Wilson Collison
Born(1893-11-05)November 5, 1893
Glouster, Ohio, United States
DiedMay 25, 1941(1941-05-25) (aged 47)
Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Other namesClyde Wilson Collison
Occupation(s)Novelist, playwright
Years active1924–1941
Known forplays, novels
SpouseAnzonetta Moore (1920–1941, his death) Anzonetta Atherton (1942+)

Wilson Collison (November 5, 1893 – May 25, 1941)[1] was a writer and playwright.

Early years

Wilson Collison was the son of John B. Collison, a clerk in the City Engineer's Office, and Mary E. Gardner.[2] Wilson Collison abandoned plans to become a scientist when he found he preferred writing. Showing signs of early talent he was nine when a Columbus newspaper accepted one of his stories. His writing was largely self-developed, as he completed only one year of high school.[3] He worked as a printer, a stenographer, an advertising writer, and as a clerk in the wholesale and retail drug business.

Actor

At 18 Collison became an actor with a repertory company that toured small towns in Michigan. He also was a vaudeville performer.[4]

Playwright and novelist

Collison's fame as a playwright came in 1919, when Up in Mabel's Room became a Broadway hit. Collison was an $18-a-week clerk in a Columbus, Ohio drugstore when he turned out this first success, in collaboration with Otto Harbach, about the pursuit of an incriminating undergarment which a shy bridegroom in a single bold moment had presented to a young woman whom he had temporarily fancied.[5] Collison also co-wrote two successful farces with Avery Hopwood: The Girl in the Limousine (1919), about a man who is robbed and left in a woman's bedroom, and Getting Gertie's Garter (1921), about a lawyer who doesn't understand the difference between a bracelet and a garter.

Collison's play Red Dust, which closed after eight performances in New York, became the 1932 Clark Gable film by the same name and the 1953 Clark Gable film Mogambo. The hit movie had been a flop on stage: "Red Dust, a turgid play," was "a repetitious melodrama ... Another of those plays of the tropics, or anyway the near tropics, where passions are primitive and men wear their shirts open in the front," wrote The New York Times.[6] His 1932 novel Red-Haired Alibi was turned into a feature-length film of the same name by Tower Productions. Directed by Christy Cabanne, it was the first feature-length film to include Shirley Temple in the credits.

The Maisie series of motion pictures, with the first in 1939, was from Collison's novel Dark Dame. MGM cast Ann Sothern as Maisie Ravier, a brash American working woman. Sothern played the same role in a half-hour weekly radio series.[7]

One of Collison's works was adapted as 1933 film Sing Sinner Sing.[8]

Works

Plays

Novels

  • 1929 Murder in the Brownstone House
  • 1930 Diary of Death
  • 1931 Blonde Baby
  • 1931 Expensive Women
  • 1931 The Woman in Purple Pajamas
  • 1932 Farewell to Women[10] also called Dishonable Darling
  • 1932 Red-haired Alibi
  • 1932 Shy Cinderella
  • 1933 Millstones
  • 1933 One night with Nancy
  • 1933 Sexational Eve
  • 1934 Congo Landing
  • 1935 Save a Lady
  • 1935 The Second Mrs. Lynton
  • 1936 Glittering Isle

Filmography

Death

Collison died at home of a heart attack. He had no funeral, at his request, and his remains were cremated.[12]

His wife remarried in 1942. Her next husband, Edwin Atherton died two years later.

References

  1. ↑ California Death Index
  2. ↑ 1900 US Federal Census
  3. ↑ "Wilson Collison, wrote farce hits". The New York Times. May 26, 1941.
  4. ↑ "Who is Wilson Collison?" The New York Times. February 9, 1919
  5. ↑ "Up in Mabel's Room: John Cumberland and Walter Jones Shine In Fairly Amusing Farce". The New York Times. January 16, 1919
  6. ↑ "Red Dust a Turgid Play of the Tropics: A Repetitious Melodrama by Wilson Collison, Erstwhile Author of Farces". The New York Times. January 3, 1928
  7. ↑ Bawden, James (Fall 2016). "Ann Sothern: Smartest Girl in Town". Films of the Golden Age (86): 18–27.
  8. ↑ "Sing, Sinner, Sing". 1933.
  9. ↑ "Debris (1923 play), Copyright renewal in 1950 by widow".
  10. ↑ "The Project Gutenberg eBook of U.S. Copyright Renewals" (TXT). Retrieved 2023-10-11.
  11. ↑ "Red Haired Alibi". 1932.
  12. ↑ "Death Takes Wilson Collison, Author of Popular Comedies". Los Angeles Times. May 26, 1941. p. A1.
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