John Colton (screenwriter)

John Colton (December 31, 1887 – December 26, 1946) was an American playwright and screenwriter born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He spent the first 14 years of his life in Japan where his English father was a diplomat. After returning to the US he soon worked for a Minneapolis newspaper.

John Colton
Born	December 31, 1887 Minneapolis, Minnesota
Died	December 26, 1946 (aged 58) Gainesville, Texas
Occupation	Playwright Screenwriter

He is best remembered for adapting, with Clemence Randolph, Somerset Maugham's novella Rain into a 1922 smash hit play starring Jeanne Eagels. He wrote the original play, The Shanghai Gesture, produced on Broadway in 1926. He excelled at writing plays dealing with Americans in far-off lands, an experience Colton knew firsthand from his early youth in Japan. With these huge successes Colton was lured to Hollywood, primarily MGM, where he wrote intertitles for some silent films and scenarios for others. In the talking film era he wrote numerous screenplays. Three of his stage plays found motion picture production: Rain (1932); The Shanghai Gesture (1941); and, posthumously, Under Capricorn (1949).

Colton suffered a stroke in 1945. He died of a second stroke in Gainesville, Texas in 1946. Colton, a gay man, never married.[1][2][3]

References

1. John Colton: biography & credits; IMDb.com database
2. John Colton at IBDb,Internet Broadway Database
3. The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine by E.J. Fleming c. 2005; McFarland & Company publishers

External links

• John Colton at IMDb
• John Colton, in 1935 back row in specs & tie standing with several literary friends i.e. Blanche Oelrichs, Dorothy Parker, Peggy Wood, Howard Greer, Dudley Murphy
• The Shanghai Gesture printed programme, the West Coast production (additional notes on Broadway production), Biltmore Theatre, Los Angeles, June 1927
• isolated headshot image of Colton from 1935 group photo