Alfred Uhry

(1936 - )

Playwright and screenwriter Alfred Uhry was born in Atlanta and attended Druid Hills High School and Brown University, earning a degree in English and drama. His first major success was a Tony Award winning adaptation of Eudora Welty’s short novel The Robber Bridegroom into a musical. He is best known for his 1987 play Driving Miss Daisy, which earned the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1988.

Uhry wrote the screenplay for Driving Miss Daisy in 1989, and the movie adaptation of the 1987 play was filmed at many locations around Atlanta, including The Temple. The film received an Academy Award for Best Picture, with Uhry awarded Best Screenplay. Uhry’s subsequent plays, The Last Night of Ballyhoo (1997) and Parade (1998), draw upon the playwright’s interest in the Southern Jewish experience.

The Last Night of Ballyhoo received a Tony Award for Best Play as well as the Outer Critics Circle Award. Parade was nominated for nine Tony Awards in 1999, going on to win two of the nine categories. Uhry also wrote screenplays for several films, including Mystic Pizza in 1988 and Rich in Love in 1993. Uhry is the only playwright to have won a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award, and several Tony Awards. He and his wife, Joanna Kellogg, have four daughters, and he was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2014.