Background
Morton, Charles Walter, , Nebraska 1899 1967 Male Author Editor author and editor, was born in Omaha, Nebr. , the son of James Charles Morton and Cynthia Ann Edwards.
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Charles Morton
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Education
He was educated in Omaha public schools and after 1912 at the Morristown (N. J. ) School.
Instead, he wandered through two enrollments at Williams College in 1916 and 1919, one matriculation at the University of Chicago in 1917, five months as a tractor driver on a ranch in Pitchfork, Wyo. , and eight years working for his father.
Career
Morton was expected to learn the family business.
Morton's first article went to the Haldeman-Julius Monthly.
Success there prompted him first to develop a series, "Peter Profit's Partner, " for Hardware Age and then to try eastern literary magazines.
The Evening Transcript was an unread, unsold, and unloved newspaper that specialized in obituaries.
Yet, Morton not only had no regrets about working there for six and a half years but even enjoyed the experience.
Morton's continuing success in writing articles for the New Yorker gained him a trial on the magazine's editorial staff in 1933.
His inability to meet the high standards of Harold Ross, the editor in chief, proved both traumatic and enlightening.
He learned that he was suited for short, light pieces, not for the lengthy essays favored by Ross.
For the rest of his life, he continued to write for Ross and his successors but from outside the New Yorker staff.
An ardent New Dealer, he remained in that post until he felt that the social security concept was permanently established.
Morton accepted an editorial position with the Atlantic Monthly in 1941.
It was a position that matched man and job perfectly for the first time in Morton's life.
In 1943, Morton began the Atlantic feature "Accent on Living, " a monthly essay interpreting the American scene in a light, dry, but frequently sharp style.
His friend and colleague Robert Manning, the editor of the magazine, explained that he "meant more to the Atlantic than his modest spot on the masthead could have made clear.
He added to our editorial deliberations, and to our pages, a profound distaste for the bogus, the pedantic, and the self-interested argument.
He forced us to look sharply at our world's congenital foolishness, he made us laugh, and he long ago made us realize that he won't be replaceable.
He collaborated with Francis Dahl, a Boston Herald cartoonist, on Dahl's Boston (1946) and Dahl's Brave New World (1947).
How to Protect Yourself Against Women and Other Vicissitudes (1951) and A Slight Sense of Outrage (1955) collected his best Atlantic, New Yorker, and Punch essays.
Frankly, George (1957) collected his humorous comments and advice to his first book's publisher, J. B. Lippincott.
In his autobiography, It Has Its Charms (1966), Morton wittily but lovingly described his childhood in Omaha, his experiences on the Evening Transcript, and his failures and successes prior to 1941.
Modest and self-deprecating, he could not single out individuals or specific groups for criticism.
His humor could be quiet and lightly placed or suddenly sharp and biting, but never malicious, angry, or belligerent.
On one such occasion, he began by lamenting the rise in prices before recalling the low prices of the 1930's, noting that it did not require much money to live well then.
Even Park Avenue restaurants trumpeted the "dollar dinner, " he mused.
"But there were too many people who couldn't buy a dollar dinner.
On the whole I prefer higher prices, " concluded Morton.
Morton lived near Harvard for many years, and as an ex-journalist and editor of the Atlantic, he associated closely with Harvard's Nieman Fellows.
[See the interview by Harvey Breit, New York Times, Oct. 7, 1951; New York Times, Sept. 23, 1951, and May 8, 1955; and San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 27, 1951, and May 13, 1955.
Obituaries are in the Boston Globe and the New York Times, both Sept. 24, 1967. ]
Religion
In 1928 he moved to Boston in order to write for the Independent.
Personality
He was one of a kind. "
Connections
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Born
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Died
1967 (aged 68) -
Religion
independent