BY ALBERT AMATEAU | Daniel B. Meltzer, playwright, short-story writer and author of scores of columns and essays, many of which were published in The Villager, died Nov. 6 in the Visiting Nurse Service Special Care hospice at Bellevue Hospital, after a three-year battle with prostate cancer. He was 74.
His published work includes the short-story collection “Outsiders,” a memoir, “Nothing Happened Here, Volume I,” and hundreds of essays and op-ed pieces, both humorous and serious, that were syndicated and appeared in newspapers across the country.
His plays, including “Movie of the Month,” “Intermission” and “The Square Root of Love,” were published by Samuel French and were produced at Circle Repertory Theater and The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, and by theater groups across the country and in Canada, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. Meltzer won a Pushcart Prize for fiction in 1997, the O. Henry Prize for fiction in 1992 and the Central Ohio Theatre Critics Award for Best New Play of the Year in 2000.
Beginning in 1979, he taught writing and theater at various programs and universities, holding the post of adjunct professor at New York University, Yeshiva University and Marymount Manhattan College. He was co-director of the N.Y.U. Journalism workshop, and taught at Pennsylvania State University, Seton Hall University, Hofstra University and at programs at Chautauqua, Henry Street Settlement and The Writer’s Voice at the YMCA
He worked as a news writer for ABC News and Special Events, at WPIX-TV and at CBS News. He was also a researcher on Marcel Ophüls’s 1988 Academy Award-winning film documentary, “Hotel Terminus, The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie.” He was an editor of The Westsider and Chelsea Clinton News.
An Upper West Side resident since 1968, Dan Meltzer organized and led the 1987 grassroots campaign to save the landmarked Beacon Theater from being converted into a nightclub. The campaign, which galvanized West Side preservation advocates, stopped the plan to radically alter the landmarked interior of the 2,900-seat movie/vaudeville palace built in 1926. Since then the Beacon has served as the venue for pop and rock concerts and other events, including appearances by the Dalai Lama.
Meltzer was a resident and fellow at several arts colonies, including Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Blue Mountain Center, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, The Ossabaw Island Project, Cummington Artists and Writers Community and Chautauqua Institution. He had a special fondness for the Upstate location of the Blue Mountain Center and the Virginia Center, the latter where he was in residence eight times since 2000.
Born to Kitty Talber and Jack Meltzer, Dan was raised in Brooklyn. He took a bachelor’s degree in theater history and criticism at City College and a master’s at Hunter College and earned a degree in documentary film and English literature at City University of New York. He was a devoted cat lover.
His partner, Nina Felshin, survives, as do two nieces, a nephew and three cousins.
“He brought great love, intimacy and sweetness to my life,” Felshin said.
His ashes will be divided to be scattered at four locations: his mother’s grave in Florida, Blue Mountain Center in the Adirondacks, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Felshin’s home in Gardiner, N.Y.
