Born: 6 June 1890, United States
Died: 19 November 1961
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Dorothy Kuhns
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Playwright Dorothy Kuhns met poet DuBose Heyward at The MacDowell Colony in 1922, and they married the following year. When the Heywards returned to the Colony in 1924, DuBose was working on his novel Porgy. It was Dorothy who convinced DuBose it would work as a play, and the two collaborated on dramatizing the story, which became the basis for George Gershwin’s legendary opera Porgy and Bess. The Heywards returned often to the Colony and were planning to work there in 1940, but DuBose died suddenly that June after a massive heart attack.