Joseph Moncure March (July 27, 1899 – February 14, 1977) was an American poet, screenwriter, and essayist, best known for his long narrative poems The Wild Party and The Set-Up.
Life
March was born in New York City in July 1899, where he attended DeWitt Clinton High School. He served in the U.S. Army during World War I, and graduated from Amherst College in 1920 (where he was a protégé of Robert Frost). He married Cyra Thomas in 1921, and they later divorced. He was also married to and divorced from Sue Wise after 1928. in 1925, and helped create the magazine's "Talk of the Town" front section.
Both of March's long poems were made into films. Robert Wise's 1949 film version of The Set-Up loses the poem's racial dimension by casting the white actor Robert Ryan in the lead, while the Merchant Ivory Productions 1975 version of The Wild Party changes March's plot to conflate the poem with the Fatty Arbuckle scandal.
The Wild Party continues to attract new readers and adaptations. In 2000, two separate musical versions played in New York, one on Broadway, composed by Michael John LaChiusa, and the other off-Broadway, composed by Andrew Lippa, with mixed critical and popular success. The Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College holds a substantial collection of March's personal papers, including unpublished poems, scripts, and a memoir entitled Hollywood Idyll.
March's uncle, General Peyton Conway March, was once Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army in World War I. His grandfather was the philologist Francis Andrew March, and his adopted daughter is the retired actress Lori March Williams.
Bibliography
Books
Essays and reporting
References
External links
- Biography and critical history of March's fiction, poetry, screenplays and memoirs, by Tim Cavanaugh
- Joseph Moncure March (AC 1920) Papers at Amherst College
- Joseph Moncure March at the Internet Movie Database