Bruce Jay Fried­man lived in New York City. A nov­el­ist, short sto­ry writer, play­wright, mem­oirist, and screen­writer, he was the author of nine­teen books, includ­ing Stern (1962), A Moth­er’s Kiss­es (1964), The Lone­ly Guy’s Book of Life (1978), and Lucky Bruce: A Lit­er­ary Mem­oir (2011). His best-known works of stage and screen include the off-Broad­way hit Steam­bath (1970) and the screen­plays for Stir Crazy (1980) and Splash (1984), the lat­ter of which received an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion. As edi­tor of the anthol­o­gy Black Humor (1965), Fried­man helped pop­u­lar­ize the dis­tinc­tive lit­er­ary style of that name in the Unit­ed States and was wide­ly regard­ed as one of its finest prac­ti­tion­ers. Accord­ing to the New York Times, his prose is ​“a pure plea­sure machine.”

800 Labor Day Fatalities