Channing Pollock

Channing Pollock (March 4, 1880 – August 17, 1946) was an American playwright, critic and screenwriter, whose works included The Evil Thereof (1916) and the memoir The Footlights, Fore and Aft (1911). Pollock is perhaps best remembered in connection with a review of one of his later plays, in which Dorothy Parker wrote "The House Beautiful is the play lousy."

Pollock began his career in 1896 as the dramatic critic at The Washington Post, and later worked at the Washington Times.

Biography

His father, Alexander L. Pollock, was consul of the United States of America in San Salvador, El Salvador. His mother took Channing and his two siblings to join him in April 1894. They took the Pacific Mail Steamship Company liner SS San Blas from San Francisco and arrived at the port of Acajutla on April 7. The country was at peace when they arrived; however, by the end of the month, the Revolution of the 44 occurred, during which President Carlos Ezeta was overthrown.

Following this revolution, an epidemic of yellow fever broke out. Pollock, his siblings and mother were relocated to Santa Tecla, a neighboring city, to avoid contagion. Eight days after his mother left, Pollock was sent to San Salvador; at his arrival, he saw his mother "standing at the door, screaming in terror to turn back; that his father was dying of yellow fever and that he must not expose himself and the others to it." The following day, Pollock's father died. Pollock and his brother John were sent to the nearest town, where they saw it "draped in mourning for some minister," not knowing that it was their father. They were not informed of their father's death until four or five days after the funeral, where his father, a Unitarian Protestant who could not be buried in the city's Catholic cemetery, was buried outside the cemetery walls in a barely marked grave.