MacGrath, Harold

Born and died at Syracuse, NY; deafened in childhood. Was at first a reporter and columnist for the Syracuse Herald newspaper, then became an author of short stories for popular magazines. His surname also sometimes appeared with the spelling "McGrath". He also wrote several novels, the first two of which were Arms and the Woman (1899) and The Puppet Crown (1901). He also became the first major author to write screenplays for the new film industry, turning out dozens of them, some based on his own short stories or novels. He had kept his deafness hidden from his readers, but finally revealed his deafness to the world in an article in the April 23, 1932 Saturday Evening Post, called "The Short Autobiography of a Deaf Man", and died just a few months later.