Edward Childs Carpenter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edward Childs Carpenter | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 13, 1872 |
| Died | October 7, 1950 (aged 77) |
| Occupations | |
| Years active | 1903–1944 |
Edward Childs Carpenter (1872–1950) was an American writer of novels and plays and a stage director in the early through mid-20th century.[1][2]
Carpenter was born December 13, 1872 (1874 per his gravestone[3]) at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,[4][5][2] a son of Edward Payson and Frances Bradley "Fanny" (née Childs) Carpenter, of the New England Rehoboth Carpenter family.[6][7]
After leaving school, Carpenter became a newspaperman and quickly rose to the position of financial editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer.[1][8] In 1903 he published his first novel, The Chasm, co-authored with Reginald Wright Kauffman,[1][9] which received favorable reviews.[10] On June 1, 1907, Carpenter married the illustrator Helen Alden Knipe; later they collaborated as writers.
Carpenter began writing plays while working at the Inquirer from 1905 to 1916, beginning with The Dragon Fly in 1905 (with Luther Long), followed by a dramatization of his own 1906 novel Captain Courtesy,[2] which was later made into a silent film of the same title, Captain Courtesy. His longest-running plays were The Cinderella Man in 1916, with 192 performances, The Bachelor Father in 1928, with 264 performances (later made into a film, The Bachelor Father), and Whistling in the Dark, co-authored with Laurence Gross, in 1932, with 144 performances (also later made into a film, Whistling in the Dark).[2]
From 1924 to 1927, Carpenter was president of the Dramatists' Theatre, Inc. In 1922, he became the second elected president of the Dramatists Guild of America. He was re-elected in 1929 continuing on as the Guild's fifth president until 1935.[2] He was a member of the Franklin Inn Club in Philadelphia,[11] and The Players and The Lambs clubs in New York City.
Carpenter died in Torrington, Connecticut[12] on October 7, 1950.[3][4][5] He and his wife, writer and illustrator Helen Alden (née Knipe) Carpenter, are interred in Town Hill Cemetery in New Hartford, Connecticut.[5][3][13]
