JOSEPH OTTO KESSELRING (Playwright, 1902-1967) spent his early years as a singer, and at the age of twenty, he began teaching music and directing amateur theatre productions at Bethel College in Kansas. At twenty-three, he left academia to pursue acting, writing short stories, and producing vaudeville plays. He acted professionally in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at the age of twenty-four and, at thirty-one, he devoted himself to writing, continuing to pen short stories and initiating his career as a playwright. Between 1933 and 1967, he authored twelve plays. His first play to be produced—Aggie Appleby, Maker of Men— premiered in 1933, and four later plays were produced on Broadway: There’s Wisdom in Women (1935), Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), Four Twelves are 48 (1951), and Mother of That Wisdom (1963).