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William Brown Meloney V[1] (May 4, 1902– May 4, 1971)[2] was a journalist, novelist, short-story writer and theatrical producer.
He was born on May 4, 1902, in Pawling, New York, to William B. Meloney IV and Marie Mattingly Meloney.[3][4] Meloney studied at Columbia College, graduated in 1926, and lectured in English and comparative literature there. He was a fellow at the University of Paris in 1927–28.[5]
He first became a lawyer and joined the law offices of William J. Donovan and managed his campaign for the Governor of New York in 1932. He later became a journalist like his parents.[5]
In 1929 he had an affair with Priscilla Fansler Hobson, the future wife of Alger Hiss, who became pregnant with Meloney's child and then underwent an abortion.[6]
Meloney was married first to Elizabeth Ryder Symons of Saginaw, Michigan, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Shirley Symons,[7] then to playwright and screenwriter Rose Franken.[8] He had two sons by his first wife: The first was William Brown Meloney VI (1931-2005) , and a second son born April 8, 1933.[7]
In 1933, Meloney and Elizabeth were living in Pawling, New York, where he was editor of the Pawling Chronicle.[7] He was also the local correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and The New York Times.[9]
In the mid-1930s, Meloney was writing motion picture scripts with Rose Dorothy Lewin Franken, and the two were married on April 27, 1937. By that time he had become a lawyer and was also an executive on This Week magazine, of which his mother was the editor. Meloney and Franken "relocated to Longmeadow, a working farm in Lyme, Connecticut, which, under their management, was adopted as a model of diversified farming by the local agricultural college at Storrs."[10] The two continued writing, "both individually and collaboratively, for magazines, including Harper's Bazaar and Collier's. They sometimes wrote together under the pseudonym Franken Meloney."[8] (Some sources also ascribe the "Margaret Grant" pen-name to the couple.[11])
He died on May 4, at his home in Kent, Connecticut.[5]
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Shared credit as writer
- Beloved Enemy, 1936[14]
- Claudia and David, 1946[14]
- The Secret Heart, 1946[14]
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