Discipline: Literature

St. Clair McKelway

Discipline: Literature
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1962
St. Clair McKelway (1905-1980) was a writer and editor for The New Yorker beginning in 1933. He began his journalistic career at the Washington Herald before moving to New York City. He worked at the New York World and the New York Herald Tribune. While working at the Tribune, he was described by Stanley Walker as, "One of the 12 best reporters in New York." He served as a managing editor for journalistic contributions at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1939. During World War II, he held public relations posts for the Army Air Force, leaving the service with the rank of Lt. Colonel. After the war McKelway returned to The New Yorker and remained at the magazine for 47 years. In 1950, he collected several of his pieces for the magazine in the book True Tales from the Annals of Crime & Rascality. One article from that collection was the basis for the 1950 movie Mister 880, starring Edmund Gwenn as a small-time counterfeiter of one dollar bills, who eluded the United States Secret Service for 10 years, from 1938 to 1948. McKelway also wrote screenplays for two other movies in 1948: Sleep, My Love, directed by Douglas Sirk, and The Mating of Millie, starring Glenn Ford and Evelyn Keyes. He published the book The Edinburgh Caper: A One-Man International Plot, based on a New Yorker article, in 1962. In 2010, Bloomsbury USA published a paperback-original collection of 18 of McKelway's works, Reporting at Wit's End: Tales from the New Yorker, with an appreciative introduction by Adam Gopnik.

Studios

Van Zorn (formerly Kirby)

St. Clair McKelway worked in the Van Zorn (formerly Kirby) studio.

Constructed thanks to a bequest from Sarah L. Kirby, Kirby Studio was the last new building to be erected during Mrs. MacDowell’s leadership (1907-1951). The load-bearing masonry walls were laid by local mason Augustus Beaulieu atop a fieldstone foundation. A 1995 renovation preserved the brick fireplace with wooden mantel and…

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