Charles Mergendahl
Charles Mergendahl (February 23, 1919 – April 27, 1959) was an American writer, best known for his 1958 novel "The Bramble Bush" (1958) and its 1960 "film adaptation". Biography. Early life and career. Charles H. Mergendahl, Jr. was born in 1919 in Lynn, Massachusetts, the first of five children born to Charles Henry Mergendahl and Alice Brockway—the former a math instructor at Classical High School, the latter an English teacher at Worcester High School of Commerce. Charles Jr. attended Newton High School and Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating in 1937. He received his B.A. from Bowdoin College, graduating in  1941, and his M.A. from Boston University. Throughout high school and college, Mergendahl had been involved in theater; in 1941, his play, "My Last Duchess" (a blank-verse dramatization of Robert Browning's much-anthologized poem), was awarded 1st prize in Bowdoin College's annual one-act play competition and his next play prompted the Boston Globe to write: "Mr. Mergendahl shows promise. He has a clever manner of writing lines that bring out what is really inside of his characters. He also has the ability to create a tense situations and to draw characters in contrast. Less commendable, however , is his way of looking at the world as though everyone in it is in the wrong profession and unhappy". Although an extended tour of duty in World War II necessarily brought his direct participation in theatre to an end, it does not appear to have adversely affected Mergendahl's productivity. In 1945, United Press reported that "during eight major engagements," Mergendahl had, by his own account, "written four novels, eight plays, and thirty short stories."