Iris Rainer Dart (néeRainer; born March 3, 1944) is an American author and playwright for television and the stage. Her most notable novel is Beaches, which was made into a 1988 film of the same name. She has also written several stage musicals as well as for television shows, such as The Sonny and Cher Show. She voiced Donna, Peter Cottontail's love interest, in the 1971 stop-motion Easter classic, Here Comes Peter Cottontail.
Iris Rainer was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was an actress as a youth with the Curtaineers, an inter-racial theater group at the Settlement house, at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, and The White Barn Theatre. She also went to classes at the Pittsburgh Playhouse as a child.[1]
In a mid-2007 interview, when asked the question: "Has the Jewish cultural dynamic in your upbringing influenced what and how you write?", Dart replied "Unquestionably. I grew up in a household where both my parents were immigrants – my mother from Russia, father from Lithuania – and they spoke more Yiddish in my house than English, so it was just a [sic] completely a part of who I was."[3]
Dart has written nine novels, including Beaches.[1] She wrote for The Sonny and Cher Showvariety show in the 1970s.[1] She got the idea to write about a woman "loosely based on 'the no holds barred outrageous person' that she found in Cher. The character became "Cee Cee Bloom" in her ...novel Beaches later made into the iconic film of the same name starring Bette Midler."[4]
She was married to rock concert promoter Steve Wolf until they divorced in 1977 (less than half a year before he was murdered when robbers broke into his house). She is currently married to Stephen Dart, a California businessman. She has two adult children, a son (by Wolf) and a daughter (by Dart), and two grandchildren.[4]
