Kenneth Macgowan
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Kenneth Macgowan (30 November 1888, Winthrop, Massachusetts - 27 April 1963, West Los Angeles) began his career as a drama critic. He wrote many books on the modern theater including The Theatre of Tomorrow (1921) and Continental Stagecraft (1922), the latter with Robert Edmond Jones. In 1922, he ran The Provincetown Playhouse as its producer, with [[Eugene O'Neill and Robert Edmond Jones as partners. His close relationship with O'Neill lasted their lifetimes.
In 1928 he moved to Hollywood, California to become a story editor for RKO Radio Pictures. by 1932, Macgowan had become a producer for RKO, including Little Women (1933) starring Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn later claims in an autobiography that she lost her virginity to Macgowan before her marriage in 1928 although his family disagrees.
Macgowan produced many films between 1932 and 1947, working at RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. He produced the first color picture, Becky Sharp, Little Women with Katherine Hepburn, Young Mr. Lincoln with Henry Fonda and Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944). In 1946, he left from the industry to become the first chair of the Department of Theater Arts at UCLA. The theater building on the school's campus is named in his honor.
Throughout his life, he wrote books on a number of subjects including drama and film, most notably Behind the Screen, a history of cinema published in 1965 after his death. He died on 27 April 1963, in West Los Angeles, California.
