James Forbes

James Forbes (September 2, 1871 – May 26, 1938) was a Canadian playwright who worked as a Hollywood film screenwriter. The Chorus Lady and The Famous Mrs. Fair were his best known plays. Biography Of Scottish ancestry, Forbes was born September 2, 1871, in Salem, Centre Wellington, Ontario, and he received his education from the College Institute of Galt, Ontario. Becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1892, he had already begun his career as an actor in Chicago in 1891. Early in 1897 he accepted the position of drama critic for the Pittsburgh Dispatch. In 1897 he became the assistant drama editor of the New York World and in 1898 he accepted the position of business manager for Henry W. Savage's Castle Square Opera Company. In 1901 he became the assistant manager of the newly established Henry B. Harris theatrical enterprises. Before turning to play-writing, Forbes published several short stories, which were written entirely in dialogue. In 1904 he adapted one of his stories into a one-act vaudeville sketch entitled The Chorus Lady. Created for Rose Stahl, an actress with whom Forbes had worked, the sketch was very successful in New York, and it then had a successful tour in the United States and England. Forbes expanded the sketch into a full-length comedy, and the 1906 production, again with Rose Stahl, had such great success that Forbes's entree into play-writing was insured. He continued to write plays, including several social comedies, and during the next twenty years he carved himself a niche as a highly acclaimed and popular playwright. Forbes achieved his greatest success in 1919 with The Famous Mrs. Fair, a social comedy dealing with the adjustments a woman faces upon returning home from her work in the war effort in France during World War I. He scored other successes commercially and critically, but his interest and abilities in other aspects of theatre kept him from devoting all his time to writing. He also directed plays, mostly his own, but others as well, and tried his hand at producing. In the 1920s and early 1930s his two main interests, writing and directing, led him to Hollywood, where he either wrote the screenplays for or directed the dialogue for a number of MGM films. Five of his own plays were made into movies.