George Manker Watters

George Manker Watters (April 27, 1890 Newspaper reports from Iowa matching this early account of his career use the name George D. Watters. and newspapers from his home town of Des Moines, Iowa covered his work as the playwright of ''Burlesque'' using his birth name of George D. Watters. In 1917 Watters married the actress Tamnson Manker. His later pen name of George Manker Watters appears to have been adopted from his wife's maiden surname.|group=n}} – March 14, 1943) was an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre manager, and film and theatre company executive. Born George Daniel Watters II, he was the son of organist George Daniel Watters I and grew up in Des Moines, Iowa where his father had worked as organist at St. Ambrose Cathedral. He began his career at the age of 18 as theatrical manager of a traveling theatre company; a post he held until 1910. He briefly lived in New York City before returning to his native city of Des Moines in 1911 to become manager of the Princess Theatre. He married Tamzon Manker, an actress working for him at the Princess, in June 1917, and later adopted her surname when he began working as a playwright using the name George Manker Watters.

In December 1918 Watters resigned from his post at the Princess Theatre after co-founding the New Art Film Corporation in Des Moines, and moved to California in January 1919 where the company leased the former studio of the recently defunct Balboa Amusement Producing Company in Long Beach. Watters wrote his first screenplay for the company's first picture, the 1919 silent film ''The Solitary Sin'', for which he also served as producer. The film company folded in 1921, and after this Watters worked for the next five years as a theatre manager in various locations, including Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, and Ohio.

By 1926 Watters was manager of Boadway's Astor Theatre. With Arthur Hopkins, he co-authored the play ''Burlesque'' which was a hit on Boadway in 1927–1928. In 1928 Watters moved to Los Angeles to join the writing staff of Paramount Pictures who had acquired to film rights to ''Burlesque''. He remained active as a screenwriter in Hollywood through 1937, and then worked as an executive for Fox Theatres under Charles Skouras. At the time of his death in Los Angeles in 1943 he was director of the Los Angeles Theater Defense Bureau and was a leader in the War Activities Committee of the Motion Pictures Industry. Provided by Wikipedia