The Diary of Anne Frank: A Play

The Diary of Anne Frank, a play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, premiered on Broadway at the Cort Theatre in 1955, only 10 years after Anne Frank’s death and eight years after the publication of her diary documenting two and a half years spent in hiding from Nazi persecution as a Jewish girl in Amsterdam during the Holocaust. The husband and wife writing team of Goodrich and Hackett were primarily known as a successful screenwriting duo, and some of their most famous films include It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Easter Parade (1948), and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). Despite their three previous forays into playwriting for the Broadway stage, the pair’s penchant for comedy made them an unlikely choice to dramatize Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, a first-hand account of a young Jewish teen living in hiding during the Holocaust that is at times funny, poignant, and ultimately tragic. Goodrich and Hackett’s play adaptation, which is based on both the diary and Otto Frank’s account of recovering the diary after the war, was immensely successful, garnering a Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1956. It was adapted into a film in 1959.