Klein, Charles, 1867-1915

British-born American playwright.

The playwright Charles Klein was born in London, England, on 7 January 1867. He was one of four sons of Hermann Klein, a professor of languages, and the former Adelaide Soman. All four brothers had careers in the performing arts: Hermann was a singing teacher and music critic, Alfred became an actor, and Manuel was musical director of the New York Hippodrome and a composer who collaborated on the operetta Mr. Pickwick (1903) with Charles.

Klein immigrated to the United States at the age of sixteen, as he said, "to carve out my own career." He made up his mind to become a dramatist and decided the best way to learn stagecraft was to get experience as an actor. He began in amateur theatricals and later moved to the professional stage, playing the juvenile parts for which his small stature was suited, including the title role in Little Lord Fauntleroy . In 1888 he married Lillian Gottlieb and they had one son, Philip.

In 1890 he was given an opportunity to revise a play he was appearing in, and from then on his dramatic output was continual. Many of his works were written in collaboration with other dramatists or adapted from novels. His early plays were mostly comedies, operettas, and farces, but after the turn of the century, he gravitated toward melodrama and strove for more of a social purpose. Among his most successful works were two librettos for operettas by John Philip Sousa, El Capitan (1895), with lyrics by Thomas Frost, and The Charlatan (1898); the operetta Red Feather (1903), written with composer Reginald De Koven and lyricist Charles Emerson Cook and produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.; The Auctioneer (1901), written with Lee Arthur and produced by David Belasco as a starring vehicle for David Warfield; The Music Master (1904), also written for Warfield; The Lion and the Mouse (1905); The Third Degree (1909); The Gamblers (1910); and Potash and Perlmutter (1913), written with Montague Glass.

Between 1912 and 1929 several of the plays were made into silent films; The Gamblers, for example, was filmed at least four times. He also novelized some of his plays in order to capitalize on their popularity.

In addition to writing plays, Klein worked as a play reader and censor for producer and theater owner Charles Frohman. The pair were sailing on the Lusitania on 7 May 1915 when the liner was sunk by a German U-boat and both lost their lives.