Don Marquis

All you want to know about Don Marquis

Don Marquis (born July 29, 1878, in Walnut, Illinois - died December 29, 1937, in New York City) was an American humorist, journalist and author. He was variously a novelist, poet, newspaper columnist and playwright. He is best remembered for creating the characters "Archy" and "Mehitabel", supposed authors of humorous verse.

Contents

Life

Donald Robert Perry Marquis (pronounced "MAR kwis" (Scottish), not "mar KEE" (French)) grew up in Walnut, Illinois. His brother David died in 1892 at the age of 20; his father James died in 1897. After graduating from Walnut High School in 1894, he attended Knox Academy, a now-defunct preparatory program run by Knox College, in 1896, but left after three months.

In 1909, Marquis married Reina Melcher, with whom he had a son, Robert (1915-1921) and a daughter, Barbara (1918-1931). Reina died on December 2, 1923. Three years later he married the actress Marjorie Potts Vonnegut. She died in her sleep on October 25, 1936. Marquis died of a stroke after having suffered three earlier strokes that left him partly disabled.

On August 23, 1943, the United States Navy christened a Liberty ship, the USS Don Marquis (IX-215), in his memory.

Career

Marquis joined The Evening Sun in 1912 and edited for the next eleven years a daily column "The Sun Dial.". In 1922 he left The Evening Sun (shortened to The Sun in 1920) for the New York Tribune (renamed the New York Herald Tribune in 1924), where his daily column, "The Tower" (later "The Lantern") was a great success. He regularly contributed columns and short stories to the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and American magazines and also appeared in Harper's, Scribners, Golden Book and Cosmopolitan.

Marquis's best-loved creation was Archy, a cockroach who allegedly left poems on Marquis's typewriter by jumping on the keys, and an alley cat named Mehitabel. Other characters who made appearances in print included Pete the Pup, Clarence the ghost and an egomaniacal toad named Warty Bliggins.

Marquis was the author of about 35 books. He co-wrote (or contributed posthumously) to the films The Sports Pages, Shinbone Alley, The Good Old Soak and Skippy. The 1926 film The Cruise of the Jasper B was supposedly based on his 1916 novel of the same name, although the plots have little in common.

Books

  • 1912: Danny's Own Story (novel)
  • 1915: Dreams & Dust (poems)
  • 1916: Cruise of the Jasper B. (novel)
  • 1916: Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers (sketches)
  • 1919: Prefaces (essays)
  • 1921: The Old Soak and Hail and Farewell (sketches) Dramatized 1921, 1926, 1937.
  • 1921: Carter and Other People (short stories)
  • 1921: Noah an' Jonah an' Cap'n John Smith (poems, sketches)
  • 1922: Poems and Portraits (poems)
  • 1922: Sonnets to a Red-Haired Lady and Famous Love Affairs (poems)
  • 1922: The Revolt of the Oyster (short stories)
  • 1924: The Dark Hours (play) This story of the trial, passion and crucifixion of Jesus had its professional premiere on 14 March 1932 at the Maryland Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland. Bretaigne Windust directed the University Players with a cast of more than 50, which included Joshua Logan as Caiaphas, Charles Crane Leatherbee as Pilate, Henry Fonda as Peter, and Kent Smith as Jesus. The play subsequently opened on Broadway on 14 November 1932 and ran 8 performances. See, Houghton, Norris. But Not Forgotten: The Adventure of the University Players, New York, William Sloane Associates: 1951, pp. 285-6.
  • 1924: Pandora Lifts the Lid (novel)
  • 1924: Words and Thoughts (play)
  • 1924: The Awakening (poems)
  • 1927: Out of the Sea (play)
  • 1927: The Almost Perfect State (essays)
  • 1927: archy and mehitabel (poems, sketches)
  • 1928: Love Sonnets of a Cave Man (poems)
  • 1928: When the Turtles Sing (short stories)
  • 1929: A Variety of People (short stories)
  • 1930: Off the Arm (novel)
  • 1933: archys life of mehitabel (poems, sketches)
  • 1934: Master of the Revels (play)
  • 1934: Chapters for the Orthodox (short stories)
  • 1935: archy does his part (poems, sketches)
  • 1936: Sun Dial Time (short stories)
  • 1939: Sons of the Puritans (novel)
  • 1940: the lives and times of archy and mehitabel (omnibus)
  • 1946: The Best of Don Marquis (omnibus)
  • 1978: Everything's Jake (play)
  • 1982: Selected Letters of Don Marquis (letters) Edited by William McCollum Jr.
  • 1996: archyology (poems, sketches) Edited by Jeff Adams.
  • 1998: archyology ii (poems, sketches) Edited by Jeff Adams.
  • 2006: The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel (poems, sketches) Edited by Michael Sims.

Biography

  • O Rare Don Marquis by Edward Anthony, published 1962 by Doubleday.

See also

External links

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