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Edward Frankin Albee III is Born in Washington, DC
His biological father left his mother, Louise Harvey, and he was placed for adoption two weeks later. He's adopted by Reed A. and Frances Cotter Albee of Larchmont, NY. Edward is named after is adoptive grandfather, co-owner of four hundred vaudeville theaters across the country, known as the Keith-Albee chain. -
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Childhood and Family
The Albee’s were an old American family, having immigrated to Maine in the seventeenth century; an ancestor was one of the original minutemen in the Revolutionary War. Albee's father inherited wealth from his father's theatre chain. In his own estimation, Albee did not have the kind of carefree, nurtured childhood one hopes for every child growing up. His mother was emotionally cold and domineering; his father was distant and uninvolved in his son’s rearing. -
Disney Cartoon, "The Three Little Pigs" Premiers
The title is a play on the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” from the cartoon "The Three Little Pigs" will later trigger the title of his most well-known work. The implied answer is: Everybody. And Albee’s plays depict the desperate lengths to which we go in order to avoid confronting the big, bad wolf huffing and puffing at the door of our flimsy houses and the terrible damage we do to each other in the process, confronting truths and navigating terrains we may prefer to leave unexplored. -
Enrolls in Lawrenceville Academy, New Jersey
Edward is dismissed during his second year for not attending classes. -
Attends Valley Forge Military Academy, Pennsylvania
Edward is dismissed during his second year. -
Enrolls in the Choate School, Wallingford, CT
Albee begins writing and receives encouragement from his teachers. He attracts theatre attention by having scripted and published nine poems, eleven short stories, essays, a long act play, Schism, and a 500-page novel, The Flesh of Unbelievers. James Thurber was an early inspiration. Some of these juvenilia were published in the school literary magazine and one poem was published in a Texas literary magazine in 1945. He graduates in 1946. -
Attends Trinity College, Harford, CT
After graduation from Choate, he heads to Trinity College. He published in the literary magazine and acted in a couple of plays but was expelled in his second year for not attending required courses and chapel. In that same year he left home (or was thrown out) after a fight over his late-night drinking, which ceased all contact between him and his adoptive parents for twenty years. -
Moves to Greenwich Village, NYC
Edward leaves his family home and moves to New York City. “I moved out lock, stock and barrel, as they say, turning my back on all that, the money and everything. It was an amazing feeling of freedom, to make my life on my own terms, for better or worse.” He works at various jobs, including messenger for Western Union. He's supported by a small inheritance from his maternal grandmother. He continues to write. PHOTO: Albee's first apartment at 60 W. 10th Street, NYC -
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Relationship with William Flannigan
Albee met and became involved with William Flanagan, who had come east from Detroit to study music and was the music critic for the Herald Tribune and other publications. In 1952 Albee moved in with Flanagan, his first long-term gay relationship. Flanagan was more than a lover to the young Albee; he was also an artistic and intellectual mentor. Flanagan and his entourage attended the theatre, art exhibits, and other cultural events, as well as frequenting lower Manhattan nightspots. -
President Eisenhower Meets Premier Khruschev in Geneva
Eisenhower met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Geneva. Soon after this meeting, Eisenhower said, "The subject that took most of my attention was the possibility of increased visits overseas by the citizens of one country into the territory of the other nation. In this subject there was the fullest possible agreement between the West and the Soviet Union". Cultural exchange programs enhance mutual understanding. See Albee/Steinbeck 1963 -
Writes "The Zoo Story"
This one act play, his first, is completed in just three weeks. The play explores themes of isolation, loneliness, miscommunication as anathematization, social disparity and dehumanization in a materialistic world. Famous story: approaching his thirtieth birthday with a sense of desperation that he would never be a writer, he “liberated” a typewriter from the Western Union office where he worked and wrote The Zoo Story as a birthday present to himself. -
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Relationship with Terrance McNally
In his early years in New York City, McNally, a young actor who was later to become a famous playwright himself, shared a cab with Edward Albee. They functioned as a couple for over four years during which Albee wrote "The American Dream" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" He was frustrated by Albee's lack of openness about his sexuality. McNally later said: "I became invisible when press was around or at an opening night. I knew it was wrong. It’s so much work to live that way." -
"The Zoo Story" Premiers in Berlin
Edward attends the premier of his first play at the Schiller Theatre Werkstaat, Berlin. The play receives excellent reviews and is paired with Samuel Beckett's "Krapps Last Tape". Although it took some time to get it on the stage, Albee knew that he had taken a giant step forward. Upon listening to a staged reading of "The Zoo Story" at the Actors Studio, novelist Norman Mailer stood up and proclaimed it the best one-act play he had ever seen. -
Openings
"The Zoo Story" opens at the Provincetown Playhouse, NYC. "The Sandbox" is produced at the Jazz Gallery, NY. "The Death of Bessie Smith" is staged at Schlossberg Theatre, Berlin. "Fam and Yam" is produced at the White Barn, Westport, CT and later at Theatre de Lys, NY.
Though "The Sandbox" did not have a long run, the following year it was performed on television with plays by Beckett and Ionesco, associating Albee with the Theatre of the Absurd. -
Albee Directs "The Zoo Story"
The play is staged off- Broadway and tours. "The Zoo Story" was a critical and commercial success and launched Albee’s career as a professional playwright in spectacular fashion: it won him the Obie (the Off-Broadway equivalent of the Tony award) and other awards; got him an agent at William Morris, partnered him with his longtime producer Richard Barr; and earned him fame if not fortune. -
"The American Dream" Staged at York Playhouse, NY
This brief absurdist drama established the playwright as an astute, acerbic critic of American values. The play addresses issues of childlessness and adoption. The play’s central figures, Mommy and Daddy, represent banal American life. Grandma buys an infant. This child did not turn out as Mommy and Daddy expected and so was abused by them until it died. When a young man—the American Dream arrives, Grandma suggests that Mommy and Daddy adopt him, since his emptiness seems to be what they desire. -
Award Winning "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
Produced at the Billy Rose Theatre, NY, the play receives The Drama Circle Critics Award, a Tony Award for Best Play, and was selected for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize by the award's drama jury, but the selection was overruled by the advisory committee, which elected not to give a drama award at all. The two members of the jury, John Mason Brown and John Gassner, subsequently resigned in protest. Commercially successful, with his earnings, Albee purchased a house in Montauk on Long Island. -
Creates The Playwrights Unit to Encourage New Playwrights
With associates Richard Barr and Clinton Wilder, Albee creates the Playwrights Unit - presenting about 100 plays at workshops including works by Langford Wilson, Sam Shepard, Terrance McNally, and John Guare - some of the first opportunities to have their work produced at the Cherry Lane Theater in the West Village. -
Travels to The Soviet Union with John Steinbeck
Steinbeck’s fame was global, and it was for this reason that John F. Kennedy asked the writer, along with then-up-and-coming playwright Edward Albee, to travel to the Soviet Union as part of the cultural exchange program in 1963. -
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Relationship with William Pennington
While on the cultural exchange in Eastern Europe with Steinbeck, they heard President Kennedy had been assassinated. When Albee returned, he and McNally broke up and he began living with William Pennington, an interior decorator. The relationship continued until 1971 when he began his longest and most important personal relationship with Jonathan Thomas. -
Awards for "Tiny Alice"
"Tiny Alice" wins The New York Drama Critics Award and a Tony Award for Best Play. The play features John Gielgud. Author Philip Roth wrote a furious indictment of the play, stating: "The disaster of the play, however—its tediousness, its pretentiousness, its galling sophistication, its gratuitous and easy symbolizing, its ghastly pansy rhetoric and repartee—all of this can be traced to his own unwillingness or inability to put its real subject [male homosexuality] at the center of the action." -
Frances Albee Suffers Heart Attack
Albee’s mother suffered a heart attack, moving him to contact her after almost twenty years of estrangement. He began a relationship with her that lasted until her death twenty years later. They did not grow close emotionally, despite seeing each other regularly at the openings of his plays or visits to his Montauk house, but it did prove beneficial to Albee at least professionally when he would later write "Three Tall Women" based upon stories his mother told him about her life. -
Film of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Released
Featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal and Sandy Duncan. Ernest Lehman wins an Academy Award for the film adaptation. Mike Nichols directs. -
A Delicate Balance
Produced at the Martin Beck Theatre, NY. It runs for 134 performances and wins the Pulitzer Prize. "A Delicate Balance" starred Jessica Tandy and her husband Hume Cronyn as Agnes and Tobias, an upper-class couple bearing a resemblance to Albee’s adoptive parents. The autobiographical origin of the play is further evidenced by the similarity between Agnes’ alcoholic sister Claire and Albee’s Aunt Jane, as well as Julia, Agnes and Tobias’ grown daughter, who resembles one of Albee’s cousins. -
Albee Establishes The Edward F. Albee Foundation
From royalties from his play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the foundation funds the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center (named after the composer and Albee’s early partner, William Flanagan, but better known as "The Barn") in Montauk, New York, as a residence for writers and visual artists. The foundation's mission is "to serve writers and visual artists from all walks of life, by providing time and space in which to work without disturbance. -
Beckett Influenced "Box" and "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung"
These two interrelated plays perhaps show that Albee was influenced by Beckett’s later works, which were shorter and more abstract than his earlier ones. "Box" and "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung" are experiments in non-mimetic and non-narrative theatre and drama. Critics and audiences were, as would be expected, perplexed, but scholars have taken interest in this experimental work exhibiting Albee’s aesthetic courage. -
Samuel Beckett Receives Nobel Prize in Literature
His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd. Albee considered Beckett an influence. He directed Beckett's work and their plays were often performed together -
"All Over"
Opens at the Martin Beck Theater, NY, directed by John Gielgud and starring Jessica Tandy and Colleen Dewhurst. The death of his former partner, William Flanagan inspired the play about the gathering of family and friends around a wealthy man on his deathbed. All Over is conventionally realistic theatre and drama; it nevertheless closed after 42 performances and was nominated for only one Tony award for best supporting actress. -
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Jonathan Thomas, Albee's Life Partner
After breaking up with William Pennington in 1971, Albee met Jonathon Thomas, a Canadian artist, and not long after they began living together; they remained a couple until Thomas’ death in 2005. Albee credits Thomas with saving him from drinking himself to death, a problem that at times during the Sixties and Seventies was out of control and may have been a factor in his professional decline. -
"A Delicate Balance" Film
Directed by Tony Richardson for the American Film Theater Series, with Katherine Hepburn, Paul Scofield, Lee Remick, Joseph Cotton, and Kate Reid. -
"Seascape"
Albee directs "Seascape" at the Schubert Theater, NY, which later earns him his second Pulitzer Prize. Seascape was a significant step in Albee’s career because it was the first time that he directed the original production of one of his plays. -
Albee Directs "Virginia Woolf?" Revival
Starring Ben Gazarra and Colleen Dewhurst -
Albee Purchases Tribeca Loft
Albee buys a 6,000-square-foot loft that was a former cheese warehouse in New York's Tribeca neighborhood. At the time of his death Albee held an expansive collection of fine art, utilitarian works and sculptures. Albee was especially interested in artworks created by indigenous cultures in Africa and Oceania. -
Gold Medal in Drama
Albee receives the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. -
"The Lady From Dubuque"
"The Lady from Dubuque" opens at the Morosco Theater, NY and closes after 12 performances. This was the first of several commercial and critical failures during the Eighties that would in effect banish Albee from Broadway and the New York theatre scene for a decade. His adaptation of Nabokov's "Lolita" was changed almost daily throughout rehearsals by the actor playing Humbert and was disowned by Albee. -
The Man with Three Arms Opens and Closes
"The Man With Three Arms" opens at the Lyceum Theatre, NY. The play ran for only 16 performances, at least one of which was booed during the curtain call. Albee did not have another new play performed in New York City for the next 11 years. He would later insist that, of his many plays, "The Man Who Had Three Arms" was "the most excoriated of all (by critics, not by audiences)" yet it "remains one of my favorites." -
The English Theatre in Vienna
Albee directs three one act plays by Langford Wilson, David Mamet and Sam Shepard at The English Theatre in Vienna. -
Inducted into The American Theater Hall of Fame
The Theater Hall of Fame, on Broadway at the Gershwin Theatre, was founded in 1970 to honor Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater. Their mission is to preserve past theater history, honor the present theater professionals, and encourage emerging artists of the American Theater. It is the only nationally recognized Hall of Fame honoring Lifetime Achievement in the American theater. -
"Marriage Play" World Premier at Vienna's English Theatre
Albee directs the world premiere of "Marriage Play". The cast was Kathleen Butler (Gillian) and Tom Klunis (Jack). The play moves to New York. The Phoenix New Times wrote of a 2008 production directed by Kathleen Butler (the original Gillian): Butler's directorial stamp is all over this, and her deep knowledge of Albee's work allows us to hear clearly his peculiar rhythms, to see how he — and the people in this marriage play — envisions life as an act in an often-dreary theatrical story. -
Teaching
Albee is named Distinguished Professor of Drama at the University of Houston, where he taught playwriting. The less-than-diligent student dedicated much of his time to promoting American university theatre. One student commented: "one of the most important playwrights of the 20th century reviewed my work. He did not speak to me as a student. He spoke to me as a writer. Edward Albee never lost that spirit of giving and encouraging others." -
Francis Cotter Albee Dies
Edward's adoptive mother dies.
Said Albee years later, in reference to his Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Three Tall Women”: "Very few people who met my adoptive mother in the last 20 years of her life could abide her, while many people who have seen my play find her fascinating. Heavens, what have I done?" -
"Virginia Woolf?" in Los Angeles
Albee directs revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' in LA starring Glenda Jackson and John Lithgow. The LA Times reports that Albee directs to maintain control of his plays. Said Jackson: "Working with the playwright might have been a hurdle too, “because authors can be overly protective of their work, but that isn’t the case with Edward, whom I find very open." -
Beckett - Directed by Albee
Albee directs "Krapp's Last Tape" and "Ohio Impromptu" at Alley Theatre in Houston. Albee acknowledges Samuel Beckett as a major influence in his work. A night of the pair's short dramas, called simply Beckett/Albee, opened Off-Broadway in 2003, some 40 years after short works by Albee and Beckett were performed on the same stage in Berlin. -
"Three Tall Women" World Premier
Albee directs "Three Tall Women" at The English Theatre in Vienna. The main character is based on his mother, with whom he had a conflicted relationship. The play deals with Albee’s perceptions and feelings about his mother and is a remarkable portrait achieved by presenting the interaction of three women, who resemble each other, at different stages of life. Featuring Myra Carter as the Old Woman, Kathleen Butler as the Middle-Aged Woman, and Cynthia Bassham as the Young Woman. -
Amano Atsushi Develops New By-Pass Heart Surgery
Developed in the early 1990s by Dr. Amano Atsushi, off pump coronary artery bypass or "beating heart" surgery is a form of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery performed without cardiopulmonary bypass (heart-lung machine) as a treatment for coronary heart disease. He later performs the surgery in 2012 on Emperor Akihito, the same year Edward Albee has his life saving surgery. (see 2012) -
Obie Award
Albee wins Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in the Theatre. The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City. As the Tony Awards cover Broadway productions, the Obie Awards cover off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions. It has often been considered off-Broadway's highest honor. -
Premier of "Finding the Sun" at Signature Theatre
From the perspective of Albee’s career overall, "Finding the Sun" is significant in that it was his first play to include gay characters whose sexuality is an explicit issue. Albee has said that he has never denied being gay, but he has not been compelled to write about gay characters and issues except in "Finding the Sun" (and The Goat, written after this statement). He has stated that there are gay writers and writers who happen to be gay, and that he belongs to the latter category. -
Awards for "Three Tall Women"
"Three Tall Women" opens at The Vineyard Theater with Myra Carter, Marion Seldes and Jordan Baker, and later moves to the Promenade Theatre, winning Albee his third Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Drama Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award and The Outer Circle Critics Award. The London production starring Maggie Smith wins The Evening Standard Award. It was hailed as the second coming of Edward Albee by the critics—even those who had condemned his plays in the past. -
Revivals
"A Delicate Balance" is revived on Broadway starring Rosemary Harris, George Grizzard and Elaine Stritch.
It is the first Broadway production of an Albee play in 13 years; it ran for a modest 186 performances and won Tony awards for best revival, direction, and actor (George Grizzard, who originated the role of Nick in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" is revived in London with Diana Rigg and David Suchet. -
Kennedy Center Honors/National Medal of Arts
Edward receives Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, DC. Albee is feted by President Clinton and friends and colleagues in the theatrical profession. The same year he receives the National Medal of Arts. -
"Tiny Alice" Revival at Hartford Stage
Starring Richard Thomas, as the play’s central character, a lay brother who has survived a major loss of faith, Thomas gives one of his most admirable performances. Robed and bespectacled, he performs with tremendous technical skill in the service of a portrayal of potent simplicity and humility. The current revisitation is the play's first major revival since Hartford Stage mounted it in 1972. It contains some of Albee's most gleamingly coruscating dialogue. -
"The Play About the Baby" Premiers
"The Play About the Baby" opens at London's Almeida Theatre -
Biography Published
Mel Gussow's biography, "Edward Albee: A Singular Journey", is published. Gussow was a critic and cultural writer for The New York Times, had known Albee and followed his career since its inception, and, as his biographer, created a compelling firsthand portrait of his complex genius. -
Tony Award for "The Goat or Who is Sylvia?"
"The Goat or Who is Sylvia?" opens on Broadway and wins the 2002 Tony Award for Best Play. The play also wins New York Drama Critic Circle Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play. The play depicts the disintegration of a marriage in the wake of the revelation that the husband has engaged in bestiality. Starring Bill Pullman and Mercedes Ruehl, it continued its 309- performance run with Bill Irvin and Sally Field. -
Jonathan Richard Thomas Dies
Albee's longtime partner, Jonathan Richard Thomas, a sculptor, died on May 2, 2005 from bladder cancer. They had been partners from 1971 until Thomas's death. -
Receives Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement
"I think the virtue of being given the Lifetime Achievement Award before you have necessarily achieved your lifetime work is probably because if they wait until you have achieved all of your lifetime work, you probably will have died. This is better. And I'm grateful. I'm dedicating to the memory of Jonathan Thomas, my life partner, who died only a month ago. He and I were together for 35 years. And he made me a happy playwright. And you have made me a happy playwright tonight. Thank you." -
80th Birthday Tributes
In honor of his 80th birthday, a number of his plays were mounted in distinguished Off-Broadway venues, including the historic Cherry Lane Theatre where the playwright directed two of his early one-acts, "The American Dream" and "The Sandbox". -
Albee Has Open Heart Surgery
The 84-year-old Tony winner admits he was skeptical of the procedure at first: “I knew my body was getting weaker and I knew I was going to have to have something done. And they finally said to me, ‘Edward, you need open-heart surgery.’ When they rip your chest open and do all sorts of silly stuff to it. “And my reaction to that was, ‘What will happen if I don’t?’ ‘You’ll probably die in a year.’ ‘Oh, then I guess there’s no choice.'” -
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" Film Selected for Preservation by The Library of Congress
In 2013, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". -
Albee's Choice Revealed: The Greatest American Play
In an interview, Albee discusses what he believes is the Best American Play ever written. Albee, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and 1996 National Medal of Arts recipient is known as a brilliant wordsmith whose plays ring with witty and biting dialogue. Albee is an iconoclast whose work is dark, often cynical, and populated by the disaffected. So, it may come as a surprise to learn his pick, revealed here:
(https://www.arts.gov/stories/other/albee-wilder) -
Edward Albee Dies at 88
According to The New York Times, Albee was "widely considered to be the foremost American playwright of his generation." Albee died at his home in Montauk, New York. His ashes were scattered at the Montauk residence. His will made the Edward Albee Foundation the beneficiary; it also ordered all of his unfinished play manuscripts to be destroyed. -
Albee's Will Requests His Unfinished Works Destroyed
James Bundy, dean of the Yale School of Drama, said “Edward’s choice strikes me as entirely in keeping with his own exacting standards.” “It’s no more our business than it would have been if he had made a little bonfire of his work before his death or shredded some manuscripts one day long ago — perhaps he did,” “It’s ultimately a good thing for artists to negotiate their own artistic destinies within the framework of the relevant laws. -
References
Britannica; Wikipedia; Edward Albee: A Casebook; National Endowment for the Arts Library; History.com; Literary Manhattan.org; edwardalbeesociety.org; poetsandwriters.org; Associated Press; News Times; CUNY TV; TheaterMania; Google Images; Vogue; The New York Times; NPR.org.; Hollywood Reporter.