George Randolph Chester was an American writer and screenwriter, film editor, and director.
Background
Short story and screenwriter George Chester’s early years are something of a mystery. He may have been born in Ohio, as most of his obituaries have it, but, as Martha Bowers reported in her article for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, “Chester claimed he was born in Richmond, Indiana, but he also shrugged off his place of birth with the remark, ‘I really don’t care. Do you prefer any particular city?’ ” Bowers goes on to speculate that “Chester’s reluctance to recall where he was born reflected an undercurrent of bitterness that informed his childhood and adolescent memories.”
Education
Whatever his origins, Chester did not have the advantage of formal schooling.
Career
Chester joined the American labor force as a child, taking whatever work came his way. By the time he reached the age of twenty, he had tried his hand at plumbing, engineering, and paper-hanging. He worked as a cook, a salesman, and a factory hand. It was not until the late 1890s that he landed his first job in the field of publishing, signing on as a reporter for the Detroit News. From there he went on to write for the Cincinnati Enquirer, starting in 1901 as a reporter and quickly moving up to Sunday editor.
As Sunday editor, Chester’s writing responsibilities grew substantially, and these new pieces were not the strict reportage of his earlier jobs. Now he was writing fiction, and in his five years at the News, his work was taken up for syndication in twenty-four additional papers. Chester’s name as an author was now widely known, so much so that when his first short story (“Strikebreaker”) was published in the September 1904, issue of McClure’s Magazine, he was able to leave the newspaper world behind and begin writing full-time.
With the publication of the Kelvin tales, Chester’s reputation was at its peak. Soon, however, his style would undergo a change. Although Chester’s subject matter remained firmly rooted in tales of scheming get-rich-quick artists, including a series based on the exploits of J. R. Wallingford’s son, his characterizations lost the exaggerated quality of the earlier stories and became much more subtly sketched. Chester’s popular characters and themes were ready-made for venues beyond the printed page - a fact quickly recognized by the great musical writer and producer, George M. Cohan. In 1910, he brought out Get Rich Quick Wallingford, a farce, which had a successful run in New York and London in 1915.
In the 1920s, the Chesters were themselves tempted to try their hands at a new popular medium - they headed west to Hollywood to write and direct screenplays. From 1921 through 1923, George wrote or collaborated on nine screenplays. Only two made it into films, both in 1921, and both of which list Lillian as a collaborator. These were an adaptation of the novel Black Beauty and a film version of the popular Son of Wallingford, both released by Vitagraph studios. While the Chesters met with only limited success on the Hollywood circuit, they did manage to gamer a good deal of experience that they could turn to good use in their fiction writing.
Chester died three months prior to the final installment’s publication, having suffered a fatal heart attack on February 26, 1924.
Chester’s personal history - rising from nothing, with no education to speak of, to become a success in his field - fitted him perfectly for the popular tastes of his day. This was an era in which stories of the making, and stealing, of fabulous riches, were immensely popular. Chester’s own take on this theme was evident in the first of his “Wallingford” series of stories, which appeared in 1908, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford: A Cheerful Account of the Rise and Fall of an American Business Buccaneer.
Connections
Chester was married to Elizabeth Bethermel. They divorced in 1911, and Chester married Lillian de Rimo, the same year. Chester had two children from his first marriage, George Randolph Jr. and Robert Fey.