Author Profile:  Harriet Dexter Reagh

Harriet Dexter Reagh first fell in love with theatre when she was a junior in high school.  Taking drama as an elective because she heard that it was an easy-A (and hopefully a place to find boys) Harriet found — to her disappointment — neither were true.

It was this shortage of males which facilitated Harriet's instant fame as a comedian...  she was cast as Brutus in her school's production of Julius Caesar.

Later, Harriet tasted stardom when she earned the lead in the senior play, Dulcy, by George Kaufman and Edna Ferber.  "The play was a hit," she remembers.  "I was quite sure that I was destined for Broadway.  I realized that education was going to be important," she explains.  "After all, it was the Great Depression and I could not expect my widowed mother to support me indefinitely."

Harriet went to Los Angeles Junior College (now City College) to study under Professor Jerry Blunt, subsequently being cast major roles in The Trojan Women, The Good Hope and Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid, among other comedies and dramas.

Broadway did not call.  But family life did...  and a career writing proved more successful and lucrative than acting.  Harriet has three plays in publication:  Rumplestiltskin, The Nuremberg Stove, and Too Many Doctors, an adaptation of Moliere's Imaginary Invalid peppered with Harriet's wit, which is published by Pioneer Drama Service.