Footnote: NY Times Corrects Elaine Steinbeck Obituary (With a Little Help from Us) Among the corrections in todays New York Times is one concerning its April 29 obituary of Elaine Anderson Steinbeck, a former stage manager and widow of author John Steinbeck.
As WestportNow noted in its April 29 story about Ms. Steinbeck, who once worked at the Westport Country Playhouse, the Times misspelled the surname of the founder of the Playhouse, Lawrence Langner, and also incorrectly listed her as stage manager of ғOklahoma!
The latter error was confirmed to WestportNow by Westport author Max Wilk who wrote a history of the musical for which he had done an extensive interview with Ms. Steinbeck.
WestportNow called the errors to the attention of Times editors, resulting in the following correction:
ԓAn obituary on April 29 about Elaine Anderson Steinbeck, a former stage manager and the widow of John Steinbeck, misspelled the surname of a co-founder of the Theater Guild, where she found work after first coming to New York, and misstated her job with the original Broadway production of “Oklahoma!” The co-founder was Lawrence Langner, not Langer. Ms. Steinbeck was a replacement assistant stage manager, not stage manager.