Spotless: Memories of a New York Childhood - Paperback

by Sherman Yellen (Author)

Playwright, librettist, Tony nominee, and two-time Emmy Award-winning writer Sherman Yellen lovingly recreates the world of his impoverished forebears before World War I; his troubled, prosperous, mendacious father; his beautiful, willful fashion-model mother, and especially his own New York childhood in the 1930s and 40s in this remarkable family saga. Yellen's childhood witnessed both great events and the everyday life of a city boy in an embattled family, all viewed through the eyes of an observant little boy waiting impatiently for his body to catch up to his all-seeing consciousness. Yellen summons up this lost world of a New York Jewish-American family during the Great Depression and World War II with candor and love and brings it back to vivid new life.

Author Biography

Sherman Yellen, playwright, librettist, screen-writer, lyricist and now memoirist, was nominated for a Tony Award for his book for the 1970 musical "The Rothschilds," with a score by "Fiddler on the Roof" songwriters Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, which he and Harnick have recently reimagined as "Rothschild & Sons" ("You cannot fault the York Theater Company's rich new production of "Rothschild & Sons" - NY Times). Sherman wrote the libretto for the Will Holt and Gary William Freidman musical "Treasure Island," winner of the Broadway World Best Regional musical Award (2012). Among his many theater works is his satirical sketch "Delicious Indignities" which appeared in the New York and London revue "Oh! Calcutta!" His straight plays include "New Gods for Lovers," "Strangers," and "December Fools." Sherman was librettist and lyricist for "Josephine Tonight," an original musical he wrote with the late composer Wally Harper about the early life of Josephine Baker, which The Chicago Sun-Times called "a shining new musical" and which the DC press praised for being "so hot that it sizzles." In his youth he worked as a librettist with legendary composer Richard Rodgers. Together with Sheldon Harnick they recently revised their musical "Rex" about Henry VIII. This new version had a successful premiere in Toronto. His teleplays have won him two Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award, first for his "John Adams, Lawyer" in the PBS series "The Adams Chronicles," and later for "An Early Frost," a groundbreaking drama about AIDS in America broadcast on NBC, as well as an Emmy Nomination for his Hallmark Hall of Fame version of "Beauty and the Beast" starring George C. Scott. Sherman's screenplay adaptations of classic novels range from "Great Expectations" to "Phantom of the Opera." He has received awards in Arts and Letters from Bard College, and he is a frequent contributor of essays to online publications such as The Huffington Post. Sherman recently published his autobiographical novella "Cousin Bella - The Whore of Minsk," available in a volume which also includes his holiday short story "A Christmas Lilly," and a collection of three plays, "December Fools and Other Plays (December Fools-Budapest-Gin Lane)." Sherman is married, the father of two sons, Nicholas and Christopher, and has three much loved granddaughters. He has lived in London and Los Angeles, worked in Berlin and Budapest, but home was, is, and always will be New York City.