George Francis Abbott was born on June 25, 1887 in Forestville, New York. He was born to an alcoholic father and a mother who "[despised] pretense in any form" (Folkart). After his father's business failed, they all moved to Wyoming, where young George worked as a cowboy on nearby ranches to help with income. Another business failure sent George and his family to Hamburg, New York. Here George became the captain of the high school football team, as well as the best actor on campus. He worked in a steel mill and later as a delivery boy for Western Union during his summers. After high school, he attended the University of Rochester to become a journalist. As Folkart says, “that plan soon gave way to drama.” Perfectly Harmless – his first play – was produced by the university's drama club. After graduating from Rochester in 1911, he continued to study playwriting at Harvard with Professor George Pierce Baker for an additional year. In 1913, when Abbott reached his mid-twenties, he was cast as the drunken college boy in The Misleading Lady on Broadway. This began an acting career that lasted until the 1920s. Also in the 1920s, Abbott began working as a playwright and director. The Fall Guy is the name of the first play for which Abbott received playwriting credit in 1925 while working for producer John Golden. He then co-wrote and directed Broadway and Love 'Em and Leave 'Em, and directed Chicago and Cowboy Crazy the following year. Things changed in 1932, when Abbott produced the comedy 20th Century with Philip Dunning; the writing and production of this play marked a major shift in Abbott's writing: a shift from melodramas to farces. Abbott's move into the farce genre is what made him so unique. He continued to write,... in the middle of the paper... years old. There is no doubt that he left his mark on the American theater and that, through his "industrious and extensive career", he showed everyone that "entertainment values ​​have overshadowed artistic virtue" (Stoner-Hawkins, 1, 9). Works Cited"ABBOTT, Giorgio." (n.d.): Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia. Network. April 23, 2014. Folkart, Burt A. "George Abbott; the legendary Broadway producer, 107." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1995. Web. April 27, 2014. "George Abbott." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th edition (2013): 1. Literary Reference Center. Network. April 23, 2014. “George Abbott.” The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Np, nd Web. April 28, 2014.Stoner-Hawkins, Sylvia. "George Abbott's Contribution to Musical Comedy in the 1950s". Journal of the American Music Research Center 19.(2010): 1-12. Academic research completed. Network. April 23. 2014.