Born Today January 2: Bayard Veiller

1869-1943

Though Bayard Veiller, who was born on this day in Brooklyn, New York, wrote for the "pictures," he was--first and foremost--a playwright, getting his start writing for Broadway. His first motion picture credit, however, did come early in his career in 1915 with the adaptation of his play The Fight by George Lederer's company Stage Filmotions Inc. It wasn't until the 1920's that he actually began to work directly for the motion picture industry.  He made his directorial debut with The Last Card in 1921, a murder melodrama made for Metro; having gained his first production credit the year before with the Metro comedy Cinderella's Twin (1920).  All through his career in in the industry, he continued to write plays that were successfully produced on both sides of the Atantic (Veiller was for a time married to English stage & screen actress Margaret Wycherly--who was the star of The Fight).  This meant that his work has continued to be produced for both the small and big screen even long after his death.  The last of his seven directing credits came in 1929 with the talkie The Trial of Mary Dugan--a film based on one of his own plays, and made for MGM (Veiller had stayed with Metro and became an MGM employee after it's merger with Goldwyn & Mayer). After retiring from directing, he had a much more prolific career as a producer than he previously had; fully nine of his twelve production credits came in the 1930's--the last of which was on the Fred MacMurray action thriller Car 99 in 1935. Although Veiller died in New York City on the 16th of January in 1943 (aged 74), his work has been produced for television since then. The first production of one of his works in a television series came in 1949--six years after his death.  One of his stories was produced for the Kraft Television Theatre with the episode Within the Wall, which aired on the 9th of the July.  The first made-for-television film of his work came in 1954 in Italy with RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana's Il processo di Mary Dugan, which aired on the 26th of November. The most recent adaptation of his work dates from 1980 on the Spanish television series Estudio 1, La silla número 13, which aired on the 29th of June of that year. Veiller's son with Wycherly, Anthony Veiller, was himself a writer/producer in the motion picture industry.  As of this writing, I can find no information as a burial place or memorial.  

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