Biography

Don Marquis was born on July 29, 1878 in Walnut, Illinois, USA. He was a writer and director, known for The Old Soak (1926), The Cruise of the Jasper B (1926) and Blood Test (1923). He was married to Marjorie Vonnegut and Reina Melcher. He died on December 29, 1937 in Forest Hills, Queens, New York City, New York, USA.

Children: Robert (7 November 1915 - 15 February 1921) and Barbara (October 1918 - October 1931).

Hollywood, California, Thursday, December 30, 1937: Don Marquis, 59, author and playwright, died at his home at 51 Wendover Drive, Forest Hills, yesterday, following an illness from which he suffered for some six years. For nearly eleven years he worked on The Sun and The Tribune newspapers. He retired from active newspaper work in 1925 and took up the career of a playwright, magazine contributor, a book writer, and, some seven years ago spent a brief period in the motion picture field. Several of his literary creations have found their way to the screen. He is survived by his two sisters, the Misses Bernice and Minerva Marquis. Funeral arrangements are pending.

As a newspaper columnist for the New York Evening Sun, Marquis created the characters of archy, a cockroach and poet who couldn't manipulate a typewriter's shift key and his best friend, a cat named mehitabel.

Writer Christopher Morley said of Marquis, "He is unquestionably the cleverest of our ephemeral philosophers".

[on choice] Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.