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RICHARD CONNELL
Mini-Biography
Directions: Read the Mini-Biography below and do a short bullet-point summary of the
biography. You need a total of 4 points from the biography. You may paraphrase your points.
Richard Edward Connell, author, was born on October 17, 1893 in
Poughkeepsie, New York, to Richard E. and Mary Miller Connell. His father, an editor
and reporter for the Poughkeepsie Press(the Press") and a political adviser to
Franklin Delano Roosevelt during Roosevelts 1910 campaign for the New York State
Senate, was elected to Congress in 1911. Connell had an older sister Mary and two
younger sisters, Catherine and Anne. Connell attended Poughkeepsie public schools
and graduated from Poughkeepsie High School. He began covering baseball games
for the Press at age 10 and was city editor at age 16. In 1911, he accompanied his
father to Washington, D.C. to serve as his secretary and begin studies at
Georgetown University. Connell entered Harvard as a sophomore in September
1912. His father died unexpectedly in October 1912 while campaigning for
reelection. While at Harvard, Connell became editorial chairman of The Crimson and
the president of the Harvard Lampoon. He also was a member of the Harvard
Union, the Speakers Club, the Signet Society, the Harvard Catholic Club, and, after graduation, the
Harvard Club of New York City.
After receiving his Harvard AB in 1915, Connell worked as a journalist on the homicide desk of
the New York American, a Hearst newspaper in New York City, but left in 1916 to become a copywriter at J.
Walter Thompson. Connell enlisted in the United States Army in July 1917, serving as a private in the 27th
Company, Military Police Corps, 27th (New York Guard) Division, training in South Carolina as part of a
mounted police unit and editing the camp newspaper, The Gas Attack. He then served at the front in
Belgium and France. After his discharge in April 1919, Connell returned to advertising in New York.
In 1919, he married Louise Herrick Fox, an advertising colleague, traveled abroad, and eventually
settled in Westport, Connecticut, leaving advertising for freelance writing. Connell published over 300 short
stories in such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post and Colliers' Weekly. Many of his short stories
were anthologized, several were O. Henry prize winners, and a number were adapted for radio and film,
including The Most Dangerous Game (adapted three times for film), A Reputation (filmed as Meet John
Doe), and Brother Orchid (filmed under the same name). He also wrote non-fiction magazine articles,
four novels, and 13 screenplays. Connell eventually relocated to Hollywood, California to write screenplays,
adaptations and plot scenarios for major studios. Connell died unexpectedly of a heart attack on November
22, 1949, in Beverly Hills, California. Connells entries in his Decennial (1925), Fifteenth (1930), and
Twenty-Fifth (1940) Reunion Harvard class reports are notable; they are brief parodies of the kind of short
fiction and screenplays he was writing at the time.

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