Charles Rann Kennedy

Born in Derby, England, on February 14, 1871, and later dying in Los Angeles on February 16, 1950, Charles Rann Kennedy built his reputation as an Anglo-American playwright. He is chiefly remembered for The Servant in the House, first produced on Broadway in 1908 and revived there several times afterward.

Kennedy’s stage career was broader than writing alone. Broadway records also credit him as a performer and director, showing how closely he was involved with the practical life of the theater as well as its literary side.

He married actress Edith Wynne Matthison in 1898, and she appeared in many of his plays and helped shape them in development. That partnership gives his work an appealing sense of collaboration: these were plays made not just for reading, but for living performance.