Gil Orlovitz was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His grandfather was the chief rabbi of Lithuania, and his father, who also had an extensive knowledge of the Talmud, warned Orlovitz about relying too heavily upon art as a basis of life. His mother, Orlovitz explained,showered upon him a combination of "babble, love, and lox." An English teacher introduced him to the arts of prosody, which he absorbed to the exclusion of other school subjects. He attended Temple University in Philadelphia for a short while and then was in the U.S. Army Air Corps for four years during World War II. After the war, he attended Columbia University, studying dramaturgy under Hatcher Hughes and also taking courses in comparative religion and philosophy. From there he went to study with Erwin Piscator at the Dramatic Workshop in New York. Little is known about his first wife, Betty, with whom...