William Clyde Fitch (May 2, 1865 – September 4, 1909) was an American dramatist, the most popular writer for the Broadway stage of his time (c. 1890 – c. 1909).
Born in Elmira, New York, and educated at Holderness School (1879–1882) and Amherst College (class of 1886), William Clyde Fitch wrote 62 plays, 36 of them original, ranging from social comedies and farces to melodrama and historical dramas.
Early life and education
His father, Captain William Goodwin Fitch, a graduate of West Point and briefly a Union officer in the Civil War before being discharged for disability in 1861, encouraged his son to become an architect or to engage in a career of business; but his mother, Alice Maude Clark, in whose eyes he could do no wrong, always believed in his artistic talent. She would frequently visit him at Holderness, and later at Amherst. (For her son's final resting place, she hired the architectural firm of Hunt & Hunt to design the sarcophagus set inside an open Tuscan temple at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.)
Fitch graduated from Amherst in 1886, where he was a member of Chi Psi fraternity. As an undergraduate, according to Brooks Atkinson, "he dazzled his fellow students with his flair for dress and his virtuosity as an amateur actor." In Amherst's 1884 Olio, his wearing a sky blue suit is mentioned humorously. During his time at Amherst, he played Miss Neville in an 1884 production of Oliver Goldsmith's 1773 comedy "She Stoops to Conquer", Lydia Languish in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 comedy "The Rivals" the next year, and Peggy Thrift in David Garrick's 1766 comedy "The Country Girl" the next.
