'She was born Barbara Stone on Feb. 6, 1926, into a Manhattan family of some prestige. Her father, Harold Stone, was heir to a fortune built from a five-and-dime store chain. Mr. Gelb, in his memoir, “City Room,” described Mr. Stone as a “dashingly handsome playboy.” Her mother was Elza Heifetz, a Russian immigrant and sister of the violinist Jascha Heifetz.
'Barbara’s parents divorced when she was 9, and her mother married S. N. Behrman, a writer at The New Yorker, a screenwriter and a playwright of drawing-room comedies. Barbara was sent to boarding school, Mr. Gelb wrote, “because her stepfather — for whom she had great affection and admiration — required an atmosphere free of domestic disturbance for his writing.” She entered Swarthmore at 16, but, preoccupied with theatrical and literary activities, she dropped out and took a job as a copy girl for The Times’s editorial board.
'At the time, Arthur had been working as a copy boy at The Times and, fiercely ambitious, had persuaded editors to let him begin a house organ called Timesweek. One day he spotted Barbara in the newsroom. Taken by this “pretty, funny and entrancing girl,” he wrote, and as a stage-struck young man intrigued by her connection to S. N. Behrman, he asked her to profile an editorial writer.
'Barbara’s parents divorced when she was 9, and her mother married S. N. Behrman, a writer at The New Yorker, a screenwriter and a playwright of drawing-room comedies. Barbara was sent to boarding school, Mr. Gelb wrote, “because her stepfather — for whom she had great affection and admiration — required an atmosphere free of domestic disturbance for his writing.” She entered Swarthmore at 16, but, preoccupied with theatrical and literary activities, she dropped out and took a job as a copy girl for The Times’s editorial board.
'At the time, Arthur had been working as a copy boy at The Times and, fiercely ambitious, had persuaded editors to let him begin a house organ called Timesweek. One day he spotted Barbara in the newsroom. Taken by this “pretty, funny and entrancing girl,” he wrote, and as a stage-struck young man intrigued by her connection to S. N. Behrman, he asked her to profile an editorial writer.
'Their romance blossomed among the jazz clubs and coffeehouses of Greenwich Village. She introduced Arthur, whose parents were immigrant Bronx shopkeepers, to her mother’s sophisticated Upper East Side world, where dinner guests might include the conductor Arturo Toscanini.
'Barbara lost her job at The Times to a returning veteran of World War II and became a freelance writer. She and Mr. Gelb married in June 1946 in the Behrman apartment...
'The original biography, “O’Neill,” which they started when they were in their early 30s, clocked in at 964 pages, but was energetically paced and chock-full of interviews with O’Neill’s ex-wives, friends from his boyhood and seaman days, and the real people on whom his dramatic characters were based. The book, published in 1962, became a best seller.
......[Their son] Peter Gelb said that his mother did most of the writing while his father did most of the editing. “They were completely different personalities,” he said. “My father was wildly ebullient while my mother was very reserved with a caustic wit. So they had this yin-yang of opposite personalities that somehow remarkably complemented each other.”
'Decades later, however, after learning of newly discovered diaries and family histories and mining some interviews they had conducted that had been embargoed until the death of O’Neill’s troubled widow, Carlotta Monterey, the Gelbs decided that “O’Neill” did not do their subject justice.
'So, well into their 70s, they undertook two new volumes that clarified some psychological mysteries, dealt more charitably with O’Neill’s parents and judged O’Neill’s drinking and other self-destructive excesses more harshly.
'Mr. Gelb had achieved near-legendary status at The Times while Mrs. Gelb ....eventually established a reputation as a freelance reporter, writing profiles of such literary and entertainment figures as Joseph Heller, George C. Scott, Mike Nichols and Richard Burton, topical articles on subjects including crime and Soviet dissidents, book reviews, and travel and lifestyle articles, many of them in The Times and The New York Times Magazine.
'She was the author of “So Short a Time: A Biography of John Reed and Louise Bryant” (1973), in which she chronicled the love triangle in Greenwich Village involving O’Neill and the politically radical journalists Reed and Bryant. ....'
'Barbara lost her job at The Times to a returning veteran of World War II and became a freelance writer. She and Mr. Gelb married in June 1946 in the Behrman apartment...
'The original biography, “O’Neill,” which they started when they were in their early 30s, clocked in at 964 pages, but was energetically paced and chock-full of interviews with O’Neill’s ex-wives, friends from his boyhood and seaman days, and the real people on whom his dramatic characters were based. The book, published in 1962, became a best seller.
......[Their son] Peter Gelb said that his mother did most of the writing while his father did most of the editing. “They were completely different personalities,” he said. “My father was wildly ebullient while my mother was very reserved with a caustic wit. So they had this yin-yang of opposite personalities that somehow remarkably complemented each other.”
'Decades later, however, after learning of newly discovered diaries and family histories and mining some interviews they had conducted that had been embargoed until the death of O’Neill’s troubled widow, Carlotta Monterey, the Gelbs decided that “O’Neill” did not do their subject justice.
'So, well into their 70s, they undertook two new volumes that clarified some psychological mysteries, dealt more charitably with O’Neill’s parents and judged O’Neill’s drinking and other self-destructive excesses more harshly.
'Mr. Gelb had achieved near-legendary status at The Times while Mrs. Gelb ....eventually established a reputation as a freelance reporter, writing profiles of such literary and entertainment figures as Joseph Heller, George C. Scott, Mike Nichols and Richard Burton, topical articles on subjects including crime and Soviet dissidents, book reviews, and travel and lifestyle articles, many of them in The Times and The New York Times Magazine.
'She was the author of “So Short a Time: A Biography of John Reed and Louise Bryant” (1973), in which she chronicled the love triangle in Greenwich Village involving O’Neill and the politically radical journalists Reed and Bryant. ....'
It was in New York Magazine, March 24, 1975 that a photo of Barbara Gelb was published.
She is holding a fluffy cat named Tigger.
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