Catherine Chisholm Cushing


Catherine Chisholm Cushing was an American writer of songs, librettos, and plays, best known for her 1916 stage adaptation of Eleanor H. Porter's Pollyanna.

Early life

Catherine Chisholm was born in Mount Perry, Ohio. She attended the Pennsylvania College for Women in Pittsburgh.

Career

Cushing started her literary career as an editor at Harper's Bazaar, before finding success as a writer on Broadway. Her first show, The Real Thing, was a comedy that ran for sixty performances and starred Henrietta Crosman and Minnie Dupree. This was followed by her Widow by Proxy with May Irwin, Kitty MacKay, Sari, Jerry starring Billie Burke, Pollyanna, Glorianna, Lassie, Marjolaine, Topsy and Eva, Edgar Allan Poe, and The Master of the Inn.
Film adaptations of plays or stories by Cushing include Kitty MacKay, Widow by Proxy starring Marguerite Clark, Pollyanna starring Mary Pickford, Don't Call Me Little Girl starring Mary Miles Minter, Topsy and Eva starring Rosetta Duncan and Vivian Duncan, and The Prince and the Pauper. Songs by Cushing included "L'amour, toujours, l'amour", which was on several film soundtracks, and ""Love's Own Sweet Song ".
Her Topsy and Eva was among the first American musicals adapted for early television; a one-hour version aired in July 1939. "Possibly because the program was so racist, history has chosen to forget this broadcast," commented one historian of television.

Personal life

Catherine Chisholm married Henry Howard Cushing in 1904. She was widowed in 1937 and died in New York in 1952, aged 78 years.