Elaine Dundy

Elaine Dundy was an American novelist, biographer, journalist, actress and playwright. Born Elaine Rita Brimberg in New York City, of Latvian maternal descent, her Polish father, Samuel Brimberg, was an office furniture manufacturer and a violent bully. Her mother was the daughter of a multimillionaire Jewish manufacturer and inventor. Dundy grew up in a Park Avenue home where she was educated by a governess, though she eventually attended high school, where her boyfriend Terry was the son of playwright Maxwell Anderson. Later, they met again and almost married. A habituée of New York... nightclubs from the age of 15, she met the exiled Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, who wished to be taught how to jitterbug. Dundy also rode in taxis at dawn about this time, apparently topless, with her head through the roof. An honors graduate from Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Virginia, she studied acting at the Jarvis Theatre School in Washington with future star actors Rod Steiger, Tony Curtis and others, and in a drama workshop was taught by Erwin Piscator.
more