William Marchant (playwright)

William Marchant (May 1, 1923 in Allentown, Pennsylvania – November 5, 1995 in Paramus, New Jersey) was a playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for writing the play that served as the basis for the 1957 Walter Lang movie, The Desk Set.

Marchant had been a resident of the Actor's Fund home in Englewood, New Jersey at the time of his death. He had earlier lived in the Stanton section of Readington Township, New Jersey, in a home owned by Broadway actress Dorothy Stickney.^[1]

Education[]

Marchant was educated at Temple University in Philadelphia and the Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut.^{[citation needed]}

Career[]

Playwriting[]

Marchant's play, To Be Continued (which included a 23-year-old Grace Kelly in the cast), opened on April 23, 1952 at the Booth Theatre on Broadway and ran for 13 performances.^{[citation needed]}

Marchant's most notable work, The Desk Set, opened on Broadway on October 24, 1955 at the Broadhurst Theatre and ran for 296 performances, with Shirley Booth in the lead role.^{[citation needed]} The play served as the source material for an eponymous 1957 movie starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

In 1975, Marchant wrote The Privilege of his Company, a remembrance of Noël Coward, which was published by The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

He translated the French play Les Dames Du Jeudi for Lynn Redgrave and John Clark, who premiered it as Thursday's Girls in Los Angeles in 1982.^{[citation needed]}

Screenwriting[]

As a screenwriter, Marchant wrote several episodes for the Armchair Theatre and Armchair Mystery Theatre, dramatized Louise, a W. Somerset Maugham story, for a 1969 BBC Two television production,^{[citation needed]} and worked on two films: Triple Cross (1966) and My Lover, My Son^{[citation needed]}.

References[]

External links[]

• William Marchant at IMDb