[5] In 1940, when the Nazis invaded Brussels, he fled with his family to France, where they received visas to Portugal from the Portuguese consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes.
[9] After graduating from Harvard, van Itallie moved to Greenwich Village, studied acting at The Neighborhood Playhouse and film editing at New York University, and wrote for the CBS television program Look Up and Live.
In 1963, van Itallie's short play, War, was produced at the Barr Albee Wilder Playwrights Unit on Vandam Street, featuring Gerome Ragni and Jane Lowry and directed by Michael Kahn.
Van Itallie's Tibetan Book of the Dead, or How Not to Do It Again, based on the Bardo Thodol and with music by Steven Gorn, premiered at La MaMa in 1983.
His translation of The Cherry Orchard premiered at Lincoln Center, featuring Irene Worth and Meryl Streep and directed by Andrei Serban, in 1977.
[20] In 1997, van Itallie performed with co-creators Kermit Dunkelberg and Court Dorsey in Guys Dreamin', as directed by Kim Mancuso and Joel Gluck.
In 1999 and 2000, van Itallie performed his one-man show War, Sex, and Dreams at Highways in Santa Monica and at La MaMa.