Byron Ongley
writer
- Birth name:
- George Booth Ongley
- Born:
- 1876-03, New York City, New York, USA
- Died:
- 1915-10-23, Wilmington, Delaware, USA
- Professions:
- writer
Biography
March of 1876 cracked open on a Manhattan street, and somewhere amid the clatter of horse-drawn cabs Byron Ongley drew his first breath. Before the age of nineteen he was already trading jokes for coins, turning out sketches that kept Broadway audiences laughing between melodramas. A natural yarn-spinner, he soon graduated to the newfangled picture business, scripting the buoyant 1918 romp *He Comes Up Smiling*—a frothy tale of optimism that mirrored his own upward arc. Byron’s nimble pen found its richest vein in George Barr McCutcheon’s novel about a fortune squandered in record time: he adapted *Brewster’s Millions* not once but twice, in 1935 and again a decade later, proving a good story can outrun even death. Off the page he shared life’s spotlight with actress Amy Summers, his wife and favorite co-conspirator. On 23 October 1915, while traveling through Wilmington, Delaware, the curtain rang down at thirty-nine—far too soon, yet leaving behind laughter that still loops in flickering light.
