James Forbes (playwright)

In 1897 he became the assistant drama editor of the New York World[1] and in 1898 he accepted the position of business manager for Henry W. Savage's Castle Square Opera Company.

He continued to write plays, including several social comedies, and during the next twenty years he carved himself a niche as a highly acclaimed and popular playwright.

He scored other successes commercially and critically, but his interest and abilities in other aspects of theatre kept him from devoting all his time to writing.

In the 1920s he was lured to Hollywood as a screenwriter for Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Norma Shearer, for whom he also served as a voice coach.

Interested in the continued movement toward urbanization, he often contrasted small-town and city life and satirized concurrent social climbing.

On July 3, 1908, Forbes, Harris and their wives, Ada and Irene, arrived in New York on the ocean liner, the RMS Baltic, after one such trip.