Donald Bevan, Caricaturist and Stalag 17 Playwright, Dies at 93
Donald Bevan, who wrote the play “Stalag 17” and was one of only four people to draw caricatures for Sardi’s restaurant in New York, died May 29 in Studio City, Calif. He was 93.
Born Jan. 16, 1920 in Holyoke, Mass., Bevan started in the theater world as a playwright, co-writing the 1951 World War II drama “Stalag 17” with Edmund Trzcinski.
The hit show ran for more than a year and was adapted into the 1953 Billy Wilder film that inspired the TV show “Hogan’s Heroes.” Bevan and Trzscinski drew on their experience as prisoners of war after they were shot down in Germany and spent time at Stalag 17B in Austria. In the prison, they wrote and staged sketches in a theater they built; Bevan also started cartooning there, where his drawings were noticed by war correspondent Walter Cronkite.
Bevan was married to actress Patricia Kirkland, whose father introduced him to Vincent Sardi, Jr. The drawings of theater personalities line the walls of three floors of the Times Square eatery, and Bevan’s portraits included Karl Malden, Lauren Bacall, Jackie Gleason, Carol Burnett and Laurence Olivier. He retired from his Sardi’s duties in 1974; the portraits are now drawn by Richard Baratz.
He is survived by a son and a daughter. Kirkland died in 2000.
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