Myron Coureval Fagan

Myron Coureval Fagan (October 31, 1887 – May 12, 1972) was an American writer, producer and director for film and theatre and a red scare figure in the late 1940s and 1950s. Fagan was an ardent anti-communist and influential conspiracy theorist. Career Fagan arrived on Broadway in 1907, where he quickly became one of the younger playwrights in American theater. Over the years, he worked in the theater with Alla Nazimova, Douglas Fairbanks, and John Barrymore. He also directed plays for the producers such as Charles Frohman, David Belasco. Fagan also became the dramatic editor of the Associated Newspapers. Many of the actors, including Humphrey Bogart, Brian Donlevy and Robert Ryan, whom Fagan directed or who appeared in his plays or screen adaptions, later became stars in Hollywood. In 1916, Fagan took a break from the theater to serve as director of public relations for Republican presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes. When a similar offer was made in 1928 to him by Herbert Hoover, he turned it down. In 1929, the sound movie of his play The Great Power earned the dubious record of being the shortest run of any movie at the Capitol Theatre, New York. It was replaced with a silent comedy film after only one performance.