Novelist, playwright, and screenwriter Ernest Pascal was active from the silent era through the 1950s. His screen credits include Chastity (1923), The Savage (1926), Wedding Rings (1930), Lloyds of London (1936), Wee Willie Winkie (1937), Kidnapped (1938), and The Hound of Baskervilles (1938). He contributed an episode for the television series General Electric Theater.

Pascal advocated for the screenwriter’s rightful place in American literature as early as the 1930s. As Screen Writers Guild president in 1935, he challenged film critics for ignoring or underrating screenwriters, noting that Guild members wrote 90 percent of all motion pictures. “Why is screen authorship the only form of creative writing condemned to the general dog house?” he asked.

His plays include The Amorous Antic, American Primitive, and the stage adaptation of his novel The Marriage Bed, of which he said, “Had it been my original intention to write a play I should certainly never have gone to the trouble of first writing a novel.” Pascal was born in 1896 and died in 1966.