Connelly was born in a small Pennsylvania town in 1890, the son of a pair of travelling actors. He wrote _The Green Pastures_ in 1930; it won that year's Pulitzer Prize for drama. In his 70-year career Connelly has written dozens of plays. One of the most versatile talents in the American theatre, he has excelled as an actor, director, producer, playwriting professor at Yale, and popular lecturer. He has written musicals, stage plays, movie scripts and radio plays. He was one of the original staff members of the _New Yorker_ magazine, and became part of the famous round table at the Algonquin Hotel. One of his short stories won an O. Henry award. His first novel was published when he was 74 years old. Today, still an active playwright, he lives peacefully at Central Park West, comfortable in his role as an elder statesman of American letters. I feel a certain freedom about repeating the comments Connelly made during our interview because the first thing he said at the door was "I never read anything about myself. ... It's not modesty; it's more terror -- for fear that some dark secret will emerge." Yes, he said, he's very busy these days. "I've just completed a comedy which I'm waiting to have done. I'd rather not mention the title before it comes out. It's a comic fantasy." He recently taped an appearance on the _Dick Cavett Show_, which will be aired sometime this month. And he's working on a musical version of _Farmer Takes A Wife_, a Broadway play that he co-authored in 1934. It became a successful film the next year, with Henry Fonda's screen premiere. "They're always reviving my plays. Last summer they did _Merton of the Movies_ (which he wrote with George F. Kaufman in 1922) in that big theatre complex in Los Angeles. It was quite successful. The boy that plays John-Boy on the Waltons played Merton. It was quite good; I went to see it." Much as Connelly dislikes certain TV shows, he thinks very highly of TV as a medium: "It's good, it's good. I like three or four shows. _Mash_ is wonderful. I like _Maude_ every now and then. And Carol Burnett. I might like _Kojak_ if it didn't run every five minutes. Three times a night is too much for any TV show." Any anecdotes about the "Vicious Circle" of the Algonquin Hotel -- whose members included Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Alexander Woollcott and George Kaufman? "Oh, I don't want to talk about the round table," he said. "Every time you turn around there's a new book about the round table. ... I've written about George Kaufman and so have a hundred other people. It might be that he might get out of his grave and club us all for writing about him."