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Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter Ketti Frings was born Katherine Hartley on February 28, 1909, in Columbus, Ohio. After attending Principia College, she began her career as an advertising copywriter before moving into journalism, writing features for United Press International. She later worked as a publicity agent, became a radio scriptwriter, and wrote movie magazine copy under the pseudonym Anita Kigore.
Frings gained recognition when her story "Memo to a Movie Producer" was adapted by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder into the acclaimed 1941 film Hold Back the Dawn, which received six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. She entered screenwriting herself by contributing to the 1943 adaptation of Jane Eyre. Ten years later, she earned a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Written American Drama for her adaptation of William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Come Back, Little Sheba in 1952.
Her Broadway debut, Mr. Sycamore starring Lillian Gish, opened in 1942 but lasted only 19 performances. She found greater success with her second Broadway play, winning the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for adapting Thomas Wolfe's novel Look Homeward, Angel. The play was a hit, running for 564 performances and earning her the first of two Tony Award nominations. Her third play, The Long Dream, was unsuccessful in 1960, closing after five performances, though the musical Walking Happy ran for 161 shows. In 1967, she and Roger O. Hirson received a Tony nomination for the book of Walking Happy.
Frings’s final Broadway production was the 1978 musical Angel, adapted from her Pulitzer-winning play, for which she wrote the book. The show closed after five performances. She had previously adapted Look Homeward, Angel for television in 1972. Her last credited screenplay was the 1975 adaptation of her first play, Mr. Sycamore.
She married Kurt Frings in 1938, and they had two children, Kathie and Peter, before divorcing in 1963.
Ketti Frings passed away from cancer on February 11, 1981, in Los Angeles, just two weeks shy of her 72nd birthday.
