`CEREMONIES' PLAYWRIGHT ELDER, AT 69.

Byline: Mel Gussow The New York Times

Lonne Elder III, the playwright who wrote ``Ceremonies in Dark Old Men,'' died Tuesday at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills. He was 69 and died ``after a chronic illness,'' said his former wife, actress Judyann Johnson Elder.

Although Elder wrote several other plays and was also a screenwriter (of ``Sounder'') and a writer for television, ``Ceremonies in Dark Old Men'' was his major work. First produced off-Broadway in 1969 by the Negro Ensemble Company, it became as meaningful a theatrical event as Lorraine Hansberry's ``Raisin in the Sun.''

In it, Elder told the poignant and humane story of one Harlem family in the 1950s, revealing the discontent that led an older generation to grow old before its time and a younger generation to try to circumvent the system by all possible means. At the center of the play is Russell B. Parker, a prodigal father and failed barber who exists on memories and ``ceremonies'' for survival. He recounts atmospheric tales about his life in vaudeville and tells, in darkly comic detail, about his days on the chain gang.

Elder's success opened the door to other African-American playwrights. After him came Joseph A. Walker, Leslie Lee, Steve Carter, Richard Wesley, Samm-Art Williams, Charles Fuller and August Wilson. Douglas Turner Ward directed and starred in the original production, and in subsequent versions on stage and on television roles were played by an honor roll of actors, including Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne and Billy Dee Williams.

When ``Ceremonies'' was revived in New York in 1985, with Ward returning to his role, the play had ripened into a contemporary classic. Three years later, the playwright went back to Off Broadway with ``Splendid Mummer,'' a monodrama about Ira Aldridge, apparently the first African-American actor to play Othello. Charles S. Dutton starred.

Elder is survived by a daughter, Loni-Christine of Los Angeles; two sons, David of San Francisco and Christian of Los Angeles; and two stepsisters and two stepbrothers, all of Jersey City.