Clyde Fitch (May 2, 1865 – September 4, 1909) was an American dramatist, the most popular writer for the Broadway stage of his time. He was elected to The Lambs in 1893. Eighteen days after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in a box inside of Ford’s Theatre — the date was May 2, 1865 — William Clyde Fitch was born in Elmira, New York. The child of a Union army officer and a gregarious, exuberant southern belle, Clyde Fitch’s destiny was the theatre, too — hundreds of them. By his death on Sept. 4, 1909, he was one of the most successful, popular, prolific and controversial playwrights of the late-19th and early-20th century. Like the creative artists of our own era, Fitch lived in a transitional moment of social and political transition and upheaval. His work surely reflected the dramatic tastes of his day, but with only one foot planted in Victorian and Edwardian aesthetics, in the melodramatic mode.
During the 19-year period that began in 1890, Fitch authored at least 62 plays — 36 original scripts, 21 adaptations and five dramatizations of novels. On two occasions, he had four plays running on Broadway; on one occasion, he had five. He constructed plays for all the stars of the gilded age — from his first play, Beau Brummell, commissioned by the narcissistic actor (and Lamb) Richard Mansfield; to his breakthrough play, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, which crowned 21-year-old Ethel Barrymore the queen of Rialto; to The City, his final play, produced triumphantly after his death. Fitch’s style and influence defies understatement. Maude Adams (before achieving her own vast fame as the first Peter Pan), John Barrymore (in his Broadway debut), and Helena Mojeska.
Fitch suffered from attacks of appendicitis but refused his doctor’s recommendation of surgery; instead he trusted the specialists in Europe who assured him that they could effect a cure over time without surgery. He left for Europe in Spring 1909 against his doctor’s wishes.
While staying at the Hotel de la Haute Mère de Dieu at Châlons-en-Champagne in France, he suffered what would be a fatal attack. He underwent surgery by a local doctor rather than travel to Paris and died from blood poisoning aged 44. His remains were brought back to New York and to Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx. Hunt & Hunt designed a beautiful monument that was finished years later. His ashes were placed in a sarcophagus (where his parents’ ashes later joined his).