Biography
Victor Wolfson began his professional career organizing acting clubs for striking coal miners in West Virginia.[3] He soon found his passion for writing and he wrote numerous plays for Broadway, dramas for television and many novels. He wrote professionally until his death.[3] Wolfson attended the first class of the University of Wisconsin Experimental College, where he founded their theater group, the Experimental College Players.[4]
His life's work was playwriting and he adapted most of his plays from novels. His Broadway productions included the 1937 comedy Excursion, as well as Bitter Stream, adapted from Fontamara by Ignazio Silone,[5] Pastoral, The Family, Pride's Crossing, and Seventh Heaven by Victor Young. His novels included The Lonely Steeple and The Eagle on the Plain and he also wrote for Harper's Magazine between 1948 and 1960.[6] In 1961, he wrote several episodes for ABC's 26-part television series Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years which earned him an Emmy Award 1960-1961 for Outstanding Writing Achievement in the Documentary Field.[7] He died, aged 81, in a fire at his home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, United States [8]
Wolfson's parents, Adolph Wolfson and Rebecca Hochstein Wolfson, who were Jewish, were political radicals[9] who emigrated from Russia in 1894 to escape the pervasive antisemitism and political persecution of the Tsarist regime. His sister Theresa Wolfson was an economist and prolific writer.[10]
