Charles MacArthur's significance as a playwright lies in his contribution to the development of American comedy in the 1920s and 1930s. The slick, unrestrained, confidently wisecracking slices of life which appeared on the New York stage in that era delighted and entertained a generation of theatregoers. MacArthur, with his collaborator Ben Hecht, was at the forefront in the development of American comedy with the plays The Front Page (1928) and Twentieth Century (1932). Tennessee Williams later credited them with taking "the corsets off the American theatre."

Charles MacArthur was one of nine children born to fundamentalist evangelist William Telfer MacArthur and his wife Georgianna. He left his Scranton, Pennsylvania, home at age seventeen and worked that summer for a newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He then worked for a local Chicago news service, the City Press, but soon advanced to a better job as a reporter for the Chicago Herald-Examiner...