A Parody Outline of History

Donald Ogden Stewart (1894-1980) was an American author and screenwriter. He graduated from Yale University in 1916 and was in the Naval Reserves in World War I. After the war he started to write and found success with A Parody Outline of History (1921), a satire of The Outline of History (1920) by H. G. Wells. This led him to becoming a member of the Algonquin Round Table. Around that time a friend of his got him interested in theatre and he became a noted playwright on Broadway in the 1920s. In 1924, he wrote Mr. and Mrs. Haddock Abroad for the publishing house George H. Doran. It was a snarky send up of the ugly American tourist. He became interested in adapting some of his plays to film, but on first entering Hollywood he had to adapt the plays of others as his own were initially shelved. As World War II approached, he became a member of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, which, during the Second Red Scare, was suspected of being a Communist front. His other works include: Perfect Behavior: A Parody Outline of Etiquette (1922), The Crazy Fool (1925), Father William (1929) and Rebound (1930).