What Were They Thinking: Archiving Anne Frank
By: BOB ABELMAN
Playwrights did not begin to describe and interpret the Holocaust experience until a decade after the end of World War II. It takes time to heal, generate the strength to reflect, and find a clear and steady voice.
The most influential and lasting American effort was “The Diary of Anne Frank,” the 1956 adaptation of a young girl’s journal by two Hollywood screenwriters, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. To a large extent, the play’s accessibility and popularity stem from its dramatic realism and the alluring thread of Anne’s innocence and optimism within the context of the atrocities occurring outside her secret annex.