Nathan was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on February 14, 1882, the son of Ella (Nirdlinger) and Charles Naret Nathan.[1] He graduated from Cornell University in 1904. There, he was a member of the Quill and Dagger society and an editor of The Cornell Daily Sun. There is some evidence that Nathan was Jewish and sought (successfully) to conceal it.[2]
Relationships and marriage
Nathan had a reputation as a "ladies' man" and was not averse to dating women working in the theater. The character of Addison De Witt, the waspish theater critic who squires a starlet (played by a then-unknown Marilyn Monroe) in the 1950 film All About Eve was based on Nathan.[3] He had a romantic relationship with actress Lillian Gish, beginning in the late 1920s and lasting almost a decade. Gish repeatedly refused his proposals of marriage.[4]
Nathan eventually married a considerably younger stage actress, Julie Haydon, in 1955.
He wrote only one play, the one-act titled The Eternal Mystery, which premiered in 1913 at the Princess Theatre in New York.[5]Owen Hatteras referenced the play as a failure when he quipped that Nathan "has forbidden the production of the play henceforth in any American city save Chicago, in which city anyone who chooses may perform it without payment of royalties."[6]
