Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

Wilson Mizner was born in Benicia, California, one of eight children.
In 1897, Addison and Wilson, with brothers William and Edgar, travelled north to the Alaska Gold Rush, which they spent bilking miners rather than looking for gold.
Addison and Wilson fled Alaska for New York, where Addison opened a Fifth Avenue shop where he sold Guatemalan relics and colonial-era furnishings at dramatic markups. Wilson became a New York dilettante, raconteur, and Broadway playwright. He married Mary Adelaide Yerkes, widow of industrialist Charles Tyson Yerkes, in 1905: while Wilson was penniless (and 29 years old), his new wife, aged 47, brought between $2 million and $7.5 million to the marriage, as well as several artistic masterpieces that Wilson duplicated, selling the copies as originals. The marriage did not last long.
Wilson's playwriting career was undermined by his laziness and an opium addiction. He was arrested in 1919 for running a gambling den on Long Island.
Wilson returned to California and wrote screenplays for some of the early talkies. His best known film work is the screenplay for the Michael Curtiz film "20,000 Years in Sing Sing".
Wilson Mizner is noted for many bon mots.