Kingsley (originally Kirschner), Sidney
KINGSLEY (originally Kirschner), SIDNEY
KINGSLEY (originally Kirschner ), SIDNEY (1906–1995), U.S. playwright. His first success was Men in White (produced by the Group Theater in 1933), a play with a background of hospital life which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1934, and was made into a motion picture. A meticulous researcher, always careful to preserve authentic detail, Kingsley gained a reputation as a "tough" writer, specializing in dramas dealing with social tensions. Slum life in his native New York inspired the theme of Dead End, first staged in 1935 and also filmed. His other plays include Ten Million Ghosts (1936); The World We Make (1939); the farce Lunatics and Lovers (1955); and Night Life (1962), a play about racketeering. The Patriots (1942), a study of early American democracy based on the conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton, was written in collaboration with his wife, Madge Evans. Detective Story (1949) was a "documentary" set in a police station. His dramatization of Arthur *Koestler's novel, Darkness at Noon (1951), won various awards.
bibliography:
S.J. Kunitz and H. Haycraft, Twentieth Century Authors (1942), s.v. and first supplement (1955).
[Samuel L. Sumberg]