Richard Hoffman David Mamet collection

Richard Hoffman, the Brooklyn theater collector and book dealer, built the David Mamet Collection over the years. During his service in the United States Army, Hoffman's experience as an actor led to an assignment to create a television program titled "Your Army in View," which consisted of interviews and live drama.

After his discharge from the service in 1955, Hoffman taught in the drama department of The City College of New York. During this period he was awarded a Eugene O'Neill Fellowship for playwriting. He also seriously began to collect rare books and first editions of contemporary American dramatists, notably the playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, Neil Simon, and David Mamet. Richard Hoffman's interest in collecting first editions led to his career as an antiquarian book dealer.

Biographical information derived from the collection.

American playwright, screenwriter, director and producer David Mamet was born November 30, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois. Mamet attended Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater in 1968 and 1969 and received a B.A. from Goddard College in 1969.

David Mamet began his career as an actor and director, founding and serving as the artistic director of St. Nicholas Theater Company in Chicago from 1973 to 1976. In 1976 three plays which Mamet had written, American Buffalo, Duck Variations, and Sexual Perversity in Chicago, achieved success on Off-Off Broadway. American Buffalo and Sexual Perversity in Chicago won both Joseph Jefferson Awards and Obie Awards in 1975-1976.

In 1984 Mamet's most acclaimed play, Glengarry Glen Ross, received a Pulitzer Prize for drama and an Antoinette Perry ("Tony") nomination for best play. Mamet's play, Speed-the-Plow was awarded a "Tony" in 1988.

In addition to playwriting, David Mamet is an accomplished screenwriter, adapting his own plays, such as American Buffalo (1996) and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), for the screen and writing original screenplays such as Hoffa (1992) and Heist (2001). Mamet has also successfully adapted the writing of others for the screen, for example James Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and Larry Barnhart's novel, American Hero, which was titled Wag the Dog for film. Mamet has also written a number of television screenplays, novels, poetry, and children's books.

David Mamet has directed for stage and screen. Some of the films directed by Mamet include House of Games (1987), Homicide (1992), Oleanna (1994), and Heist (2001). He has also has taught at Goddard College, the Yale Drama School and New York University.

As an acclaimed playwright and screenwriter, David Mamet has received numerous awards, including induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994, an Academy Award in 1986, and the Pulitzer Prize in 1984

Literature Research Center Biographies retrieved on 11/2/2004 at http:/galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/LitRC