Arnold Sundgaard

Arnold Sundgaard
Born	Saint Paul
Nationality	United States of America

Arnold Sundgaard
Born	(1909-10-31)October 31, 1909 Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
Died	October 22, 2006(2006-10-22) (aged 96) Dallas, Texas, U.S.
Nationality	American
Awards	Guggenheim Fellowship (1951) MacDowell fellowship
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science
Academic work
Institutions	Columbia University Bennington College University of Texas

Arnold Olaf Sundgaard (October 31, 1909 – October 22, 2006) was an American playwright, librettist, and lyricist. He was also a writer of short stories and children's books as well as a college professor specializing in drama and theatrics. Sundgaard was best known for his role in the production of six Broadway plays.

Background

Sundgaard was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and was of Norwegian descent. He attended Johnson Senior High School in Saint Paul, where he played football with Warren E. Burger.

Career

Poster for the original production of Spirochete, a Living Newspaper play by Arnold Sundgaard produced by the Federal Theatre Project (1938)

Sundgaard worked with the Federal Theatre Project early in his career. In 1938, the FTP produced, as part of the Living Newspaper series, his play Spirochete: A History, about the spread of syphilis.

Sundgaard wrote the libretti for close to a dozen operas and musicals by composers such as Alec Wilder, Douglas Moore, and Kurt Weill. With Moore he wrote the opera Giants in the Earth, after the novel by Ole Edvart Rølvaag; it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1951. In 1952, he wrote The Lowland Sea with Wilder. With Victor Ziskin he wrote the short-lived The Young Abe Lincoln, which played briefly on Broadway in 1961.

Besides theatrical work, Sundgaard wrote nonfiction for The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, among other publications. With Eric Carle, he also wrote children's books, such as The Lamb and the Butterfly of 1988; his The Bear who Loved Puccini, published in 1992, was illustrated by Dominic Catalano.

Personal life

Sundgaard counted among his friends Studs Terkel and Gregory Peck. His first marriage, to Margaret Christiansen, ended in divorce; his second marriage, to Marge Kane, ended at her death in 1998. He died at his home in Dallas, Texas, and was survived by a son and two daughters; another son predeceased him, in 1985.