D.L. Coburn obit

D.L. Coburn Dies: Pulitzer Prize-Winning ‘The Gin Game’ Playwright Was 87

 

He was not on the list.

D.L. Coburn, the playwright who won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for drama for his much-produced The Gin Game, died from colon cancer December 3 at a Dallas hospice center. He was 87.

His death was reported by his wife, Marsha Coburn, to The New York Times.

The Gin Game is a comedy-drama in which two elderly residents of a retirement home – one male, one female – start an acquaintance over hands of the title card game. The long, in-depth chats – and bickering – uncover life stories and disappointments, and display the same competitive spirit the duo brings to the card table.

After several regional productions in 1976 and 1977, the play opened at Broadway‘s John Golden Theatre in October 1977 in an acclaimed Mike Nichols-directed production starring real-life husband and wife Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy (she won a Tony Award for the performance) The popular play was revived on Broadway in 1997 with Charles Durning and Julie Harris and again in 2015 with James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson.

The play’s small cast and single porch set have helped make it an affordable entry in numerous regional and international theater line-ups, including in London’s West End, over the decades. A TV adaptation starring Cronyn and Tandy was produced for Showtime in 1981, and a PBS adaptation starring Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore aired in 2003.

Born Donald Lee Coburn in Baltimore on August 4, 1938, Coburn launched his professional life as an advertising copywriter in his hometown. Following the outsized success of The Gin Game – his first play, produced when he was 39 – Coburn never again matched that professional success. While none of his subsequent plays, including 1979’s Bluewater Cottage and 2009’s Return to Bluefin made it to Broadway, Coburn never succumbed to bitterness.

“Of course he was frustrated,” Marsha Coburn told The Times. “But Don was not an angry man. He kept writing and writing. That’s who he was. He never lost his love of writing.”

Coburn’s first marriage to Nazlee Joyce French ended in divorce. In addition to wife Marsha, he is survived by two children from his first marriage and three grandsons.