century association biographical archive

Earliest Members of the Century Association

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Louis Evan Shipman

Dramatist

Centurion, 1912–1933

Born 2 August 1869 in New York (Brooklyn), New York

Died 2 August 1933 in Boury-en-Vexin, France

Buried Mount Hope Cemetery, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

Proposed by Brander Matthews and Herbert Adams

Elected 2 March 1912 at age forty-two

Century Memorial

Like [Lee Wilson] Dodd and like most of our other successful contemporary playwrights, Louis Evan Shipman was not himself a product of the stage. He was a Harvard graduate, had begun by writing for the weekly magazines, and achieved his first and possibly greatest successes in dramatic composition when he was less than thirty. His productions appeared on the stage at reasonably frequent intervals during the three decades ending with 1929. He was one of those playwrights, not uncommon in the history of the theatre, who no sooner had brought to the footlights one comedy than the prolific pen and imagination were busy with another.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1934 Century Association Yearbook