Joseph Kesselring

Joseph Otto Kesselring was born in New York City on June 21, 1902. His career was always linked in some way to the theatre. His early years were spent as a singer (boy soprano and adult tenor), and at the age of twenty, he began teaching music and directing amateur theatre productions at Bethel College in Newton, Kansas. At twenty-three, he left academia to pursue acting, writing short stories, and producing vaudeville plays. He acted professionally in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES at the age of twenty-four and, at thirty-one, one year after his marriage to Charlotte Elsheimer, he devoted himself to writing, continuing to pen short stories and initiating his career as a playwright. Between 1933 and his death in 1967, he authored twelve plays—mostly light comedies. His first play to be produced, AGGIE APPLEBY, MAKER OF MEN, premiered in 1933, and four later plays were produced on Broadway: THERE’S WISDOM IN WOMEN (1935), ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1941), FOUR TWELVES ARE 48 (1951), and MOTHER OF THAT WISDOM (1963). Mr. Kesselring died on November 5, 1967, at the age of sixty-five.