Elaine Dundy
Elaine Dundy (1921–2008), born Elaine Rita Brimberg in New York City to Jewish immigrant parents, grew up on Park Avenue and attended Sweet Briar College. A lively presence in New York’s nightclub scene, she met figures such as Piet Mondrian before studying acting under Erwin Piscator. After working in Paris dubbing films, she settled in London, where she married theater critic Kenneth Tynan in 1951 and became part of the city’s cultural elite. Dundy acted for radio and television before turning to writing. Her debut novel, The Dud Avocado (1958), became a bestseller. She later wrote The Old Man and Me (1964), The Injured Party (1974), biographies of Elvis Presley and Peter Finch, and a memoir, Life Itself! (2001). Dundy died in Los Angeles at age 86.
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Elaine Dundy’s follow-up to the immensely successful novel The Dud Avocado was a now-little-known play, My Place, first performed in 1962. Set in the dressing room of an actress who doesn’t have a place of her own to live, My Place, according to author Clancy Sigal depicts "a new race of working-class, provincial, free-living and insecure actors, without traditions or education and needing and resisting both. These are tough, poignant young people, wanting to be themselves but desperately afraid of being phonied up if anyone official, or anything systematic, touches them. In this sense they are symptomatic of that whole social class of ‘new wave’ young English people. We envy their groping and their embattled pride.”
Elaine Dundy’s follow-up to the immensely successful novel The Dud Avocado was a now-little-known play, My Place, first performed in 1962. Set in the dressing room of an actress who doesn’t have a place of her own to live, My Place, according to author Clancy Sigal depicts "a new race of working-class, provincial, free-living and insecure actors, without traditions or education and needing and resisting both. These are tough, poignant young people, wanting to be themselves but desperately afraid of being phonied up if anyone official, or anything systematic, touches them. In this sense they are symptomatic of that whole social class of ‘new wave’ young English people. We envy their groping and their embattled pride.”