Ronald Melville Whyte was an American playwright, critic, and disability rights activist.
19 Facts About Ron Whyte
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Ron Whyte was born with congenital birth defects of both legs and one arm, and as a child he was put in leg braces built by his father and walked with the help of these devices.
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Ron Whyte was run over by a school bus in an accident while he was in high school, and both of his ankles were crushed.
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Ron Whyte completed his studies in Spokane, Washington, where the family had moved as his father held a series of increasingly responsible positions with the Great Northern Railway.
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Ron Whyte attended Whitworth College in Spokane for one year, then transferred to San Francisco State University, where he studied drama.
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Ron Whyte was a member of The Riverside Church in New York during the ministry of William Sloane Coffin and was in care for ordination as a minister in the United Church of Christ.
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Ron Whyte wrote for the magazines Creepy and Eerie in the 1960s.
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Ron Whyte compiled his experiences as an author into a book, contracted with St Martin's Press but was not able to complete it before his death.
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Ron Whyte was Arts Editor and Book Review Editor of the SoHo Weekly News in New York; Drama Editor of The American Book Review; and a book reviewer for other publications.
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Ron Whyte's books included The Flower That Finally Grew; the play Welcome To Andromeda and Variety Obit, and Disability: A Comedy.
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At the Actors Studio, Ron Whyte wrote a second act for Welcome To Andromeda and the now two-act play was premiered with Ellen Burstyn in the role of the Nurse.
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Ron Whyte wrote a third act later, Andromeda III, but it has not yet been performed.
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Ron Whyte wrote Disability: A Comedy, which drew on his own experience as a disabled person.
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Ron Whyte wrote the scripts for three films that received commercial theatrical release: Valentine Eve ; The Happiness Cage, directed by Bernard Girard; and Pigeons, directed by John Dexter.
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Ron Whyte wrote teleplays for several programs including Look Up and Live on CBS-TV and the syndicated series Tales from the Dark Side.
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Ron Whyte received several Sam Shubert Fellowships while at the Yale School of Drama; a Rockefeller Foundation Playwrights Fellowship in 1981; the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Musical in Chicago in 1979; nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1983, and the Drama-Logue Award for Best Play in Los Angeles in both 1978 and 1989.
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Ron Whyte died of a cerebral hemorrhage on September 13,1989, while summering in the New Haven, Connecticut, home of Rep.
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Ron Whyte was buried in the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven.
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Several hundred non-theater-related items from Ron Whyte's collection are held by the General Research Division of the New York Public Library in New York City.