More about Ewart Adamson

Prior service 72nd Regiment, Seaforth Highlanders of Canada. Ewart Adamson joined the C.E.F. as a private and was promoted to Major by wars end. Major Adamson had many occupations after the war, mining engineer, writer, but his claim to fame grew in Hollywood as a writer for many studios, including Warner Brothers, RKO and Republic. He wrote screenplays for the Three Stooges in the late 1930’s and into the 1940’s. Ewart died 28 November 1945.

Prior to his arrival in Hollywood, in 1930, Adamson spent five years as a tin-mine manager in Perak, Malaya, where the inspiration for what later became the 1944 Republic serial Haunted Harbor (1944) came when he and several associates discussed several ways of salting a mine. A discussion only, by bored men, but a 1943 novel, “Haunted Harbor”, came from it.

Settling in Hollywood in 1930, Adamson became a prolific screenwriter and, in addition to writing over 145 shorts, also provided stories and screenplays for features for Warner Bros., RKO, Chesterfield and Grand National, among others. In the 1940s he wrote four features for Republic and films for PRC and Monogram.

His novel (using his “nom de plume” of Dayle Douglas) was published by Mystery House of New York on June 12, 1943, and was sold to Republic Pictures on December 6, 1943. Retaining the novel’s title, Republic produced it as a serial shot between April 14 and May 18, 1944. Many of the films that he wrote screen plays for featured famous actors of the time, such as the original Rin Tin Tin, Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks Jr & Boris Karloff.

For more information on Ewart, visit his Service Record.