Arnold Schulman

Arnold Schulman (August 11, 1925 – February 4, 2023) was an American playwright, screenwriter, producer, songwriter, novelist, and stage actor whose career spanned Broadway, television, and Hollywood film. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a Jewish family, he attended the University of North Carolina, where he studied writing. During World War II he served with the U.S. Navy, and in 1946 he relocated to New York City to pursue a writing career in earnest. There he studied playwriting with Robert Anderson, known for Tea and Sympathy, through classes at the American Theatre Wing, an institution with which Schulman maintained a long association. He was also closely connected to the Actors Studio.

Schulman's early professional work was in television. During the early 1950s he wrote teleplays for programs including General Electric Theater, Omnibus, Kraft Television Theatre, and Playwrights '56. His Broadway career as a performer included appearances in Come Back, Little Sheba and An Enemy of the People, and he made his Broadway debut as a performer in 1950. He later contributed to the stage as a book writer, receiving credit for the 1963 Broadway musical Jennie. His stage work also included a connection to A Hole in the Head, the comedy for which he later wrote the screenplay.

Schulman transitioned to Hollywood in 1957, beginning with the screenplay for Wild Is the Wind. A Hole in the Head followed in 1959, and over the subsequent decades he wrote screenplays for a wide range of productions, including Cimarron, Love with the Proper Stranger, The Night They Raided Minsky's, Goodbye Columbus, To Find a Man, Funny Lady, Won Ton Ton the Dog Who Saved Hollywood, A Chorus Line, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, and And the Band Played On, for which he also served as co-producer. He produced and served as executive producer on Players, though that film's script was rewritten without his consent; contractual terms prevented him from removing his name from the credit.

His screenplay work earned significant industry recognition. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay for Love with the Proper Stranger in 1963 and for Best Adapted Screenplay for Goodbye, Columbus in 1969. The Writers Guild of America nominated him three times for Best Screenplay, for Wild Is the Wind, A Hole in the Head, and Love with the Proper Stranger, and awarded him the Writers Guild Award for Goodbye, Columbus. In 1994 he received a Humanitas Prize for his work on And the Band Played On. In addition to his screen and stage work, Schulman published a 1971 biography of his guru Sathya Sai Baba, titled Baba, through Viking Press. He died at his home in Santa Monica, California, on February 4, 2023, at the age of 97.