Colin Campbell Clements was born on 25 February, 1894, the son of
William George and Ada von Swanback Clements. His father, who had
emigrated from England around 1885, worked at the Omaha stockyards as a
cattle driver.
In 1917 Clements graduated with an Artium Baccalaureatus (A.B.) Degree
from the University of Washington. The following year he attended
classes at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. Before
enlisting in the US Army in 1918, Clements worked as a play reader,
actor and stage manager for
Stuart Walker's Portmanteau
Theater.
After the war Clements spent two years working in the British occupied
zone in Turkey with Near East Relief assisting Armenian refugees. A few
years later the British government awarded him the General Service
Medal of the British Army for his services there.
Not long after returning to America Clements became master of English
at Lawrenceville School in Lawrence Township, New Jersey. It was also
around this time that he attended Professor
George Pierce Baker's famous 47
Workshop at Harvard.
Clements published his first book, "The Touchstone and Other Plays", in
1919, followed by "Seven Plays of Old Japan" in 1920. An example of
some of the other books he wrote during this period of his career are:
"Jo-a Drama" (1922), "A Book of Prayers for Boys" (1922), "Plays for a
Folding Theater" (1923), "Plays for Pagans" (1924) and in collaboration
with Mary Heaton Vorse, "Wreckage"
(1924).
Clements met Florence Ryerson in 1927
while he was directing a play at a small theater in Santa Barbara,
California. When the couple married the following year they almost
immediately began working as a team. By 1945 they had churned out,
eight novels, over 100 short stories (six that were serialized in
magazines), three books of monologues and in excesses of 50 plays and
screenplays. Their most popular works were probably "June Mad" (1939),
"Glamour Preferred" (1941) "Harriet" (1943), "Notorious Gentleman"
(1945) and "Strange Bedfellows" (1948).
Children were often the subject matter of Clements and Ryerson's
stories. Much of what they learned from observing Ryerson's son, Hal
and their gardener's four children became fodder for their work.
Clements and Ryerson's plays were very popular among amateur theater
groups from around the country. Even during the depths of The Great
Depression royalties from amateur theater groups earned them $4,000
annually.
In 1932 the Clements were robbed by a burglar with rather sophisticated
tastes. Besides expensive Oriental rugs and towels, the highbrow thief
pilfered a set of books by
Maurice Maeterlinck, sixteen volumes
of the history of Greece, four volumes of works by
Giovanni Boccaccio and a copy of "The
Imitation Of Christ" by Thomas A. Kempis.
The original manuscript of "Harriet", their story about
Harriet Beecher Stowe, was donated
by the couple to the Archives of American Letters in Princeton
University along with a letters of appreciation for the play from
former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt,
author Sinclair Lewis and actress
Mary Pickford.
Colin Campbell Clements died on 29 January, 1948, after a three week
stay at Jewish Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His wife and
partner of nearly 21 years was at his bedside.
