author
Orrie Lashin
Best known as the co-author of the Depression-era play Class of '29, this little-documented writer is linked to a story of young graduates trying to find their footing in hard times. The surviving record is slim, which gives the work an extra sense of mystery.
1 Audiobook
Class of '29
by Orrie Lashin, Milo Hastings
About the author
Orrie Lashin is credited as the co-author, with Milo Hastings, of Class of '29, a three-act American play. Project Gutenberg lists it as Lashin's only work in its catalog, and Princeton University's Federal Theatre Project materials also preserve a script for the play, suggesting that this collaboration is the main reason the name remains in circulation today.
Class of '29 centers on college graduates facing unemployment and disappointment in the shadow of the Great Depression. That premise gives Lashin's known work a clear social angle: it looks at ambition, love, pride, and economic pressure through the lives of young people whose future has not unfolded as promised.
Reliable biographical details about Orrie Lashin appear to be scarce in the sources available here. Because so little can be firmly confirmed beyond the authorship of Class of '29 and the playwright credit attached to that work, it is safest to remember Lashin as a largely obscure dramatic writer whose name survives through one notable collaboration.