CONNELLY, MARC

(1890-1981)

   Born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, Marcus Cook Connelly had a long and distinguished career as a playwright, occasional actor, producer, and director, which began with amateur theatricals in his hometown. His first Broadway contribution was as librettist and lyricist of a failed musical, The Amber Princess (1916), but his career truly began when he agreed to collaborate with George S. Kaufman. Their fruitful partnership began with the acidic comedy Dulcy (1921), which made a star of Lynn Fontanne, and included the comedy To the Ladies (1922), the short-lived musical The '49ers (1922), the long-running hit satire of Hollywood called Merton of the Movies (1922), the musical Helen of Troy, New York (1923), the failed The Deep Tangled Wildwood (1923), and the expressionist farce Beggar on Horseback (1924). The last was a long-running success, followed by the musical Be Yourself (1924), which marked the end of the Connelly-Kaufman collaboration.

   On his own, Connelly wrote The Wisdom Tooth (1926), which ran a season. He collaborated with Herman Mankiewicz on The Wild Man of Borneo (1927). Working solo again, Connelly won a Pulitzer Prize for The Green Pastures* (1930), which he also directed, a long-running adaptation of Roark Bradford's folk tales of African American life.