Wilson Collison

Wilson Collison (November 5, 1893 – May 25, 1941)^[1] was an American writer and playwright. He started with farces.

Wilson Collison
Born	(1893-11-05)November 5, 1893 Glouster, Ohio, United States
Died	May 25, 1941(1941-05-25) (aged 47) Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Other names	Clyde Wilson Collison
Occupation(s)	Novelist, playwright
Years active	1924–1941
Known for	plays, novels
Spouse	Anzonetta Moore (1920–1941, his death) Anzonetta Atherton (1942+)

His play Red Dust (1928) was adapted twice for feature films: the first released in 1932 under the same title, and a 1953 version titled Mogambo. Two novels also received second lives in film adaptations.

Early years

Wilson Collison was the son of John B. Collison, a clerk in the Glouster, Ohio City Engineer's Office, and Mary E. Gardner.^[2] Wilson Collison abandoned plans to become a scientist when he found he preferred writing.

Showing signs of early talent, he was nine when a Columbus, Ohio newspaper accepted one of his stories. His writing was largely self-developed, as he completed only one year of high school.^[3] In his early years, he worked as a printer, a stenographer, an advertising writer, and as a clerk in the wholesale and retail drug business.

Actor

At 18 Collison became an actor with a repertory company that toured small towns in Michigan. He also was a vaudeville performer.^[4]

Playwright and novelist

Collison's jump start as a playwright came in 1919, when he co-wrote Up in Mabel's Room and it became a Broadway hit. Collison was working as an $18-a-week clerk in a Columbus, Ohio drugstore when he collaborated on the play with the more experienced Otto Harbach of New York City. The older man was already known as a lyricist. The farce centered on a shy bridegroom's pursuit of an incriminating undergarment which in a single bold moment he had earlier presented to a young woman whom he had temporarily fancied.^[5]

Collison also co-wrote two farces with successful playwright Avery Hopwood: The Girl in the Limousine (1919), about a man who is robbed and left in a woman's bedroom; and Getting Gertie's Garter (1921), about a lawyer who doesn't understand the difference between a bracelet and a garter. These had some success in New York.^{[citation needed]} (In 1920, Hopwood had four plays running on Broadway.)

A number of Collison's works had second lives as film adaptations in the 1930s, as the industry expanded with "talkies". His play Red Dust closed after eight performances in New York, and received withering reviews.

But it was adapted twice for films, which had more success. The 1932 film by the same name was set in Vietnam, then a French colony, and starred Clark Gable. Another film adaptation, titled Mogambo, was made in 1953. Set and shot in colonial British East Africa and neighboring areas, it also starred Gable, plus Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, and introduced British actor Donald Sinden.

The stage version was described this way: "Red Dust, a turgid play," was "a repetitious melodrama ... Another of those plays of the tropics, or anyway the near tropics, where passions are primitive and men wear their shirts open in the front," wrote The New York Times.^[6]

Collison's novel Red-Haired Alibi (1932) was adapted as a feature-length film of the same name by Tower Productions. Directed by Christy Cabanne, it was the first feature-length film to include Shirley Temple in the credits.^{[citation needed]}

The Maisie series of motion pictures, with the first in 1939, was developed from Collison's novel Dark Dame. MGM cast Ann Sothern as Maisie Ravier, a brash American working woman. Sothern played the same role in a half-hour weekly radio series.^[7]

One of Collison's works was adapted as the 1933 film Sing Sinner Sing.^[8]

Works

Plays

• 1919 Up in Mabel's Room
• 1919 The Girl in the Limousine
• 1920 The Girl with the Carmine Lips
• 1921 Getting Gertie's Garter
• 1921 A Bachelor's Night
• 1922 Desert Sands
• 1923 Debris^[9]
• 1928 Red Dust

Novels

• 1929 Murder in the Brownstone House
• 1930 Diary of Death
• 1931 Blonde Baby
• 1931 Expensive Women
• 1931 The Woman in Purple Pajamas
• 1932 Farewell to Women^[10] also called Dishonable Darling
• 1932 Red-haired Alibi
• 1932 Shy Cinderella
• 1933 Millstones
• 1933 One night with Nancy
• 1933 Sexational Eve
• 1934 Congo Landing
• 1935 Save a Lady
• 1935 The Second Mrs. Lynton
• 1936 Glittering Isle

Filmography

• The Girl in the Limousine (1924, based on The Girl in the Limousine)
• Up in Mabel's Room (1926, based on Up in Mabel's Room)
• Getting Gertie's Garter (1927, based on Getting Gertie's Garter)
• Divorce Made Easy (1929)
• Expensive Women (1931, based on Expensive Women)
• A Scarlet Week-End (1932, based on The Woman in Purple Pajamas)
• Three Wise Girls (1932, based on Blonde Baby)
• The Crusader (1932)
• The Red-Haired Alibi (1932, based on Red-haired Alibi)^[11]
• Red Dust (1932, based on Red Dust)
• Night of the Garter (UK, 1933, based on Getting Gertie's Garter)
• Sing Sinner Sing (1933)
• Smart Girl (1935)
• Woman Wanted (1935)
• There's Always a Woman (1938)
  • There's That Woman Again (1938)
• The Mad Miss Manton (1938)
• Maisie (1939)
  • Congo Maisie (1940)
  • Gold Rush Maisie (1940)
  • Maisie Was a Lady (1941)
  • Ringside Maisie (1941)
  • Maisie Gets Her Man (1942)
  • Swing Shift Maisie (1943)
  • Maisie Goes to Reno (1944)
  • Up Goes Maisie (1946)
  • Undercover Maisie (1947)
• Moon Over Burma (1940)
• Up in Mabel's Room (1944, based on Up in Mabel's Room)
• Getting Gertie's Garter (1945, based on Getting Gertie's Garter)
• Mogambo (1953, based on Red Dust)
• Maisie, unsold television pilot based on "Maisie" character; aired on television anthology series New Comedy Showcase (1960)

Death

Collison died at home of a heart attack. He had no funeral, at his request, and his remains were cremated.^[12]

His wife remarried in 1942. Her next husband, Edwin Atherton died two years later.