Tom Cushing

Charles Cyprian Strong Cushing (October 27, 1879 – March 6, 1941) was an American playwright who wrote under the name Tom Cushing.

Cushing was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of William Lee Cushing, founder and headmaster of the Westminster School in Simsbury, Connecticut, and Mary Lewis Strong Cushing. He attended Westminster and later Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. He graduated in 1902. He was a tutor in the English Sudan in 1903 and a teacher of English and Greek at Westminster from 1909 to 1917. During World War II, he served in France in the entertainment division of the YMCA. Cushing died at Baker Memorial Hospital in Boston following an operation for a brain tumor.

He made his Broadway in 1912 debut authoring the musical comedy Sari, an English language adaptation of the operetta Der Zigeunerprimas. Cushing complained to P. G. Wodehouse that he was only paid $500 for the play.

In 1921, his play Thank You, co-written with Winchell Smith, debuted at the Longacre Theatre.Dorothy Parker wrote that it was "deftly done..and gently amusing. The small-town characters are not so obtrusively comic as they might be, and you can guess what a relief that is. If ever a play ended at the second act, Thank You is that very play, but there is, of course, a third act, so that the dress suits can be brought in, and the audience can feel that it has had its money's worth."

Another 1921 premiere, at the Empire Theatre, was Blood and Sand, his adaptation of the Vicente Blasco Ibáñez novel Sangre y arena (1908). Otis Skinner starred as the toreador Juan Gallardo, and while his performance was acclaimed, critics thought he was too old for the part. Cushing's play was its adapted into a 1922 silent film version starring Rudolph Valentino.

...
Wikipedia