Rose Leiman Goldemberg papers

1968-2014

Rose Leiman Goldemberg is an American playwright and screenwriter of dramatic and musical works based on biographies and true stories. She was born in 1928 in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Staten Island, New York. As an adult, she moved to Manhattan and has been based in New York City for the duration of her career. Goldemberg's earliest writings were poetry and she has written professionally for radio, television, film, and the stage. The lives of both ordinary and famous women, feminism, and Jewish culture are frequent themes in her writing.

Her most prominent work was The Burning Bed (1984), a television movie based on the true story of a survivor of domestic violence, played by Farrah Fawcett. Another well-known television movie written by Goldemberg, Stone Pillow (1985), starred Lucille Ball as a homeless person. Other screenplays written by Goldemberg include Land of Hope (1976), and Mother and Daughter: The Loving War (1980). Goldemberg was more involved with the production and filming of television movies, mini-series, and shows than is typical for screenwriters, making cast recommendations and visiting the sets. Most of her screenplays are dramas.

Goldemberg's plays, many of which are musicals, frequently incorporate biographical material, as with Sophie (1987), about entertainer Sophie Tucker; Picon Pie (2005), about Yiddish theater actress Molly Picon; and Letters Home (1979), a dramatization of published correspondence between author Sylvia Plath and her mother. Her plays have been produced widely Off-Broadway and in venues throughout the United States and internationally.