The Fifth Season

Born Sylvia Hoffenberg in New York, Sylvia Regan took the stage name Sylvia Hoffman for her brief Broadway acting career in the 1920s. After it foundered, she worked in promotions and public relations at the Theatre Union and Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre but found greater success as a playwright. Her first play, Morning Star, debuted on Broadway in 1940 and told the story of a Jewish immigrant family on the Lower East Side. Regan divorced her first husband in 1936 but kept his name and went on to marry the famed Yiddish musical composer Abraham (Abe) Ellstein, with whom she wrote the musical comedy Great to Be Alive! in 1950 and The Golem, produced by the New York City Opera in 1961.