Elmer Rice lived for many years on a wooded estate in Stamford, Connecticut until his death in Southampton, England in 1967 of pneumonia after suffering a heart attack. Obituaries took note of a long and respected theater career. Brooks Atkinson described Rice in his history of Broadway as "a plain, rather sober man with a reticent, unyielding personality...But when a social principle was at stake, he was more clear-headed than most people, and he was quietly invincible...He was one of Broadway's most eminent citizens."