He is best remembered for adapting, with Clemence Randolph, Somerset Maugham's novella Rain into a 1922 smash hit play starring Jeanne Eagels.
He excelled at writing plays dealing with Americans in far-off lands, an experience Colton knew firsthand from his early youth in Japan.
With these huge successes Colton was lured to Hollywood, primarily MGM, where he wrote intertitles for some silent films and scenarios for others.
Three of his stage plays found motion picture production: Rain (1932); The Shanghai Gesture (1941); and, posthumously, Under Capricorn (1949).
His 1933 play Nine Pine Street, written with Carleton Miles, was based around the Lizzie Borden story.