Jerome Alden was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 and screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

 for television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 and documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

s. He was born in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

. He graduated from the University of Oregon

University of Oregon

-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...

. He wrote the one-man play Bully, about Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

, and the book for the musical Teddy & Alice

Teddy & Alice

Teddy & Alice is a musical with a book by Jerome Alden, lyrics by Hal Hackady, and music adapted from the work of the late John Philip Sousa, with some new songs by Richard Kapp...

, which was also about the Roosevelt family

Roosevelt family

In heraldry, canting arms are a visual or pictorial play on a surname, and were and still are a popular practice. It would be common to find roses, then, in arms of many Roosevelt families, even unrelated ones...

. Both productions appeared on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

. Alden was married to a ballerina, Barbara Gaye, who danced in the original Broadway productions of Annie Get Your Gun

Annie Get Your Gun (musical)

Annie Get Your Gun is a musical with lyrics and music written by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields. The story is a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley , who was a sharpshooter from Ohio, and her husband, Frank Butler.The 1946 Broadway production...

and Our Town

Our Town

Our Town is a three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It is a character story about an average town's citizens in the early twentieth century as depicted through their everyday lives...

. They were the parents of opera directors Christopher Alden

Christopher Alden (director)

Christopher Alden is a radical theater director known for staging revisionist productions of opera. He is the twin brother of David Alden, also an opera director, and belongs to a generation of modernist directors that includes Robert Wilson and Peter Sellars, though Alden retains his own personal...

 and David Alden

David Alden (director)

David Alden is a prolific theater and film director known for his post-modernist settings of opera. He is the twin brother of Christopher Alden, also an opera director in the revisionist mold...

.