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`The Merchant'
Of Stratford

• .
wer 2

The Art Of
Joan Snyder

SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News

A

playwright's daily walks
around Central Park led to the
tender comedy being per-
formed May 9-Junel0 by the
Jewish Ensemble Theatre. Henry
Denker, always alert to new ideas, did
some people watching and brought a
rich creative background to his develop-
ment of Horowitz and Mrs. Washington,
first done as a novel.
The play, which is about a Jewish
stroke victim and the African-American
nurse who motivates him to try really
living again, became the all-time favorite
Reader's Digest condensed book, accord-
ing to its author. The original is one of
34 novels by Denker, who also wrote six
Broadway plays and numerous radio
serials before moving into television as a
producer and occasional boss of then
actor Ronald Reagan.
"I live across the street from Central
Park, and every day I pass several Jewish
men in wheelchairs [being cared for by]
black nurses," explains Denker, 89, who
has been a keynote speaker at the Jewish
Community Center of Metropolitan
Detroit's Jewish Book Fair in West
Bloomfield.
"Over days, then months, then years,
I kept saying to myself, 'There's a play, a
story, a book about these people. What
do they do the other 23 hours in the
day when they're not sitting in the
park?' And I began to write.
"I liked the opportunity to not just
tell the story but at the same time take
part in the revolution that was going on
in this country in terms of race. It was
such a success with Reader's Digest that
they asked me to do a second book,
which I did. It was called Mrs.

11 "

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Washington and Horowitz Too."
Robert Grossman and Jennifer Jones
play the leads in the West Bloomfield
production directed by Patricia Ansuini.
"By the end of the play, members of
the audience are not just looking at a
Jewish man and black woman; they are
looking at two human beings," says
Jones, who is making her JET debut.
PEOPLE WATCHER on page 78

Robert Gs.ossiihtil, right, --
,phys Jewish stroke victim
Saan
aka
Jenniler Jones ply:v► Ill

unflappable nurse,
Washington, in the JET
production of licitly
Dellker's ioroteitr,
tVitshingtott."

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