Margaret Mayo (playwright)
| Margaret Mayo | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
November 19, 1882 Brownsville, Illinois, United States |
| Died | February 25, 1951 (aged 68) Ossining, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Playwright, screenwriter, actress |
Margaret Mayo, born Lillian Elizabeth Slatten (November 19, 1882 in Brownsville, Illinois – February 25, 1951), was an American actress, playwright and screenwriter.
She was raised on a midwestern farm near Brownsville, Illinois. Later she was educated at the Girl’s College in Fox Lake, Wisconsin, the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Salem, Oregon, and at Stanford University. In her teen years she traveled to New York City to pursue her acting career and that is where she got her stage name Margaret Mayo. She worked as many things, an adapter, film actress, and film company founding partner, playwright, theatre actress, and a writer. In 1901, she married her husband Edgar Selwyn who was a fellow actor. Until about 1917 Mayo averages about a play per year.
When she moved to New York City in her early teens she won a small part in a play named Thoroughbred at the Garrick Theatre in, 1896. Mayo continued her acting career until 1903. She ended up meeting her husband a few years prior to this in 1896. They were both acting in William Gillette’s play Secret Service. The same year she married is when she began her writing career. She began her writing with, Ouida's novel Under Two Flags. She then wrote adaptations of The Marriage of William Ashe in 1905 and The Jungle in 1907. Her earliest successes were adaptations of novels: The Marriage of William Ashe (1905) and The Jungle (1907). However, Mayo is best remembered as the author of more original plays such as Polly of the Circus (1907), Baby Mine (1910), Twin Beds (1914), and Seeing Things (1920), written with Aubrey Kennedy. She adapted several of her plays for the silent screen. Her play Polly of the Circus became the first film produced by the Goldwyn Company in 1917, of which she was a founding member along with her former husband Edgar Selwyn. The play was again made into a film in 1932. In 1910, female writers wrote thirty percent of the plays produced in New York (Engle 29). Professional theatre on Broadway was particularly robust, and accomplished writers such as Mayo commanded $65–$100,000 for a new play (Engle 33). She was once challenged to write a play in a day and she finished in 23 hours.
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