Donald Quinn
| Don Quinn | |
|---|---|
Quinn circa 1939
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| Born |
November 18, 1900 Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S. |
| Died | December 30, 1967 (aged 67) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Cartoonist, writer |
| Years active | 1920s-1965 |
| Spouse(s) | Garnette Steve Quinn (m. ?-1938; her death) Edythe Quinn (m. 1940s-1967; his death) |
Don Quinn (November 18, 1900–December 30, 1967) was an American comedy writer who started out as a cartoonist based in Chicago. According to sources, Quinn's career as a cartoonist was short-lived but his career as a writer began after he realized that the magazines and newspapers threw away his drawings he sent in but kept his captions.
Quinn was best known as the sole writer (later head writer to Phil Leslie) of the popular old-time radio show Fibber McGee and Molly for 15 years and as the writer for the program's stars Jim and Marian Jordan for 20 years.
Quinn was also the creator/head writer of radio's The Beulah Show, (a Fibber McGee spinoff), and television's The Halls of Ivy. Quinn also created the popular Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve character on Fibber McGee and Molly.
Quinn was born in November 1900 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Not much is known about his early life nor is much known about his early career as a cartoonist. However, what little is known is that after discovering that, even though his drawings were thrown away by magazines, his captions were kept, Quinn found a job at WENR in Chicago writing for some of the up-and-coming comedians there.
It was there where Quinn met Jim and Marian Jordan in 1931. The Jordans at the time were veterans of Vaudeville and had previously worked at rival station WIBO. The pair already had starred in two programs on WENR, Luke and Mirandy from 1927-1931 and The Smith Family from 1929-1932. Quinn was hired to write scripts for The Smith Family.
That same year, the three of them created Smackout which debuted March 2 on WMAQ. Smackout, a revised version of Luke and Mirandy centered around Jim Jordan in the role of Luke Gray, a proprietor of a general store that was brimming with stock but yet "smack out" of everything, who loved to tell a good tall tale to his customers. The program was picked up by NBC's Blue Network for national syndication in 1933 and remained there until the summer of 1935.
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