Happy birthday, Marc Connelly.

Playwright Marc Connelly, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, was born today in Pennsylvania in 1890. His life in the theater began with a collaboration with George S. Kaufman, Dulcy (1921), which was a hit for Lynn Fontanne. He continued his collaboration with Kaufman with To the Ladies! (1922), a hit for Helen Hayes; Merton of the Movies (1922); and Beggar on Horseback (1924). He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Green Pastures (1930), which portrayed God as a black man, and the O Henry Award for his Collier's short story "Coroner's Inquest" (1930; rpt. in To the Queen's Taste, 1946, and Ellery Queen's Mini-mysteries, 1969). He died in 1980.

Helene Hanff discusses meeting Connelly in The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, as he was a fan of her earlier book, 84, Charing Cross Road.