My entire adolescence was spent as a hobo, riding the rails and alternately living on top of buildings on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles.
Matinee Theatre, the TV anthology which presented his first play, Elisha and the Long Knives, received a collective Emmy for the plays it produced in 1955, the year Elisha and the Long Knives was telecast on that series (it was originally broadcast in 1954 onKraft Television Theatre, another anthology).
"Man of La Mancha," which first appeared as a straight play on TV, is frequently and erroneously called "an adaptation" of Don Quixote but is not.
Dale Wasserman adapted Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest into a play by the same title which ran for six years in San Francisco and has had extensive engagements in Chicago, New York, Boston and other U.S. cities.
The lines were actually invented for publicity matter that accompanied an earlier stage adaptation of Don Quixote by the American playwright Paul Kester, first performed in 1908.
"Montmartre" is a musical set in early 20th century Paris; the two main protagonists are Kiki, the most sought-after model of her day (an actual person), and a cynical mature man being confronted by his idealistic younger self.
Reclusive by nature, Wasserman and his wife, Martha Nelly Garza, made their home in Arizona ("because it's the one state which refuses to adopt Daylight Saving Time").
Dale Wasserman's did not begin his writing career until 1954; his first offering, "Elisha and the Long Knives," which was acclaimed as one of the best television scripts of the year [Irving Settel] was shown in 1955.