Alvin Aronson graduated college in 1972. Only 24 years after he started! In between his 1948 start and his 1972 graduation he spent a large amount of time in Manhattan seeking to be a working playwright on Broadway. And he did make inroads there. He lived in four different rent controlled apartments over his two decades there–all of them in The Village. Some of his non theatre jobs were waiter, clerk, and legal secretary.
In 1952 during the production of Tennessee Williams play, Summer in Smoke at Circle in the Square, he had a small acting part and handled lots of other off stage functions. It was there that he befriended the actress Geraldine (8 oscar nominations) Page. They became friends for life. A funny incident during Summer and Smoke, as Alvin was the sound technician and he forget to ring the bell which would have cued Geraldine to stop dusting. So Geraldine’s character had to keep dusting and dusting! He apologized off stage to Geraldine and all was forgiven. It has been noted by theatre historians that this production of Summer and Smoke directed by Jose Quintero was the birth of Off-Broadway.
Alvin produced two plays off-Broadway, one of which, The Pocket Watch ran over two years in the 1960s. He also wrote a play called The Enormous Lie that had a reading for legendary Lee Strasberg. Among the readers were Geraldine Page, Jerry Orbach, and Robert Logia. Unfortunately, the play was never produced for the stage.
And Alvin even met Marilyn Monroe!
Alvin and Geraldine Page would eat lunch together with James Dean, and Louis Jourdan while rehearsing for the play, The Immoralist. Alvin was a journeyman, of sorts, in the NY theater world. He was a stage manager for President JFK’s birthday party at the Waldorf Astoria. At JFK’s party Alvin had good talks with Jimmy Durante and Louis Armstrong. At the party, he also escorted Carol Channing, Ed Sullivan, and Audrey Hepburn to their seats. He was a patient and friend of Dr. Max Jacobson, aka Dr. Feelgood, who treated JFK, Mickey Mantle, Truman Capote, and a slew of other famous people. He even wrote a play about Dr. Jacobson. He worked for playwright Alan Jay Lerner for several years during the making of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Our family has endearingly referred to him as the Forrest Gump of the NY theater world in that era. He was surrounded by successful people, but never reached their talent level as he valiantly struggled to survive in a theater world that he loved.
When Alvin died, he left behind 1000s of pages of writings, letters, and plays. He’d written eight plays, all on onion skin paper using a manual typewriter. We had the luxury of time and slowly poured over all of his ephemera usually sitting on his living room floor. We even found two letters from director Elia Kazan! Alvin had pleaded with Mr. Kazan to produce his play, The Enormous Lie, but to no avail. (Though Kazan was very generous with constructive feedback.) We also discovered eight letters from Geraldine Page to Alvin. She often addressed him as Vernon, the character he played in Summer and Smoke, and she signed her name as Miss Alma, her character.
After his New York Story chapters, he spent lots of time traveling, earning lots of stamps on his passport. He also performed a one person play based on the Yiddish author/playwright, Sholem Aleichem that Alvin performed in dozens of cities across the United States.
He was married in 1976 to Zelda Aronson and they lived together in Boston until her death in 1995. During that time period, and beyond, he worked for several large universities, and then did fundraising for the theatre world of Boston. He loved talking to people, and he would often start a conversation with a complete stranger.
After Zelda’s death, he never remarried, and he did grow into a generous soul who always picked up the tab at dinner, ‘spoiled’ his granddaughters, and subsidized a bunch of family vacations.
He was a voracious reader, and he loved to tell many tales of his New York days like it happened yesterday.
He is missed.
along the way 