Louis Charles Adelman

1919 - 2014
Louis Charles Adelman died on Friday, January 10 at the Jewish Life Care Center in New York City where he had been for the last two months. He was 94 years old.

He was born on July 4, 1919 in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated from Boys High School, Brooklyn in 1937 and from Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with a Master's Degree in Theatre in 1951, after having served in the US Army during World War 2 from 1942-45. While at Carnegie Tech, he had a series of plays on the main stage of the university.


After leaving Carnegie, he served in the Merchant Marine and travelled extensively, before returning to settle in New York in the late 1950s, working as a script writer for CBS Television. He attended the New Dramatists and the Actors Studio, as well as the Clifford Odets seminar. Lou lived in Greenwich Village for almost two decades and in 1965 was joined by his wife, Ann. He worked as a free lance playwright throughout his life.

Lou moved with his wife and son to Manhattan Plaza at 484 West 43rd Street on Election Day 1977, where he lived for the next 37 years. He loved living in the building with the local theatre and artistic community, where he continued to have many friends up until his death.


Lou had an off Broadway production of his play Night Fishing in Beverly Hills in 1981, and also saw a production of one of his works in Detroit later that decade, as well as a series of readings of his plays in New York over the next 15 years. Lou was also a regular contributor of educational plays for high school students to Scholastic and Junior Scholastic Magazines from the late 1970s until the early 1990s.

A memorial service was held for Lou at the Crestwood Memorial Chapel at 199 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village on Sunday, January 12, 2014, which was well attended by family members, neighbours and friends.

Lou is survived by his beloved wife of 47 years, Ann Adelman, by his son Oliver Adelman, as well as by his daughter-in-law Rumyana Ivanova Vakarelska and his grandson, Michael Vakarelski-Adelman, as well as two loved nephews, Howard and Barry Adelman and Howard's wife Ernestine, and their daughters Marla, Valarie and Pamela.