Sn behrman biography of christopher lee

Playwright and author S. Samuel Nathaniel Behrman was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in He was the youngest of three sons raised by Lithuanian immigrants in the heart of Worcester's Jewish community on Providence Street. An older sister was killed in a streetcar accident during her childhood. The family lived in a tenement which Behrman later mused was "heavily populated with angels," their imaginary presence invoked by the Hebrew prayers of his father, a devout, scholarly man who spent long hours studying the Talmud.

As a boy, the precocious Behrman was befriended and mentored by Daniel Asher, a young man six or seven years his senior whom he met through one of his brothers. Under Asher's tutelage, Behrman became a prize-winning leader of his high school debate team. From , Behrman attended Clark College, where his first essays, short stories and dramatic sketches were published in the student literary magazine.

He was awarded a B. They supported him financially while he attended Columbia University and studied French drama under the distinguished Brander Matthews. As Behrman neared the completion of his M. He chose to remain in New York to establish himself as a writer.

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He penned dozens of book reviews for The New York Times , where he worked briefly in the classified advertising department and later as an assistant editor of the book section. Early in , Behrman was sent by the Times to interview the British poet Siegfried Sassoon, then visiting New York on a reading tour. Behrman was deeply moved by Sassoon's passion for literature and by the strong moral sensibility evidenced in his war poems.

The two writers spent a great deal of time together while Sassoon was in New York, and they corresponded for many years afterwards.