Charles Tazewell

Charles Tazewell (June 2, 1900 – June 26, 1972) was an American actor, radio playwright, and children's book author born in Des Moines, Iowa. He began acting during his high school years and went on to work across theater, radio, and television, while also producing a body of written work that included some of the best-selling children's books of the twentieth century.

Tazewell's stage career began in earnest in 1923, when he took a small role in the Theatre Guild's production of Peer Gynt at the Garrick Theatre. His Broadway work followed between 1924 and 1925, centered on three productions. He appeared in the Guild's staging of Ernst Toller's Man and the Masses in 1924, then joined the cast of Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted, which opened on November 24, 1924, and ran for 192 performances before closing in October 1925. He completed his Broadway tenure with Howard's Lucky Sam McCarver. During this period he resided at 143 West 72nd Street in New York. In 1931, he wrote the book for the musical Sugar Hill, though the production had a brief run.

Through the 1930s, Tazewell shifted his focus to radio writing. Among his scripts was Downbeat on Murder, written for the Columbia Workshop and broadcast on CBS on June 6, 1937. The experimental program featured voices that transformed into musical notes. He later extended his work into television, writing special material for Tennessee Ernie Ford.

Tazewell is most widely recognized for The Littlest Angel, a Christmas story he originally drafted as an unproduced radio script in 1939. Published in book form in 1945, it became one of the best-selling children's books of all time and had reached its 38th printing by the time of his death in 1972. The story concerns a young boy's adjustment to life as an angel in heaven and the gift he offers to the holy infant. It was adapted multiple times for both film and radio, with a notable adaptation produced as a musical television drama for the Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1969. The book was translated into numerous languages and reprinted many times over.

Among his other children's books, The Small One was adapted by The Walt Disney Company into an animated short film of the same name in 1978, six years after Tazewell's death. He also wrote The Littlest Snowman, which was adapted as a segment of the film Christmas Fairy Tale and had previously been presented in a shorter version narrated by Bob Keeshan on the CBS children's program Captain Kangaroo. The Littlest Snowman received the Thomas A. Edison Prize for the best children's story of 1956.

Tazewell was married to Louise Skinner Tazewell. The couple lived in Los Angeles before relocating to Chesterfield, New Hampshire. He was a founder of the Brattleboro Little Theater in Brattleboro, Vermont. He died on June 26, 1972, and is buried at Lindenwood Cemetery in Stoneham, Massachusetts.