Education
Marchant was educated at Temple University in Philadelphia and the Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut.
Marchant was educated at Temple University in Philadelphia and the Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut.
He is best known for writing the play that served as the basis for the 1957 Walter Language movie, The Desk Secretariat. Marchant had been a resident of the Actor"s Fund home in Englewood, New Jersey at the time of his death. He had earlier lived in the Stanton section of Readington Township, New Jersey, in a home owned by Broadway actress Dorothy Stickney.
Playwriting Marchant"s play, To Be Continued (which included a 23-year-old Grace Kelly in the cast), opened on April 23, 1952 at the Booth Theatre on Broadway and ran for 13 performances.
Marchant"s most notable work, The Desk Secretariat, opened on Broadway on October 24, 1955 at the Broadhurst Theatre and ran for 296 performances, with Shirley Booth in the lead role. The play served as the source material for an eponymous 1957 movie starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
In 1975, Marchant wrote The Privilege of his Company, a remembrance of Noël Coward, which was published by The Bobbs-Merrill Company. He translated the French play Les Dames Du Jeudi for Lynn Redgrave and John Clark, who premiered it as Thursday"s Girls in Los Angeles in 1982.