author
Augustin McHugh
1877–1928
Best remembered for the lively farce Officer 666, this Brooklyn-born playwright helped shape early 20th-century Broadway comedy with brisk plots and a knack for stage-ready mischief.
1 Audiobook
Officer 666
by Barton Wood Currie, Augustin McHugh
About the author
Born in Brooklyn in 1877, Augustin McHugh—also often credited as Augustin MacHugh—was an American playwright and writer active in New York theater during the 1910s and 1920s. Reliable theatre records connect him with Broadway productions including Officer 666 (1912), What Would You Do? (1914), Search Me (1915), The Meanest Man in the World (1920), and the musical It's Up To You (1921).
His best-known work is Officer 666, a comic farce that also circulated in book form and was adapted for the screen more than once in the silent-film era. The play’s lasting visibility in library catalogs and public-domain collections suggests the kind of popular success that kept his name in circulation after its first stage run.
McHugh died in 1928. While detailed biographical information is limited in the sources available, his surviving credits show a writer closely tied to commercial Broadway entertainment, especially fast-moving comedy built for a wide audience.