Paula Brody
Paula Brody (July 19, 1936 – April 24, 2024) was born in the Bronx to Al and Bea Abrams. In school, the teachers let her sit apart with a book because she learned so fast. She retained a lifelong commitment to proper grammar.
As an undergraduate at Columbia University she won the National Award for Women in Television. She met Alan Brody in playwriting class and decided that day he was the man she would marry. For their 20th anniversary she wrote the lyrics to “After All These Years,” which was recorded by Anne Phillips (and can be found on Spotify).
After graduating from Columbia, she embarked on a broadcasting career, but took a hiatus from the field to raise her children. She completed a Masters Degree in English Literature, and published her poetry in numerous literary journals. In the mid seventies she returned to broadcasting as a producer at WMHT public television in upstate New York. At the age of forty, she was the oldest person ever accepted into the Directors Guild of America trainee program, becoming an assistant director and working on major films, including The Cotton Club, Moonlighting, Moscow on the Hudson, and A Gathering of Old Men.
After she retired, Paula took joy in sewing, quilting, reading Dorothy Dunnett and Jane Austen, and baking rugelach and danish for the staff and residents of the Brickbottom Artists Building, where she lived with Alan until her death. She was deeply troubled by the state of the world and contributed generously to social justice and mutual aid organizations.
She was a passionate mother, a joy-filled grandmother, and a loving and supportive wife to a self-described difficult playwright.
She leaves behind her husband, Alan, her children, Lise and Dylan, and her granddaughter, Jocelyn Beatrice.