Eugene Walter was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the second son and second of at least two children of George Andrew Walter and his wife, Jennie (or June) King. His father was born in Pennsylvania of Connecticut parents; his mother was a native of London, England. George Walter, a bookkeeper, was active in amateur opera companies and musical programs as a singer and director, and his wife appeared in at least one amateur theatrical performance in Cleveland, in 1873.
Education
Eugene's formal education was limited to public school in Cleveland.
Career
When he was "still in knickerbockers" his family moved to a logging camp in northern Michigan. At twelve, he worked his way back to Cleveland as a sailor on a Great Lakes schooner and afterward found a job as an office boy on the Cleveland Press. He soon rose to political reporter and assistant editor, but shortly thereafter was dismissed for insubordination. This pattern of rapid promotion followed by dismissal recurred in a series of newspaper jobs, reportedly because of his lack of objectivity on social and political issues. Nonetheless, at the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, the News in Detroit, the Star in Seattle, and the Sun and Globe in New York, Walter earned the reputation of being able to cover a big story effectively in less time than any other reporter. Further experience broadened his background. At age fifteen he had briefly joined Troop H of the Sixth Cavalry, stationed at Fort Assiniboine in northern Montana. In April 1898, on the day war was declared against Spain, he enlisted in the 16t Ohio Volunteer Cavalry as a saddler, but his company did not leave the continental United States. Not long afterward, during one period of unemployment in the early 1900's, he went to Alaska in search of gold, returning in mid-winter by dog team through Canada. Walter drew on his cavalry experience for his first play, Sergeant James, which was produced in Boston in 1902 but failed to reach Broadway. At this point the dark, stocky, energetic young man decided to serve a practical theatre apprenticeship and became an "advance man, " crisscrossing the country to publicize "coming attractions" which ranged from Shakespearean productions to burlesque. Meanwhile he continued to write intermittently. Two lifelong friends, the producers Edgar and Arch Selwyn, finally persuaded him to stay with them and give full time to his scripts, and in 1905 he wrote The Flag Station and Undertow. Arch Selwyn, acting as his agent, failed to get a New York contract for Undertow, but arranged for fourteen simultaneous productions in stock, opening April 15, 1907, in Los Angeles. These were a phenomenal success - unheard of for a play which had never appeared on Broadway - and with $8, 000 from the first week's proceeds Walter retired for further play writing, living with the Selwyns in Southold, Long Island. Paid in Full, after failing in tryouts, reached Broadway in 1908 and enjoyed a lengthy success, and was followed later that year by The Wolf, which he wrote in a week. Many of his later plays were written with his wife in mind for the leading female role. Walter now came into his most creative and successful period. He had learned and perfected the techniques of writing melodrama, the tricks of structure, characterization, and dialogue which produced the most popular fare on the American stage in the early years of the century. He was, as the critic Brooks Atkinson later called him, a "play carpenter" rather than a dramatist or artist, but he skillfully applied his craft to contemporary social situations which fascinated his audience. He wrote about the "middle class, " which he defined as "those who are neither wealthy nor poor; neither dependent nor independent; but who exist through their years of life in constant apprehension of a curtailment of income, and without a trade which gives them the opportunity for quick re-employment, provided they are suddenly deprived of work. " His main character was usually a woman, often motivated by a desire for security. In 1909 David Belasco produced Walter's The Easiest Way, the story of an actress, formerly a rich man's mistress, who tries to clean up her life to win the love of a virtuous newspaperman but finds that sin is an "easier way" than starving. The play was an overwhelming critical and financial success. Walter's use of the novel device of an unhappy ending in which vice is triumphant caused him to be hailed as a great realist, the American Ibsen, the American Pinero. This extravagant acclaim colored the appraisal of all his later work; every subsequent play was compared unfavorably with The Easiest Way. Walter himself judged Fine Feathers (1911) a better play, but he had difficulty getting it produced. Among his more notable works in the following years were Just a Wife (1910), The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1911), and The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1916), the last two adapted from popular novels by John William Fox. By 1918 Walter was participating in financing his own plays. The Heritage (1918) and The Challenge (1919), in which the central figures were men rather than women, reduced him to bankruptcy, but his plays continued to be produced in the 1920's, the most successful and best being A Man's Name (in collaboration with Marjorie Chase, 1921) and Jealousy (1928), adapted from a French drama by Louis Verneuil, which was his last play. In the meantime Walter had begun a profitable connection with moving pictures. By 1917, film rights to a successful Broadway play would sell for a minimum of $10, 000, and most of Walter's plays were made into popular films: The Wolf (1914), Fine Feathers (1915), The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1916), in which Charlotte Walker made her first film appearance, and, of course, The Easiest Way (1917). (Sound versions of the last two appeared in the 1930's. ) In later years, besides his authorship of the original play, Walter was sometimes credited with the screenplay or dialogue. He remained in New York City, where many of the feature silent films were made, until he was signed by Radio pictures in 1929 and moved to Hollywood. From this time until his death he was almost always under contract to a movie studio. As contract writers usually did not receive screen credit, it is impossible to know exactly how much work he did. He died of cancer that year in his Hollywood apartment and was buried in the Veterans Administration Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Achievements
Connections
On December 1, 1908, Walter married Charlotte Walker, a popular actress. Walter divorced Charlotte Walker on April 3, 1930, charging her with desertion, and on April 26 in Mexicali, Mexico, secretly married Mary Kissel, an artist's model. After a second divorce he married Mary Dorne, a stage actress, in 1941.