Biography
Lonne Elder III was an American playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the screenplay for the 1972 film Sounder, directed by Martin Ritt and based on the novel by William H. Armstrong, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. He was the first Black writer nominated in that category.
Elder began his career as an actor, appearing in the original Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. He later wrote the play Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, first produced in 1969 by the Negro Ensemble Company, for which he received a Drama Desk Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. He also wrote screenplays including the adaptation for Bustin’ Loose (1981) and the television miniseries A Woman Called Moses (1978).
