Charles Gardner Sullivan, who was raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota, began college studies at the University of Minnesota, but left before graduating and in 1907 took a position on the Saint Paul Daily News. He worked as a journalist in many major cities, including Chicago, Cleveland, and Philadelphia before settling in New York City, where he wrote a syndicated column for the Evening Journal.

In New York Sullivan sold a few sketches to the vaudeville circuit and began submitting stories to film producers in the metropolitan area. The first of his works to be filmed was Her Polished Family, a satire on the sensibilities of a recent college graduate, which the Edison Company bought and filmed in 1911. He continued to sell material for one-reelers to Edison and the Lubin Manufacturing Company, while studying the epic films--vigorous, occasionally morbid sagas of the Civil War hero, the vanishing red man, the...