EICHELBAUM, SAMUEL

EICHELBAUM, SAMUEL (1894–1967), Argentine playwright and short-story writer. Born in a Jewish agricultural colony in Domíguez, Entre Ríos, he lived most of his life in Buenos Aires. Though in his psychological plays Eichelbaum deals mostly with the Argentinian middle class and is not especially concerned with Jewish life, Jewish themes and characters (both urban and rural) appear in his plays El Judío Aarón (1942), Nadie la conoció nunca (1926), and Divorcio nupcial (1941); and in some of his short stories such as "La buena cosecha," "El señor Lubovitzky depositario" (1925), and "Lo que la luna vio." He is considered one of the principal architects of Argentinian drama. Two of Eichelbaum's plays were awarded the municipal prize of Buenos Aires: Tormenta de Dios (1930) and Señorita (1937); but his best-known plays, also adapted for the screen, are Un guapo del 900 (1940) and Un tal Servando Gómez (1942), which deal with the suburban cultural environment of Buenos Aires. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: D.W. Foster, Cultural Diversity in Latin American Literature (1994); N. Glickman and G. Waldman, Argentine Jewish Theatre: An Anthology (1996); D.B. Lockhart, Jewish Writers of Latin America. A Dictionary (1997); L. Senkman, La identidad judía en la literatura argentina (1983). (Florinda Goldberg (2nd ed.)