Bartlett Cormack
| Bartlett Cormack | |
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Photo from The University of Chicago Magazine, November, 1921, the year he wrote the script for Anybody's Girl.
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| Born |
Edward Bartlett Cormack March 19, 1898 Hammond, Indiana, United States |
| Died | September 26, 1942 (aged 44) Phoenix, Arizona, United States |
Edward Bartlett Cormack (March 19, 1898 - September 26, 1942) was an American actor, playwright, screenwriter, and producer best known for his 1927 Broadway play The Racket, and for working with Howard Hughes and Cecil B. DeMille on several films.
Cormack was the son of Scottish-born Edward K. Cormack and Alice E. Cormack. By 1900 his family had moved from Hammond, Indiana to Chicago, Illinois where his father worked in sales. He graduated from University High School, and was accepted at the University of Chicago. While a sophomore, Cormack wrote the play Anybody's Girl, considered to be one of the best ever submitted for the Blackfriars (the student dramatic organization). Cormack became a member of Maurice Browne's Little Theatre Company in Chicago, but his duties as a general handyman were so demanding he was dismissed from the University as a result of poor class attendance.
To gain experience as a writer, he got a job at The Chicago Evening Journal and stayed there a year, covering "hangings, race riots, street car strikes and other diversions characteristic of Mayor Thompson's turbulent town". He left the Chicago Evening Journal for the Chicago American, working there five years before applying for reinstatement at the University of Chicago. He wrote two more college plays and became engaged, graduating two years later with honors and as a Phi Beta Kappa. He returned to The American, where he wrote features and dramatic criticism.
In 1923, he married Adelaide Maurine Bledsoe (1901–1999), the daughter of Samuel T. Bledsoe, who was a president and board chairman of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. They would have a son, Thomas Bledsoe Cormack, and a daughter, Adelaide Kilbee Cormack. Soon after the wedding, he accepted a position as a press agent for a theater production and the couple moved to New York City.
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