John Willard (playwright)

John Willard (November 28, 1885 – August 30, 1942)[1] was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor.

Willard's most famous work is The Cat and the Canary (1922), which was made into the influential silent film of the same name in 1927.

Also, the work was filmed in 1930, in 1939 (starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard) and in 1979 (by Radley Metzger).

His performance in Pagliacci secured him a contract to sing baritone solos with Oscar Hammerstein in New York.

[8][9] During World War I he was a captain in the United States Army Air Corps, and flew bombing runs over German machine-gun sites.