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• Born in Americus, Georgia to Lonne Elder, II and Quincy Elder. He has two brothers and twin sisters.
  

• Spent most of his life in New Jersey and New York, for his family moved North when he was still a baby. By the age of ten was orphaned and went to live with relatives on a New Jersey farm.
  

• 1949 - Entered New Jersey State Teachers College (now Trenton State Teachers College), but left before the end of his first year. Moved to New York at 19 and continued his education. Became more active in movements for black equality.
  

• 1952 - Was drafted to serve in the U. S. Army. Moved back to Harlem after discharge. Wrote short stories and poetry and became associated with the Harlem Writers Guild.
  

• 1953-1956 - Shared a room with Douglas Turner Ward and his writings moved more toward playwriting.
  

• During his early New York City years, held various jobs to support himself while he wrote. Worked as a waiter, political activist, professional gambler, and poker dealer in an after-hours club; unloaded trucks and worked on the docks.
  

• Studied acting and worked summer stock with Alice Childress, who was a member of the Harlem Writers Guild.
  

• 1959 - March 11, made his Broadway debut at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City as Bobo in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Performed in the national tour from 1960 to 1961.
  

• "A Hysterical Turtle in a Rabbit Race," his first play of note, is as of yet unpublished and unperformed publicly. In it, Anne Marie Evans Baxter is a black social climber who learns of the futility of her struggle in this American culture. The play presented the emergence of the idea of the tensile strength of the black American family in his writings.
  

• 1963 - Married Mary Gross and became the parents of a son, David DuBois in 1964. They divorced in 1967.
  

• 1965 - On November 15, performed with the other members of the Negro Ensemble Company at the St. Marks Playhouse. Played the role of Clem in Day of Absence. Ward would play the role of Parker in Ceremonies in Dark Old Men.
  

• 1967 - Presented his next major drama, Charades on East Fourth Street, at Expo '67 in Montreal, Canada. It assumed a more revolutionary tone and expanded the idea of family to include the black community.
  

• Began writing for television with scripts for Camera Three (early 1960s), The Terrible Veil (1963), N.Y.P.D. series (1967- 1968), and McCloud episodes (1970-1971).
  

• 1969 - On February 14, married Judith Ann Johnson who also played the role of the young girl Parker has a fling with in Ceremonies of Dark Old Men.
  

• 1970 - Moved his wife and son to the West Coast and had another son, Christian, born in September. Pursued film writing and penned the film script, Sounder which was produced in 1972, which dealt with a depression-era black family. He wrote A Woman Called Moses which starred Cicely Tyson who was also in Sounder.
  

• Instrumental in founding the Black Artists Alliance whose membership included such notables as Ossie Davis and Denise Nicholas. The organization, like Sounder, was devoted to promoting the presentation of positive and meaningful black life in the media. B.A.A. dissolved after a year.
  

• Lonne Elder died on June 11, 1996 at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. He was 69 and is survived by his daughter Loni-Christine; two sons, David and Christian; and two stepbrothers and two stepsisters.
  

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  CEREMONIES IN DARK OLD MEN

• 1969 - Presented at Wagner College, Staten Island, New York in July; Negro Ensemble on February 4; Pocket Theatre on April 28; 1986 tour on the West Coast.
  

• Once again a play that points toward the resilience of the African American family. The principal conflict concerns determining the proper values on which to base one's life. Directly or indirectly, the characters debate the ways through which black survival may be assured.
  

• The conclusions of the play suggest that part of the solution lies in the togetherness of the family. It ends with irony and ambiguity but essentially also with tragic reaffirmation.
  

• Among the playwrights many awards, Ceremonies in Dark Old Men won the Outer Drama Critics Circle Award, the Vernon Rice Drama Desk Award, the Stella Holt Memorial Playwrights Award, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award.
  

• 1975 - Elder wrote the teleplay which was subsequently broadcast on ABC television. Robert Hooks, who had shared a New York apartment with Elder from 1961 to 1962 recreated the role of Blue Haven in this version.
  

• Ceremonies in Dark Old Men was included in Lindsay Patterson's Black Theater: A 20th-Century Collection of the Best Playwrights (1971); also included in Best American Plays, Seventh Series, 1967-1973.

The critical response to Ceremonies in Dark Old Men was overwhelmingly positive. Although a few critics saw the play as inept, formulaic, and dated, the majority found it well wrought, rich, powerful, and meritorious.

"In its endless scanning of surfaces and appearances, slice-of- life realism scants the substance of truth and reality. It is a pity that Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, by Lonne Elder, III, occupies the worst of these two decidedly dated dramatic works... Written in the era of the Negro revolution, Elder's play might be subtitled Waiting to Get Whitey. At the same time, it is the story of the disintegration of a black family... But what really makes the play bearable is the superior performances of the players, most notably the emotionally explosive acting of Douglas Turner".

"He also uses conflict too much, not trusting his characters to hold our attention with their deeper emotional involvement in the action. But ultimately we forgive him all this because of the trueness of his observation and the complete avoidance of self- pity..."

"As a play, Ceremonies is out of control: The characters are inconsistent, and the cumbersome unfolding of the plot tedious at times; but by the end, we have learned a little about what it feels like to live in the ghetto."

"What makes it altogether delightful and arresting is the unadorned, exciting, joyous and entirely devoted nature of the acting--the kind which not only makes one believe that he is there (yet happily in the theatre), but that the actors have invented their own lines on the spur of the moment."

George Ecksstein, "Softened Voices in The Black Theatre," Dissent, 23 (Summer 1976): 306-308.

Lewis H. Fenderson, "The New Breed of Black Writers and their Jaundiced View of Tradition," CLA Journal, 15 (September 1971): 18-24.

_____ . Census: "Noted Playwright Lonne Elder Dies". Jet . (July 8, 1996): 17.

Esther Spring Arata and Nicholas Hohn Rotoli, Black American Playwrights: 1800 to the Present: A Bibliography (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976): 76-77.

Arata, More Black American Playwrights: A Bibliography (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1979): 78-79.