Dates

• Existence: 1890-1971

Biography

Carl Glick was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, in 1890, the son of a manufacturer of gasoline engines and furnaces. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1915. During his freshman year, he played bit parts for the Donald Robertson players at the Chicago Art Institute, for which he was paid fifty cents a performance. He supported himself during his junior year in college by writing moving picture scenarios. He left college for one year to travel with a repertory theatre troupe, an adventure which ended with his being stranded in a small town when the troupe disbanded. After graduating from Northwestern, Glick returned to Iowa to start one of the first community theatres in Iowa, in Waterloo. After this he directed little theatres in San Antonio, Texas, and Sarasota, Florida. Between productions, he wrote plays and short stories. During this time he wrote the plays The Police Matron, It Isn't Done, Outclassed, The Fourth Mrs. Phillips, Suncold, and Ten Days Later, among others. Between 1919 and 1922 he wrote many short stories for such magazines as Saucy Stories, Fascinating Fiction, Parisienne and New Parisienne, Black Mask Magazine, and 10 Story Book, some of them using various pseudonyms. In 1932, not finding any more little theatres to direct, he moved to New York.   In New York, he was sent to Chinatown by the Emergency Works Bureau as athletic director of a boys club for the Church of All Nations. Here he became fascinated with the Chinese in America and found a topic for his writing talent. His books Shake Hands with the Dragon, Three Times I Bow, Double Ten, and Oswald's Pet Dragon all arose from his acquaintance with and respect for the Chinese in America. During the research and writing of Double Ten, he met and became friends with A. E. O'Banion, with whom he wrote two children's books, Mickey, the Horse That Volunteered and Mickey Wins His Feathers. As well as writing about the Chinese in America, he wrote mysteries (Laughing Bhudda, Death Sits In), about community theatre in America (Curtains Going Up), and produced a chatty autobiographical work (I'm a Busybody). His play, The Unconquered, was the first play produced with WPA funds.   A man of diverse talents, he was sometimes a professor at universities and colleges such as the Universities of Colorado and Montana, New York University, and California Western University; sometimes a director of theatre; and sometimes a playwright and author. His last appointment was as professor of English and Drama at California Western University in San Diego, from which he retired in 1961. During his lifetime he published seventeen books and nine plays, as well as many short stories and magazine articles. He died on March 8, 1971.

Citation:

Author: Jacque Roethler, October 2001

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