2013 Essays

Bradley King

Taves, Brian

During the preliminary research that culminated in my volume Talbot Mundy, Philosopher of Adventure (McFarland 2005), I investigated the anomaly of the book Her Reputation, titled The Bubble Reputation in the UK, Mundy’s sole literary collaboration as well as the only book he wrote with a “photoplay edition” motion picture tie-in. Who was his coauthor, Bradley King? The standard references offered only a long list of credits. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences had two clippings, revealing that “Bradley” was not a man, but an attractive female brunette. County and city legal records were the next recourse, and other bits came from brief mentions in articles and papers, found as I began researching a biography of producer Thomas Ince (1880–1924). From this research I realized that, despite King’s obscurity today, she ranked as one of the leading female screenwriters during the 1920s and 1930s.