Owen Davis

Owen Gould Davis (January 29, 1874 – October 14, 1956) was an American dramatist known for writing more than 200 plays and having most produced. In 1919, he became the first elected president of the Dramatists Guild of America. He received the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Icebound, His plays and scripts included works for radio and film. Before the First World War, he wrote racy sketches of New York high jinks and low life for the Police Gazette under the name of Ike Swift. Many of these were set in the Tenderloin, Manhattan. Davis also wrote under several other pseudonyms, including Martin Hurley, Arthur J. Lamb, Walter Lawrence, John Oliver, and Robert Wayne.

Davis was born into a large family in Portland, Maine. They moved to Bangor, where he lived until he was 15. As a boy, Davis wrote plays for his eight siblings, who performed them for the town. His parents were Owen Warren Davis, an iron manufacturer, and his wife Abigail Augusta Gould.His brother William Hammatt Davis later served as chairman of the National War Labor Board in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. Davis attended the University of Tennessee in 1888-1889 and transferred to Harvard University in 1890, completing his degree there in three years. At Harvard, he was active with the Society of Arts drama organization. For a time, he coached a New York preparatory school's football team.He married Elizabeth Drury Breyer, an actress, in 1901 or 1902, and they had two sons. Both entered the theater world; Owen Davis Jr. became an actor, and Donald Davis a playwright.Davis lived in New York City for much of his life, and died there.