author
George Randolph Chester
1869–1924
Best known for creating the fast-talking schemer Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, this American writer turned sharp humor and newsroom energy into stories that became popular books, plays, and silent films. He also worked in early cinema as a screenwriter, editor, and director.
6 Audiobooks
Five Thousand an Hour: How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress
by George Randolph Chester
The Making of Bobby Burnit Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man
by George Randolph Chester
The Ball of Fire
by George Randolph Chester, Lillian Chester
The Early Bird: A Business Man's Love Story
by George Randolph Chester
Young Wallingford
by George Randolph Chester
Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford A Cheerful Account of the Rise and Fall of an American Business Buccaneer
by George Randolph Chester
About the author
George Randolph Chester was an American writer born on January 27, 1869, and he became widely known for lively, comic stories about ambition, hustling, and American business life. Before his fiction career took off, he worked as a newspaper reporter, and that quick, punchy journalistic style helped shape his storytelling.
His best-known creation was Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, a hugely popular con-man character whose adventures appeared in magazines and were later collected in book form. Chester also wrote works such as Five Thousand an Hour, and several of his stories were adapted for the stage and for silent films while he was still alive.
Later in his career, he moved beyond print and worked in the film world as a screenwriter, editor, and director, showing how easily his storytelling crossed into the new medium of cinema. He died on February 26, 1924, but his career still offers a vivid glimpse of the overlap between magazine fiction, popular theater, and early Hollywood.