Elmer Rice made his first trip to Paris in 1925, seeking a change of scene in order to revitalize his career after a series of failures in New York. In 1930 he returned to soak up atmosphere for a play about American expatriates living in the Latin Quarter of Paris--an idea which had come to him as a result of his earlier experiences in that city.

A native of New York City, Rice, after receiving his law degree from New York Law School in 1912 and being admitted to the bar, ironically found himself appalled by legal ethics and having serious misgivings about law as a profession. He had already developed an interest in drama and soon resigned his position with a New York law firm to pursue a career as a playwright. In this pursuit he was almost immediately successful. His first Broadway play, On Trial (1914), was a smash box-office...