This could be quite exhausting, he recalled. She received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles . Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. She had intense relationships with various brilliant and talented men whom she called "my husbands.". Wasserstein's daughter, Lucy Jane, was born three-months premature, and the mother's health continued to deteriorate. Jacobs has been cleaning house of a number of Wassersteins close associates: for starters, vice-chairmen Donald Drapkin and Chuck Ward and longtime Wasserstein acolyte Doug Taylor have left the firm. The approximately $7 billion bankruptcy filing was the largest ever in retailing at the time. May blessings be bestowed upon you all in the future. She raised the baby with the help of friends and assistants, always trying to keep her frailty under wraps. She died of lymphoma in 2006. "I can confirm it. There was Tina Howe, Marsha Norman and Honor Moore. Rosen tells the story of receiving a phone call after Wasserstein died from Art Reichstetter, a banker who had also worked with Wasserstein at all three firms. Daughter, Lucy Jane, born. Wasserstein and Perella met while working a corporate acquisition, and within 20 minutes of their first encounter, Wasserstein had taken control of the meeting. And what a production it was! He was bruised all over his body, explains one who saw him after he returned to the office that May. Ms. Wasserstein would have juice and the two would ''sit around and vote for Best Supporting Actor in the Birth of Lucy Jane'' among the nurses and doctors. Annals of Motherhood February 21, 2000 Issue Complications By Wendy Wasserstein February 13, 2000 I got up at 5 a.m. on August 27th to write Fay Francis's eulogy. (Claude, who was said to have been heartbroken, declined to comment for this article.) For the people who knew him well he engendered enormous loyalty., Jeffrey Rosen, another longtime friend of Wassersteins and his colleague at First Boston, Wasserstein Perella & Co., and Lazard, agrees. We continue to mourn his loss. I never met her, but many have said that she was a wonderful person. See rank. I sat down on the freaking steps, and he stood over me, Perella says. He was put on life support immediately upon arrival at the hospital. The director Jerry Zaks told her his daughter had been in the same neonatal unit and was now bright and healthy. Warning: "continue" targeting switch is equivalent to "break".Did you mean to use "continue 2"? ''Peter at the end of 'The Heidi Chronicles' says, 'In our lives our friends are our families. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. During her career, which spanned nearly four decades, Wasserstein wrote eleven plays, winning a Tony Award, a Pulitzer Prize, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk Award, and an Outer Critics Circle Award. You lost. Or I won. May your legacy shine eternally bright through your works and the lives that they continue to impactrest in peace! It was caring, but weird. Larry Grafstein, the head of M&A at Rothschild in New York, who worked for Wasserstein for years at Wasserstein Perella and at Lazard, wrote in an essay in The New Republic how exasperating that aspect of Wassersteins personality was. Perella, Bill Lambert, and Charles Ward in 1988, former bankers at First Boston Corp., until its eventual sale to Dresdner Bank in 2000 for some $1.4 billion in stock.Wasserstein Perella & Co. Four years after that play opened, Wasserstein began fertility treatments, and in 1999 Lucy Jane Wasserstein was born prematurely. Seeing himself as the Nietzschean bermensch, he believed he played by different rules than everyone else. She was born when Wendy was 48, the paternity of the father remains a secret; Wendy would not reveal it even on her deathbed at 55 years old. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. In November 2005 she was hospitalized with lymphoma. Bernard Gersten, executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater, was there. Even if you're not at home, you can still get a notification on your phone. Wasserstein is allegedly a humorist, but the centerpiece of this collection of "essays," as her publisher boldly calls them, is a self-absorbed psychodrama about her grim struggle to conceive and give birth on the brink of the menopause. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. In the 21st century, it's not just urns and gravestones anymore. Claude Becker Wasserstein '82 is the founder and CEO of Fine Day Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in innovative and . What a most incredible statement. Wasserstein's writing could be funny or sad, but either way, Salamon says, her writing always struck a chord with a generation that was rocked by big social upheavals: "Changes in rights, attitudes, expectations for women, for gays all of that was happening during Wendy's lifetime. So, around her 40th birthday, along with ''Lose weight,'' ''Write a play'' and ''Read more,'' she put, ''Have a baby.''. ''Now we're depleted,'' she said; her sister Sandra Meyer died of cancer in 1997. Finally, the finance minister said, Excuse me, Mr. Wasserstein. But apparently this is privileged information. Bruce proceeded to launch into a distinctive, long-winded Wassersteinian monologue about all of the different issues facing Slovakias privatization program, corporate sector, and politics generally given its recent separation from the Czech Republic, Grafstein wrote. Why hadnt he said anything to anybody?. He was a very, very strange guy, says one. Her passing is a great loss to not only the theater community, but to an entire generation of women. '', The real-life baby, Lucy Jane, was born nearly three months premature and had to stay in the neonatal intensive care unit for two months, though her mother tried to think of her as being away at ''a good Jewish boarding school which specializes in the sciences,'' as usual leavening the painful with a wisecrack. He believes he is that. Contact info. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. On January 30, 2006, Wendy Wasserstein - a playwright and essayist whose work reflected with humor and empathy the dilemmas and challenges facing American baby-boom women who wanted to "have it all" - died, at age 55. He was witty and enthusiastic. Says another person who saw Wasserstein last summer, He frankly looked pretty well. The fact that he was sick wasnt noticed by a lot of us for a month or two., In July 2006, Wasserstein was seen around town again. Lazards apparent obfuscation of Wassersteins health issues is nothing new, however. Day to Day has this remembrance of her prolific career and award-winning plays that . Wasserstein, who never married, became pregnant at the age of forty-eight; her daughter Lucy Jane was born in 1999. Date of birth. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. And I realized the wisdom of what Reichstetter said. It never varied, and I had a lot of meals with him, right? After a while, you just began to cave. It does not store any personal data. She passed away in 2006 from lymphoma at age 55. Ms. Wasserstein has no husband, or a steady boyfriend, for that matter. This was a reporting coup for sure, since Wasserstein had all but abandoned the idea of allowing himself to be the focus of a major magazine story after Deirdre Fanning of Forbes had written the infamous Bid Em Up Bruce cover story, of August 1989, which suggested that Wasserstein encouraged his clients to hugely overpay for companies. Add a bio, trivia, and more. Lucy Jane WassersteinWendy Wasserstein / Daughter. (With his second wife, Christine Parrott, Wasserstein had three children: Pamela, Ben, who works with a producer at HBO, and Scoop, now a law-school student. ''She came early because she knew it was hard to get in,'' Ms. Wasserstein said. A graduate of University of Michigan, he earned a law degree and MBA at Harvard. She was so there," Salamon says. To preserve the pregnancy, her doctor ordered her to the hospital. the firm would now be a shadow of its former self, assuming it was even still around. Four years after that play opened, Wasserstein began fertility treatments, and in 1999 Lucy Jane Wasserstein was born prematurely. Joe Perella recalls how Bruces standard diet was hamburger for lunch, shrimp cocktail and steak for dinner. When her daughter was 2, a terrible chronology began: Wasserstein became ill in 2001. Hed come in; hed go to his office. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. "When Wendy won the Pulitzer Prize, Lola supposedly told all of Wendy's aunts, 'Oh, Wendy won the Nobel Prize,' " Salamon says. what happened to lucy jane wasserstein. The mystery shrouding Bruce Wassersteins death, last October, at 61, fit the billionaire investment bankers M.O. To her family - I am so sorry that you had to experience this - may Wendy guide you and protect you from the Other Side. Rohatyn had heard that Wasserstein had been out of the office for several months and wondered why Lazard hadnt disclosed that fact to the market. Wassterstein gave birth to a daughter, Lucy Jane Wasserstein (September 12, 1999) when she was 48 years old. ''If you haven't won a Tony, can you go?'' She would be willing to talk about her brother and his life, but only with the consent of Bruces oldest child, Pamela, a 32-year-old lawyer who worked at the Wall Street law firm Wachtell Lipton and Leon Blacks Apollo Management L.P. before becoming a project director at the Tribeca Film Institute. Wassersteins plays examine womens experiences at different stages in lifeand for a long time, she was the lone female voice that addressed these issues regularly on famous stages. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". Itd be the best thing that could happen to the firm! (Lazard declined to make any of its board members available to be interviewed or to comment on any part of this story. Lucy Jane Wasserstein, daughter of the late Wendy Wasserstein, should be about 12 years old as of this writing. It is as though a mighty oak has fallen, leaving an empty and glaring space against the sky where he stood. (Neither Lipton nor Jordan would be interviewed about Wasserstein for this article. Mother: Pulitzer-prize winning . "She had so many husbands. May all your good memories of Wendy be of comfort to you at this very difficult time. Within a week, she had gained a pound, although, Ms. Wasserstein noted, ''weight gain runs in my family.'' Ms. Rosenthal's personal assistant mingled with her baby sitter and housekeeper. But Jane doesn't know if she should really believe . Meryl Streep, Ms. Wasserstein's friend from the Yale Drama School, sneaked in to see the baby, incognito. Macbeth, starring Alan Cumming, opens on April . ''She's home. Some basic help and starters when you have to write a tribute to someone you love. Wasserstein's first marriage, to wife Laura, ended in 1974. . Lucy Jane Wasserstein, her mother, Lola . (Rosenfeld declined to be interviewed about Wassersteins role.). Born. . NEW YORK (AP) -- Playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who chronicled the feminist struggles and successes of the baby-boomer generation in such wryly observant works as "The Heidi Chronicles" and "The . He looked like a guy who had been going through chemo or something. Inside the firm, the explanation was that he was suffering a prolonged bout of pneumonia. We will miss her brilliance and wit. He was an amazing intellect and human being, he says.