Playwright Jerome Chodorov Dies at 93

NEW YORK - Playwright Jerome Chodorov, co-author of "My Sister Eileen" which he later adapted as the musical "Wonderful Town," has died at 93.

Chodorov died Sunday at Nyack Hospital, said his daughter, Susan.

"My Sister Eileen," which Chodorov co-wrote with Joseph A. Fields, was one of the playwright's biggest successes, opening on Broadway in 1940 and running for 865 performances. The story of two sisters from Ohio who come to conquer New York during the Depression starred Shirley Booth as the sardonic, would-be writer Ruth Sherwood.

Rosalind Russell played the role in the 1953 musical version for which Chodorov and Fields supplied the book and Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote the score. A revival is currently on Broadway with Donna Murphy portraying Ruth.

Chodorov had several other Broadway hits in the 1940s and early '50s. He and Fields also wrote "Junior Miss," a warmhearted family comedy about a young girl who, after a series of misadventures, becomes a debutante. The 1941 show, based on Sally Benson's short stories, ran for 710 performances.

The team's third Broadway success was "Anniversary Waltz" (1954), starring Kitty Carlisle and Macdonald Carey. The comedy, which had a 615-performance run, received mostly negative notices, but audiences responded to its story of frantic marital discord and its satire of television, which was beginning to steal audiences away from Broadway.

In the early 1950s, Chodorov was blacklisted for a time after having been named in testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities as having attending meetings of the Communist Party.

Born in New York, Chodorov worked as a journalist for the New York World before moving to California where he worked on more than 50 films including "Dancing Feet" (1936), "All Over Town" (1936), "Dulcy" (1939), "Louisiana Purchase" (1942) and "Murder in the Big House" (1942), as well as film versions of both "My Sister Eileen" (1942) and "Junior Miss" (1945).

Among Chodorov's other plays with Fields were "The French Touch" (1946) and "The Ponder Heart" (1956), which they adapted from a Eudora Welty short story.

Chodorov also supplied the books for several other musicals including "The Girl in Pink Tights," (1954) which was composer Sigmund Romberg's last Broadway musical, and "I Had a Ball" (1964), starring Buddy Hackett.

His last Broadway production was "A Talent for Murder," a comedy-mystery Chodorov co-wrote with Norman Panama and which starred Claudette Colbert and Jean-Pierre Aumont. It had a 10-week run in 1981.