author
Kenneth Macgowan
1888–1963
A lively figure in American theater and film, he moved from drama criticism and Broadway production into Hollywood, where he helped shape early Technicolor filmmaking. He also became an important teacher and builder of theater studies at UCLA.
2 Audiobooks
Continental stagecraft
by Kenneth Macgowan
Early Man in the New World
by Kenneth Macgowan, Joseph A. Hester
About the author
Born in Massachusetts in 1888, Kenneth Macgowan built a career that ranged across criticism, stage production, writing, and film. He first worked as a drama critic and became closely involved with modern American theater, writing books about the stage as well as helping produce important theatrical work.
In Hollywood, he became known as a producer at 20th Century-Fox and is especially remembered for La Cucaracha (1934), which won the Academy Award for Best Color Short Film and is often noted as an early landmark in three-strip Technicolor. He also produced Becky Sharp (1935), another key film in the history of color cinema.
Later in life, Macgowan joined UCLA, where he served as the first chair of the university's Department of Theater Arts. He died in Los Angeles in 1963, leaving behind a career that linked journalism, theater, movies, and arts education in a rare and wide-ranging way.