Edward Albee: An Abbreviated Biography

Edward Albee

Edward Harvey was born to Louise Harvey on March 12, 1928. 18 days after his birth, he was adopted by Reed and Francis Albee of Larchmont, NY. His name was changed to Edward Franklin Albee III, after Reed’s father — Edward Albee II — a famous and wealthy vaudeville magnate who owned several theaters.  Albee’s mother, who later became the subject of his 1991 play Three Tall Women, was a socialite. After graduating from Choate Rosemary Hall, a private boarding and day school in Connecticut in 1946, he went on to Trinity College where he was expelled a year later for skipping class and refusing to go to chapel. Trinity was the third school from which he was expelled, having been kicked out of high school twice before going to Choate. 

Albee’s relationship with his parents was strained and he left home in his late teens. He gave various accounts of how and why this happened saying in different interviews that his parents kicked him out at 18 because he wanted to be a writer and they wanted him to be a “corporate thug.”, he also said he left of his own accord because he “had to get out of that stultifying, suffocating environment.” In a later interview, he said: "I never felt comfortable with the adoptive parents. I don't think they knew how to be parents. I probably didn't know how to be a son, either." The Albee Society’s website describes Reed as “distant and uninvolved” and Francis as “emotionally cold and domineering” — though speaks extensively about the family’s wealth and connections.

In the 1950s, Albee moved to Greenwich Village where he began his playwriting career as he supported himself with odd jobs. It was there that he, though he’d been aware of it since was 12 and began exploring in college, had his first gay relationship with composer William Flannigan (pictured right). The two stayed together until around 1959 when Albee moved in with Terrance McNally (who appears right with Albee). Though lots of Albee’s work explored queerness — especially the early work of the 50s, he repeatedly stated that he did not consider himself, nor did he like to be remembered as a “LGBT advocate” or a “Gay writer”, saying in his acceptance speech for the 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation's Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement: "A writer who happens to be gay or lesbian must be able to transcend self. I am not a gay writer. I am a writer who happens to be gay."

Between 1959 and 2009, Edward Albee wrote some 35 plays, 2 opera libretti and a collection of essays. Albee received three Pulitzer Prizes for drama—for A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994). He received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement (2005); the gold medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1980); as well as the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts (both in 1996).

Albee spent several decades with his partner, sculptor Jonathan Richard Thomas who he began dating in 1971. The two remained together until Thomas’ death in 2005 at age 59. Albee passed away in 2016 at the age of 88.

Albee began writing as a young person and focused mainly on poetry, short stories and essays. In 1946 he wrote a novel Flesh of Unbelievers but it wasn’t until he committed to writing plays that he found his stride. His first play The Zoo Story premiered in 1959 in Berlin. Several of his plays, almost all critical of America and the American Dream, had their premieres in Germany before coming stateside. 

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

In 1962, Albee made his Broadway debut with his seminal work Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The original production at the Billy Rose Theater starred Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider and premiered on October 13, 1962. 

The title is a reference to the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” from Disney’s The Three Little Pigs and to English novelist Virginia Woolf. Woolf, whose works include Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and Orlando (1928), had a life marked by depression and abuse, but was also regarded as one of the great feminist writers and a pioneer of “stream of consciousness” writing. She died by suicide at age 59, leaving a letter to her husband Leonard which read in part “What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you….Everything has gon from me but the certainty of your goodness.” Moved by this letter, Albee wrote to Leonard asking his permission to use his late wife’s name in the title of this play. The phrasing, however, came from a piece of graffiti he’d seen in Greenwich Village, which had also been featured in The New Yorker in 1957 that read “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” Albee said:

“When I started to write the play it [the graffiti] cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf – who's afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical, university intellectual joke.”

In some interviews, Albee states that George and Martha were based on a married couple with whom he was friends — Willard Maas and Marie Menken. Maas, a literature professor, and Menkin, a filmmaker and painter, threw lavish and long parties and had infamous public fights with one another. A mutual friend, Gerard Malanga described their parties: “[it] would commence at 4 PM on a Friday and end in the wee hours of night on Monday.” 

The original production ran for 669 performances and won the 1963 Tony for Best Play. It was selected as the winner of the 1963 Pulitzer Prize but the advisory board, composed of the trustees of Columbia University, refused to award it the prize on the basis that its sexual themes and profane language was inappropriate. No prize was awarded that year. 

In 1966, the play was adapted into a film directed by Mike Nichols. It was his first feature film and Nichols would go on to make such films as The Birdcage (1996) and The Graduate (1967) but he was also known for directing Broadway shows like Barefoot in the Park (1963) and The Odd Couple (1965). The movie starred Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal and Sandy Dennis and garnered 13 Oscar nominations, winning 5 and the film is preserved by the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. Notoriously, the set of the film was known as just as tumultuous as the script itself, as Liz and Dick’s contracts restricted them to filming 5 days a week, only between the hours of 10 AM and 6 PM and the pair would often take 4 hour lunches and open the set to their rich and famous friends. 

Career Works

Plays

• The Zoo Story (1959)
• The Death of Bessie Smith (1960)
• The Sandbox (1960)
• Fam and Yam (1960)
• The American Dream (1961)
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)
• Tiny Alice (1964)
• A Delicate Balance (1966)
• Everything in the Garden (1967)
• Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1968)
• All Over (1971)
• Seascape (1975)
• Listening (1976)
• Counting the Ways (1976)
• The Lady from Dubuque (1980)
• The Man Who Had Three Arms (1982)
• Finding the Sun (1983)
• Walking (1984)
• Envy (1985)
• Marriage Play (1987)
• Three Tall Women (1991)
• The Lorca Play (1992)
• Fragments (1993)
• The Play About the Baby (1998)
• The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2000)
• Occupant (2001)
• Knock! Knock! Who's There!? (2003)
• At Home at the Zoo (2004)
• Me Myself and I (2007)

Adaptations

• The Ballad of the Sad Café (1963) (adapted from the novella by Carson McCullers)
• Malcolm (1966) (adapted from the novel by James Purdy)
• Breakfast at Tiffany's (adapted from the novel by Truman Capote) (1966)
• Everything in the Garden (adapted from the play by Giles Cooper) (1967)
• Lolita (adapted from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov) (1981)

Opera libretti

• Bartleby (adapted from the short story by Herman Melville) (1961)
• The Ice Age (1963, uncompleted)
• Essays
• Stretching My Mind: Essays 1960–2005 (Avalon Publishing, 2005).