Pulitzer's Prize Recipient, Playwright. He received international recognition as "Mr. Broadway," the prolific American playwright, who was the recipient of the 1960 Pulitzer's Prize in Drama and numerous Tony Awards. He set an astonishing record for the highest level of popular theater productions with 27 musicals and dozens of other productions. Memorable hits include "Jumbo," "Three Men on a Horse" and "Boy Meets Girl" in 1935, "The Boys from Syracuse" and "Pal Joey" in 1940, "On the Town" in 1949,"The Pajama Game" in 1954, "Damn Yankees" in 1955," "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" in 1962 and ending with "Flora, the Red Menace" in 1965. He is credited with 122 Broadway shows. His Pulitzer's Prize was for the 1959 play "Fiorell!", which received eight Tony Awards nominations, receiving four that included Best Musical and Best Director. He is credited with 40 films in which he was the screenwriter, director, or producer. The film versions of his plays include "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "The Fall Guy" in 1930, "The Pajama Game in 1957 and "Damn Yankees" in 1958. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1930 for "All Quiet on the Western Front." Born to a father, who was a mayor of a New York town and a maker of uniforms, the family became bankrupt, thus at the age of two, he and his family relocated to Cheyenne, Wyoming where his father became a Federal Land Agent. Like many other boys in Wyoming, he became a cowboy while attending military school. When he was in his teens, his family moved back to New York. He attended Hamburg High School playing football and other sports. In 1907 he graduated high school and four years later graduated from the University of Rochester, where he became involved with acting and wrote his first play, "Perfectly Harmless." He had an acting role on Broadway in 1913.This followed with drama studies at Harvard University. His first successful plays were "The Fall Guy" in 1925 and "Broadway" in 1926. Although his career spanned from the 1920s to the 1960s, he was still active with Broadway into the 1990s. In 1963, he published his autobiography, "Mister Abbott." The 54th Street Theater was renamed in his honor but five years later the building was demolished. In 1976 he received from the City of New York the Handel Medallion, in recognition of his many accomplishments in the city. In 1982 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Performing Arts from Kennedy Center. He received a Special Tony Award on the occasion of his 100th birthday. In 1990 United States President George H.W. Bush presented him with the National Medal of Arts. He was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 1993. He married three times. With his first wife, he had a daughter before his wife's untimely death. His daughter, Judy, followed in her father's footsteps becoming a director. At the age of 107, he died from a stroke at home. He was cremated and his wife was given the ashes. His third wife, a native-Hawaiian, Joy Valderrama, died in February of 2020. The couple's legacy will live on as Temple University previously dedicated the "George and Joy Abbott Center for Musical Theater."