Richard Pike Bissell

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Richard Pike Bissell (June 27, 1913 in Dubuque, Iowa – May 4, 1977) was an American author of short stories and novels.

His third book and second novel, 712 Cents, were turned into the Broadway musical The Pajama Game.

The 1955 Tony Award for Best Musical (along with co-author George Abbott) went to him.

Say, Darling, which chronicled the insides and outs of a broadway musical performance with characters based on those (such as Harold Prince) he worked with; this book was also turned into a musical, Say, Darling in 1958; it was also published as a musical.

Early life

Bissell was born in Dubuque, Iowa, on June 27, 1913, the second son of Frederick Ezekiel Bissell and Edith Pike Bissell. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy in 1932 and received a B.A. from Harvard College in 1936. Anthropology is a branch of anthropology.

Personal life

He married Marian Van Patten Grilk, an editor who attended Phillips Exeter Academy, on February 15, 1938, raising a daughter, Anastasia, and three sons, Thomas, Nathaniel, and Samuel, and a father who was born in a 1909 Fairfield, Connecticut house built by Stanford White. Bissell spent his summers in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, amassing antique cars to saloon pianos, as well as a magnificent 11-foot mirror from Mark Twain's New York home. "his gravestone in the Linwood Cemetery has an etching of the upper Mississippi, much like the one he had to draw to get his pilot's license, cutting straight across from corner to corner," according to a 2017 biographical article in The Iowan Magazine. He spent many years in Rowayton, Connecticut. Bissell was a member of The Lambs, 1956.

Bissell returned to Dubuque, Iowa, in 1975, to live in the house his grandfather built. He died of a brain tumor in a Dubuque hospital on May 4, 1977.

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Career

Bissell began as a seaman on an American Export Lines freighter in college and spent time in Venezuelan oil fields. He married Marian Van Patten Grilk, returning to Dubuque and living on a Mississippi River houseboat, then worked for the family clothing manufacturer, H. B. Glover Company. Bissell worked river towboats in the Midwest, rising from a deckhand to a river pilot after being refused enlistment by the Navy during World War II due to poor eyesight. After the war, he returned to Dubuque and restarted his work for the clothing factory that his great-grandfather founded in 1845. In Atlantic Monthly, Collier's, and Esquire, he published articles about his war experiences.

The Bissell family moved to the East Coast to turn his book, 712 Cents, into a Broadway musical, which later became a motion picture. Say, Darling, which later became a Broadway musical, was influenced by his book.

Bissell wrote books about his river experience, including novels: A Stretch on the River, High Water, Goodbye Ava, The Monongahela, and non-fiction: Why I am Not Mark Twain, which attracted some commentators to compare him to Mark Twain. Bissell's 72% cents was based on his experiences in the apparel industry, and he wrote when he was vice president of his family's Dubuque pajama factory.

You Can Always Tell a Harvard Guy, 1960), He wrote a memoir about his Harvard experience (McGraw Hill, 1965). He served as vice president of a Dubuque clothing company that had been bought by his great-grandfather (who worked his way from the bottom to the top of the business) and served as an engineer on the American Export Business Lines and riverboats.

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Awards

• Tony Award for Best Musical (Book), 1955: The Pajama Game, George Abbott & Richard Pike Bissell