Charles Klein (playwright)

Charles Klein, around 1915

Charles Klein (* 7. January 1867 in London , † 7. May 1915 in the Atlantic off the coast of Ireland ) was an English actor and playwright , the young in the United States emigrated and was very successful there as such.

Life

Charles Klein was born in London as one of the four sons of Hermann Klein, a professor of languages, and his wife Adelaide (née Soman). All four brothers made careers in artistic fields: Hermann Jr. became a singing teacher and music critic, Alfred became an actor, and Manuel became a composer and theater director at New York's Hippodrome Theater . With him, Charles wrote the operetta Mr. Pickwick in 1903 .

At 16, Klein immigrated to the United States to pursue a career. He retained his British nationality. Initially, he wanted to be an actor and began performing in small amateur theater pieces. He later got more professional and got roles in serious, larger productions. Because of his small, slim stature (he also had a slight handicap from a congenital clubfoot), he often played youthful roles such as the lead in The Little Lord . On July 10, 1888, he married Lillian Gottlieb in Manhattan, with whom he had two sons, Philip (1888-1935) and John Victor (1908-1992).

In 1890 he got the opportunity to revise the text of a piece in which he played. From then on he developed his talent for dramatic, energetic stage works and concentrated predominantly on writing. He worked on many of his plays in collaboration with other playwrights and liked to use novel models. Klein's early works were primarily light comedies , operettas, and pranks , but at the turn of the century his taste changed and he devoted himself to serious dramas .

His most successful works included two librettos for operettas by John Philip Sousa : El Capitan (1895) with texts by Thomas Frost and The Charlatan (1898). Furthermore, the operetta Red Feather (1903), which was created in collaboration with the composer Reginald de Koven and the poet Charles Emerson Cook and was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.; The Auctioneer (1901), with Lee Arthur and produced by David Belasco ; The Music Master (1904); The Lion And The Mouse (1905); The Third Degree (1909); The Gambler (1910) and Potash And Perlmutter (1913) in collaboration with Montague Glass.

Between 1912 and 1929, various of his plays were filmed, for example The Gambler . B. at least four times. Klein rewrote some of his works to novels in order to make them accessible to a larger audience and to increase their popularity. In addition to his engagement as a playwright, Klein also worked as a critic and censor for the New York theater producer Charles Frohman . Together they were traveling on business on the ocean liner RMS Lusitania from New York to Great Britain, when it was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915 . Both men were among the 1198 fatalities. Klein's body was in such poor condition that it could only be identified by his clubfoot.

swell

• Edwin Francis Edgett: Little, Charles. In Dictionary of American Biography, ed. By Dumas Malone. Vol. 2. New York: Scribner's, 1933
• John Wightman: Mr. Charles Klein, the Author. The Playgoer and Society Illustrated 6, no.34 (1912) p. 116
• The Lusitania Resource

Web links

• Charles Klein in the Internet Movie Database (English)