Raisbeck, Kenneth, 18..-19..

Kenneth Romaver-Ron Raisbeck (1899-1931) graduated from Harvard College (Class of 1920, A.B. 1921). While at Harvard, Raisbeck was an assistant to (and later a good friend of) George Pierce Baker for his 47 Workshop play writing course and a close friend of American novelist Thomas Wolfe. Raisbeck was said to be openly homosexual while at Harvard. In 1926, Raisbeck toured Paris with Wolfe and other friends, Marjorie Crocker Fairbanks (Mrs. Sydney Fairbanks) and Miss Helen Harding. Raisbeck became a playwright and screenwriter and lived in various locations in the United States. His plays consisted of Torches (1923), Rock Me, Julie which played for two weeks on Broadway in New York City (1931), and The lady of [in?] Spain which was never produced. Late in the 1920s he worked on screenplay scenarios in Hollywood and in 1931 he came East again. He was found dead in a Westport, Connecticut cemetery on September 30, 1931. Establishing the cause of death developed into a controversy, but many said he was murdered by strangulation. The killer was never found.

Raisbeck was the model for the character Frank Starwick in Wolfe's second autobiographical novel, Of time and the river. Marjorie Crocker Fairbanks was a close friend of Raisbeck, and for a time, the wife of Sydney Van Kleek Fairbanks (1895-1985, Harvard (Class of 1917) A.B. 1920, JD 1925, AM 1933, PhD 1936). Austen Crocker Fairbanks was their child.

From the description of Kenneth Raisbeck papers, 1916-1938. (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 612815749