Elmer Rice (1892-1967) was an American playwright and novelist. Often innovative in style, his plays reveal a concern with individual freedom confronted by the tyranny of impersonal institutions and destructive passions.

Elmer Rice was born Elmer Reizenstein on Sept. 28, 1892, in New York City. After 2 years of high school, he began working at the age of 14. He passed the regents' examinations and entered the New York Law School, from which he graduated cum laude in 1912. He passed the bar examinations but decided to try writing instead. His play On Trial (1914) was a resounding success. In 1915 he married Hazel Levy. Although not a member of any political party, Rice inclined toward socialism. After World War I he spent 2 years in Hollywood before moving to East Hampton, Conn.

Following On Trial, he had several plays produced in New York, but it was not until The Adding Machine (1923), an expressionistic tragic-comic portrait...