Joseph Kramm

Background

Joseph Kramm was born on September 30, 1907, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.

Education

Joseph Kramm chose theatre after his mother took him to plays when he was a child, and acted throughout high school and college. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 1928. Kramm spent most of his time working on amateur theatricals while he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, which caused his grades to suffer. After enduring psychological intelligence tests and evaluations by psychiatrists to determine the cause of his poor grades, he came away with a critical view of the psychiatric field, a judgment that would reappear in "The Shrike."

Career

Joseph Kramm first worked professionally as an actor in 1928, for a Philadelphia stock company. By 1929, Kramm began a six-year stretch with the Civic Repertory Theatre, also in Philadelphia. He appeared in Bury the Dead and in the London version of Golden Boy. He also played in Liliom with Ingrid Bergman and Burgess Meredith, and in Uncle Harry with Joseph Schildkraut. He worked for various theatre companies in the 1930s, including the Federal Theatre Project of the Works Progress Administration.

In 1936-1943, he served in the United States Army. He also performed in several plays for the armed forces during World War II. After the war, Kramm headed for New York, where he acted in and, from 1946 on, directed many plays and worked as an acting teacher. Kramm has lectured on the theatre in many parts of the country and for ten years has been an instructor of acting and directing at the American Theatre Wing.

While Kramm had begun writing plays during the 1930s, his first successful work was "The Cry of the Watchman." He made his mark, however, with "The Shrike" (1952), the drama of a man who attempts suicide to escape a domineering wife - a role actor José Ferrer starred in during the show's Broadway run. Among Kramm's other plays is "Giants, Sons of Giants."

Achievements

• Joseph Kramm directed many plays and performed in many stage productions. As a playwright, he earned several awards for his famous play "The Shrike."

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Shrike 1952

Connections

Joseph Kramm's first wife was Janet Chandler, an actress. They married on January 11, 1956, and divorced on April 4, 1956. Kramm's second wife was Isabel Bonner, also an actress.

late wife:

Isabel Bonner

Isabel Bonner, an actress, died on stage while performing in Joseph Kramm's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "The Shrike," in Los Angeles, California in 1955.

ex-wife:

Janet Chandler

Janet Chandler, birth name Lillian Elizabeth Guenther, was a starlet of 1930s B-movies. She had a lucrative sideline as a model in southern California, often employed by exclusive fashion houses. In 1932, she was selected as a junior hostess representing Arkansas at the Los Angeles Olympics. The following year, she was signed by Fox and starred in only her second film for the studio opposite George O'Brien in The Golden West (1932). Unfortunately, her next venture turned out to be a box-office bomb and Janet was dropped by the studio. Though she stayed on the Hollywood periphery as a lead actress for another three years, she was already condemned to bottom-of-the-bill sage brush operas and melodramas for Poverty Row outfits like Weiss Brothers, Peerless, and Reliable. Sometime in 1935 - presumably on the set of Rough Riding Ranger (1935) - she had an accident which prompted her to retire from acting.