Martha M. Stanley


Martha Melean Stanley, née Martha Norwood Burgess, also known as Martha Norwood Stanley, was an American playwright from Massachusetts. She wrote fiction and stage dramas, and collaborated with playwright Adelaide Matthews to create several successful comedies in the 1920s. Some of her works have been adapted to film.

Early life

Martha "Mattie" Burgess was born in Harwich, Massachusetts, the daughter of Stephen Burgess and Lydia Sears Foster Burgess. Both of her parents were also born in Harwich. Her father was a sea captain. She married Canadian-born printer John R. Stanley in 1894.

Career

She wrote short fiction for magazines, and a novel, before she wrote her first play with her "girlhood friend", Adelaide Matthews.
She moved to Los Angeles. Her husband died in 1937.

Reviews

Stanley and Matthews's first show, Nightie Night, was a hit in New York, so much that there were questions about whether two new playwrights were the actual authors, or whether their names were a pseudonym for an established playwright such as Jane Cowl or Jane Murfin. However, "the reason for its superior workmanship was the fact that they had studied their art from the ground up and spent a great many years in perfecting their technique," explained a newspaper reviewer in 1920. In 1921 The New York Times profiled Stanley and Matthews under the headline "Two Sudden Playwrights."
The Los Angeles Herald called Nightie Night "a merry, giggle-ful little play" that handles romantic farce with "tact" instead of vulgarity. The New York Times called their 1921 show The Teaser an "ingenious comedy".

Death and burial

She died in 1950 at the age of 82. Both of the Stanleys' graves are in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, California.

Works

Non-fiction

  • "'Took the Cake': 'Sweet Charity' Made Sweeter"

Fiction

  • The Souls of Men
  • "In the Discard" Argosy Volume 79 Issue 4
  • "Times Have Changed", ''Young's''

Plays

Filmography