Discipline: Literature

Stuart Hample

Discipline: Literature
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1978, 1982
Stuart Hample (1926-2010), also known as Stoo Hample, was an American children's book author, performer, playwright, and cartoonist who sometimes used the pseudonyms Joe Marthen and Turner Brown, Jr. He is best known for the books Children's Letters to God and The Silly Book, and the comic strip Inside Woody Allen. In 1948 he was the writer and star of the evening comedy show Cartoon Capers on WBEN-TV in Buffalo, NY, and also of a children's show called Junior Jamboree on the same station. He was sometimes a guest host on the NBC Children's show Birthday House when the regular host, Paul Tripp, was unavailable. In the 1950s he appeared regularly on the CBS-TV children's program Captain Kangaroo as Mister Artist. During this period his first play, Alms for the Middle Class, had a simultaneous world premiere at the Pittsburgh Public Theater and Geva Theater (Rochester, New York) and was produced on “Earplay,” the dramatic workshop of National Public Radio. At the time of his death, he was working on All the Sincerity In Hollywood, a one-character play based on the life of radio comedian Fred Allen. The play had several readings directed by Austin Pendleton and starring Dick Cavett.

Studios

Heyward

Stuart Hample worked in the Heyward studio.

The Lodge Annex, a wing on the west side of the men’s dormitory (The Lodge), was completed in 1926. Initially intended as an apartment for a caretaker, the space was soon repurposed as a live-in studio for writers. In recognition of a major endowment gift from the DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Foundation, Lodge Annex was…

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