Norman MacOwan

Norman MacOwan (2 January 1877 – 31 December 1961) was a Scottish author, playwright, and actor whose career spanned stage, film, and prose fiction. Born in Hope Park, St Andrews, Scotland, he was the son of a Presbyterian minister.

MacOwan built a reputation as both a performer and a writer for the stage. Among his acting achievements was a sustained run in the title role of a stage adaptation of Booth Tarkington's Monsieur Beaucaire, a part he performed 677 times. He was also a member of Dion Boucicault's company, which included Mary Jerrold, Hubert Harben, and Mary Hinton, and undertook a tour of Australia with that troupe in 1926.

As a playwright, MacOwan produced a body of work that included The Chalk Line, co-written with his cousin Sir Fabian Ware and first produced in London in 1912, as well as The Demagogue, Lord o' Creation, and Jacob's Ladder. His 1921 play The Blue Lagoon was a dramatization of a story by De Vere Stacpoole. In 1924 he published his first novel, The Infinite Shoeblack, which received favorable reviews, and he later adapted it for the stage in 1930. His play Glorious Morning, which addressed totalitarianism and anticipated a second world war, appeared in 1938.

MacOwan's Broadway credits included the play The Blue Lagoon, the play The Infinite Shoeblack, and Glorious Morning, with his Broadway appearance recorded in 1930.

His screen career extended across more than a decade and included roles in The Dark Light (1951), for which he also served as co-writer, Valley of Eagles (1951), The Card (1952), Castle in the Air (1952), Footsteps in the Fog (1955), Where There's a Will (1955), X the Unknown (1956), Action of the Tiger (1957), Tread Softly Stranger (1958), Heart of a Child (1958), The Boy and the Bridge (1959), Kidnapped (1960), and The City of the Dead (1960). Outside of his professional work, MacOwan was a keen and proficient golfer.