SOURCE: "Novelists and the Drama," in American Playwrights of Today, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1929, pp. 211-29.

In the following excerpt, Mantle comments on Biggers's early stage career.

Earl Derr Biggers figures that he is one of the luckier playwrights. He quit writing novels and plays and took to writing motion picture scenarios when both the quitting and the scenario market were at their peak.

It was his last summer in New York that cured Biggers. He had had some success with plays. He had written, as far back as 1912, a comedy called If You're Only Human which Rose Stahl wanted to buy but which her manager, Henry B. Harris, could not see. And when If You're Only Human was later produced in stock Mr. Biggers met George M. Cohan. As a result of that meeting George M. bought the dramatic rights to Mr. Biggers' novel, Seven Keys to Baldpate...