George Milton Savage family papers, 1861-2000

George Milton Savage was a playwright and teacher of playwriting. He was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1904 and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1923. He received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Washington. A professor of English, he taught composition and literature at the University of Washington from 1930 to 1951. Savage provided generous editorial assistance to students and writers, such as Betty MacDonald, who went on to successful careers.

In 1943 Savage established the Tryout Theatre in Seattle, which was dedicated to the production of newly written plays, including some of his own. In 1945 he organized a writer's conference in Seattle that was a predecessor to the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference. He was also an editorial adviser to Superior Publishing Company, a publisher of novels and non-fiction.

In 1951 Savage moved to the University of California, Los Angeles in order to direct graduate work for their theater arts department. He received a Fulbright grant to teach at the University of Bristol, England in 1958 and held visiting professorships at the University of Iowa, the Idyllwild Arts Foundation, and the Dramatische Werkstatt in Salzburg, Austria. In 1962 he was elected to receive the Margo Jones Award, one of the highest honors in American theater, for his support of new play programs. Savage retired from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1971, but continued teaching in the school's extension unit. In 1975 he returned to Seattle, where he died in 1977.

Over his lifetime, Savage wrote 72 plays, a number of them in collaboration with his son George Savage, Jr. Earlier in his career, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of Kerry Fairfax. His most successful works are The Phoenix and the Dwarfs, The Garbage Hustler, and Verily I Do, a musical written in collaboration with Gladys Charles. Savage's career took off in 1937 when his play about a sit-down strike, See How They Run, won a play competition co-sponsored by the Federal Theatre Project and the Dramatists Guild. The play was performed by Federal Theatres in San Francisco and Seattle in 1938. Savage also collaborated with Edourar Peltret, Bill Noble, Zoe Schiller, Dorothy Burke, Dorothy Berrigan, Sophie Rosenstein, and Gladys Charles.

In 1929 Savage married Gladys Ferrier, the daughter of Washington pioneers from Aberdeen. She wrote book reviews and other articles, and often assisted Savage with his playwriting and business correspondence. Gladys Savage worked in the English departments at the University of Washington and the University of California Los Angeles.

The Savages had two sons, George Milton, Jr. and John Robert. George Milton Savage, Jr. (sometimes referred to as Jorj or George III) is also a playwright and has written more than 30 plays since the 1960s, some in collaboration with his father. His plays have been produced in small theaters, mostly on the West Coast.

John Nelson Savage (1832-?), a Civil War soldier with the Indiana Volunteers, was the grandfather of George Milton Savage 1904-.