fiction.wikisort.org - Writer

William Marchant (May 1, 1923 in Allentown, Pennsylvania – November 5, 1995 in Paramus, New Jersey) was a playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for writing the play that served as the basis for the 1957 Walter Lang movie, The Desk Set.

William Marchant
Born	(1923-05-01)May 1, 1923 Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	November 5, 1995(1995-11-05) (aged 72) Paramus, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation	Playwright and screenwriter
Education	Temple University (BA) Yale University (MFA)

Marchant had been a resident of the Actor's Fund home in Englewood, New Jersey at the time of his death. He had earlier lived in the Stanton section of Readington Township, New Jersey, in a home owned by Broadway actress Dorothy Stickney.[1]

Education

Marchant was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania and attended Temple University in Philadelphia and Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut.^{[citation needed]}

Career

Playwriting

Marchant's play, To Be Continued, which included a 23-year-old Grace Kelly in the cast, opened on April 23, 1952 at the Booth Theatre on Broadway and ran for 13 performances.^{[citation needed]}

Marchant's The Desk Set opened on Broadway on October 24, 1955 at the Broadhurst Theatre and ran for 296 performances with Shirley Booth in the lead role.^{[citation needed]} The play served as the source material for an eponymous 1957 movie starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

In 1975, Marchant wrote The Privilege of his Company, a remembrance of Noël Coward, which was published by Bobbs-Merrill Company.

He translated the French play Les Dames Du Jeudi for Lynn Redgrave and John Clark, who premiered it as Thursday's Girls in Los Angeles in 1982.^{[citation needed]}

Screenwriting

As a screenwriter, Marchant wrote several episodes for the Armchair Theatre and Armchair Mystery Theatre, dramatized Louise, a W. Somerset Maugham story, for a 1969 BBC Two television production,^{[citation needed]} and worked on two films, Triple Cross (1966) and My Lover, My Son^{[citation needed]}.

References

External links

• William Marchant at IMDb

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