Knoblock, Edward

Knoblock, Edward [ Edward Knoblauch] (1874–1945), playwright born and bred in the United States, who spent much of his life in England and on the Continent and eventually became a British citizen. He was for a short time an actor, and had a thorough knowledge of the stage, which he applied with much skill to the dramatization of other writers' novels, sometimes in collaboration with them, and was considered an admirable and reliable ‘play carpenter’ rather than an original dramatist. Of his own fairly numerous plays the most successful were Kismet (1911), an oriental fantasy produced in London by Oscar Asche and in New York (also 1911) by Otis Skinner, and Marie-Odile (1915), a tale of the Franco-Prussian war which in New York was directed by David Belasco. He collaborated with Arnold Bennett on Milestones (1912), with Seymour Hicks on England Expects (1914), and with Bennett again on London Life (1924) and Mr Prohack (1927). The novels of which he made stage versions include Priestley's The Good Companions, Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel (both 1931), Beverley Nichols's Evensong, and A. J. Cronin's Hatter's Castle (both 1932).