2013 in Paris, where he lived for a long time.

Designated by critics as the spiritual son of the American playwright Arthur Miller, friend of Genet and Beckett, he had been nicknamed "our sweet American thug" by the Franco-Romanian playwright, Eugene Ionesco.

In 2011 his autobiography "Un New-Yorkais à Paris" was published by Grasset.

A year later, he was made Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, highest decoration of the Order of Arts and Letters.

His screenplay for the 1982 film Author! Author!, starring Al Pacino, is a largely autobiographical account of a playwright dealing with the stress of having his play produced on Broadway while trying to raise a large family. Other Horovitz-penned films include the award-winning Sunshine, co-written with Istvan Szabo (European Academy Award – Best Screenplay), 3 Weeks After Paradise (which he directed and in which he starred), James Dean, an award-winning biography of the actor, and The Strawberry Statement (Prix du Jury, Cannes Film festival, 1970), a movie adapted from a journalistic novel by James Simon Kunen that deals with the student political unrest of the 1960s. Horovitz adapted his stage play My Old Lady for the screen, which he directed in summer, 2013, starring Maggie Smith, Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott-Thomas and Dominique Pinon. The film was released in cinemas worldwide in fall 2014.