Joe Masteroff

Joe Masteroff (December 11, 1919 – September 28, 2018) was an American playwright and book writer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Jewish parents Louis Masteroff, originally from Korsun in present-day Ukraine, and Rose Pogost, originally from Kishinev in present-day Moldova. He attended Temple University before enlisting and serving with the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Following the war, he trained with the American Theatre Wing between 1949 and 1951, beginning his professional path as an actor.

Masteroff made his Broadway debut as a performer in The Prescott Proposals in 1953. After completing a national tour, he transitioned to playwriting, and his first stage work, The Warm Peninsula, opened at the Hayes Theater on Broadway in January 1959. The production featured Julie Harris, June Havoc, Farley Granger, and Larry Hagman in its principal roles.

In 1963, Masteroff wrote the book for She Loves Me, a musical with music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, directed by Hal Prince. The show ran for 301 performances on Broadway and earned Masteroff a Tony Award nomination for Best Author of a Musical. Three years later, Prince brought him in to write the book for Cabaret, an adaptation drawing on John Van Druten's play I Am a Camera and Christopher Isherwood's The Berlin Stories. Prince had set aside an earlier adaptation by Sandy Wilson and commissioned Masteroff to develop his own version. With music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb, Cabaret opened on Broadway in November 1966, ran for 1,165 regular performances, and won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1967.

Masteroff collaborated with Kander and Ebb again on 70, Girls, 70, which opened on Broadway in April 1971 but closed after one month. Beyond Broadway, he wrote the libretto for an operatic adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, as well as the book and lyrics for the Off-Broadway musical Six Wives in 1992 and Paramour, based on Jean Anouilh's The Waltz of the Toreadors, which was produced at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego in 1998.