Theatre Register

Owen Davis

Shows · Owen Davis

Book Writer 1874–1956

Owen Gould Davis (January 29, 1874 – October 14, 1956) was an American dramatist known for writing more than 200 plays and having most produced. In 1919, he became the first elected president of the Dramatists Guild of America. He received the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Icebound, His plays and scripts included works for radio and film. Before the First World War, he wrote racy sketches of New York high jinks and low life for the Police Gazette under the name of Ike Swift. Many of these were set in the Tenderloin, Manhattan. Davis also wrote under several other pseudonyms, including Martin Hurley, Arthur J. Lamb, Walter Lawrence, John Oliver, and Robert Wayne.

Also credited on2 works

Spring Is Here
Tenderloin

These come off the person record, which names a work and not a production. So we can say this name is attached to the work and we cannot say which staging, or in what capacity. For a composer or a writer that is the whole career we hold; there is no cast list to find them in.

In the literature8 passages

  • was backed by the Medical Review of Reviews. Olive Wyndham had the lead in the Owen Davis play “What Happened to Mary.” Billie Burke was in “The Amazons,” a Pinero play, and Shelley Hull was her leading man in both this and Somerset Maugham’s “The Land of Promise” in which she starred later in the year. Marguerite Clark had little luck wi…theatre-pdfs/A Pictorial History of the American Theatre, 1860-1985 (Blum).txt
  • “The Great Lover,”’-a comedy by Frederick and Fanny Hatton starring Leo Ditrichstein; “The House of Glass” with Mary Ryan; “Sinners,” an Owen Davis play with Alice Brady, Robert Edeson,theatre-pdfs/A Pictorial History of the American Theatre, 1860-1985 (Blum).txt
  • The Pulitzer Prize was awarded to “Icebound” by Owen Davis. Other important new plays were Molnar’s “The Swan”theatre-pdfs/A Pictorial History of the American Theatre, 1860-1985 (Blum).txt
  • Owen Davis’s Pulitzer-prizewinning American drama Icebound, about the old Maine family squabbling over money and a wastrel son. Gertie played plain jane, the poor relation, ‘far removed’ said one critic ‘from the quips and nods and becks and wreathed smiles which have made her famous in musical comedy’. There was no question of staging Ic…theatre-pdfs/Gertrude Lawrence - Sheridan Morley.txt
  • mance. (Whoopee by William A. McGuire, Walter Donaldson, and Gus Kahn, based on Owen Davis's play Thetheatre-pdfs/McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, v. 3 (I-N).txt
  • edy by Owen Davis. In California for his health, hypochondriac Henry Williams becomes a foil for Sally Morgan, whose lover is the supposed half-breed Indian, Wanenis. Being forced to marry the local sheriff, she induces Henry to prevent this by eloping with her. He does so with the sheriff in hot pursuit. Coming to an Indian reservation t…theatre-pdfs/McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, v. 3 (I-N).txt

Passages naming this person, found by keyword across 178 books. A keyword match is not a biography, and a common name will pull in the wrong one.

What this page does not know

  • What this person played. No cast list we hold records a character against a performer.
  • Any staging. This name appears in no production cast list we hold — 1,877 of 7,139 people are in that position, most of them writers, composers and designers rather than performers.
  • Which of the credits above the roles on this record — book writer — apply to. The roles sit on the person and never on a credit, so a director who also acted looks the same here as one who did not.

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