Hopwood started out as a journalist for a Cleveland newspaper as its New York correspondent, but within a year had a play, Clothes, produced on Broadway. He became known as "The Playboy Playwright" and specialized in comedies and farces, some of them with material considered risqué at the time. One play, The Demi-Virgin in 1921, prompted a court case because of its suggestive subject matter, including a risque game of cards, "Stripping Cupid", where a bevy of showgirls teased the audience in their lingerie. The case was dismissed. His many plays included Nobody's Widow, starring Blanche Bates; Fair and Warmer, starring Madge Kennedy ; The Gold Diggers, starring Ina Claire ; Ladies' Night, 1920, starring Charlie Ruggles ; the famous mystery playThe Bat, 1920 ; Getting Gertie's Garter, 1921, starring Hazel Dawn ; The Demi-Virgin, 1921, also starring Dawn; The Alarm Clock, 1923; The Best People, 1924, the song-farce Naughty Cinderella, 1925, starring Irene Bordoni and The Garden of Eden in 1927. Hopwood was asked to write the third act of Mary Roberts Rinehart's play The Bat. Hopwood collaborated with Rinehart to then work on the last act of the play in Sewickley and sometimes in New York. The early sound film The Bat Whispers played an influence on Bob Kane's Batman because the inspiration for Batman's costume came from the "mysterious Bat" character portrayed in the movie from 1930.
Personal life
In 1906, Hopwood was introduced to writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten. The two became close friends and were sometimes sexual partners. In the 1920s Hopwood had a tumultuous and abusive romantic relationship with fellow Cleveland-born playwright John Floyd. Although Hopwood announced to the press in 1924 that he was engaged to vaudeville dancer and choreographer Rosa Rolanda, Van Vechten confirmed in later years that it was a publicity stunt. Rolanda would later marry caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias. On July 1, 1928, at Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera, Hopwood was accidentally drowned. He was buried in Riverside Cemetery, Cleveland. His mother, Jule Hopwood, inherited a large trust from him, but he had not made arrangements for the disposition of other items, including literary rights. While she was working through the legal issues with his estate, Jule Hopwood fell ill and died on March 1, 1929. She was buried next to her son.
Legacy
Hopwood's plays were very successful commercially, but did not have the lasting literary significance he hoped to achieve.
Throughout his life, Hopwood worked on a novel that he hoped would "expose" the strictures the commercial theater machine imposed on playwrights, but the manuscript was never published. Jack Sharrar recovered the manuscript for this novel in 1982 during his research for Avery Hopwood, His Life and Plays. The novel was published in July 2011 by Mondial Books as The Great Bordello.
