He was the professional partner of Antoinette Perry, co-founder of the American Theatre Wing,[1] and he was also a member of the Algonquin Round Table.

[18] He pledged Phi Delta Theta fraternity[fn 2] upon returning to the University of Kansas in September 1907,[19] and joined the Dramatic Club.

[21] During the next two years Pemberton worked full-time for the Emporia Gazette, becoming White's star reporter[22] then city editor by August 1909.

[26] Upon arriving in New York, Pemberton found out The Sun position didn't exist, but was able to get a job on the Evening Mail, reporting on harbor traffic and shipping.

[27] Pemberton directed and produced the American premiere of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author in 1922,[28] as well as its first Broadway revival two years later.

Among his other productions was Miss Lulu Bett, whose writer Zona Gale became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, Personal Appearance by Lawrence Riley, which was a Broadway hit and was later turned into the film Go West, Young Man and Harvey, Mary Chase's play about a man whose best friend is a large imaginary rabbit, later made into a film starring Jimmy Stewart.