John V. A. Weaver       ( WEAVER)

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John Van Alstyn Weaver was born at Charlotte, North Carolina, July 17, 1893. He was the son of John Van Alstyn Weaver, for whom he was named, and Anne Randolph Tate Weaver. He graduated from Hamilton College at Clinton, New York in 1914 and the following year studied at Harvard University.

He went to Chicago and in 1916, became assistant book editor of The Chicago Daily News. He was a lieutenant int he army during the first World War and returned to The News in 1919. A year later he became literary editor of the The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and held this post for four years, resigning to devote all his time to writing. In 1928 he went to the West Coast to write for Paramount. He had freelanced there since 1921.

John Weaver married Peggy Wood, the musical comedy star, in 1924. They had one son, David who was born in 1927. He died on June 15, 1938 in Colorado from tuberculosis.

A poet who wrote his verse in the idiom of the street, he came out of the gaudy Chicago of Ben Hecht to be a book reviewer just as the literary renaissance of the twenties was dawning over New York. He published five volumes of verse, two novels and a play in this period before going to Hollywood to write dialogue for the movies.

Table of Contents

Box 1.
Beyond Death
Her Knight Comes Riding
Nice
 A Joy Forever
April
Sleeping Princess
L'Envoi
To Youth
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