Merton Emerton Hodge was a playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

, actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 and medical practitioner.

Born in Taruheru, Poverty Bay

Poverty Bay

Poverty Bay is the largest of several small bays on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island to the north of Hawkes Bay. It stretches for 10 kilometres from Young Nick's Head in the southwest to Tuaheni Point in the northeast. The city of Gisborne is located on the northern shore of the bay...

, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

, he studied at Kings College in Auckland, Otago Medical School in 1925, graduated in 1928 (M.B., Ch.B), completed post-graduate studies at Edinburgh University.

As well as continuing his medical studies Hodge pursed his life-long interest in theatre and continued to write plays throughout his working medical life.

Plays

Hodge is best known for The Wind and the Rain, which was performed 1000 times in London's West End, six months on New York's Broadway, toured the world and was translated into nine languages.
Plays produced in London:

• The Wind and the rain, St Martin's Theatre, 1933, 1934, 1935;
• Grief goes over, Globe Theatre, 1935;
• Men in white (anglicised form), Lyric Theatre, 1935;
• The Orchard walls, St James Theatre, 1937;
• The Island, Comedy Theatre, 1938;
• Story of an African farm, New Theatre (from Olive Schreiner's novel), 1938;
• To Whom we belong, Q Theatre, 1939;
• Once there was music, Q Theatre, 1942;

Recordings

• My Life in the Theatre, series for overseas broadcast for British Broadcasting Service.

His suicide by drowning

Drowning

Drowning is death from asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia....

 came in Dunedin

Dunedin

Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago Region. It is considered to be one of the four main urban centres of New Zealand for historic, cultural, and geographic reasons. Dunedin was the largest city by territorial land area until...

 in 1958.

Publications

The plays The Wind and the rain, Grief goes over, Men in white, The Island, Story of an African farm and a novelised version of The Wind and the rain, 1936.

External links

• Hodge's personal papers are held by the Alexander Turnbull Library http://tapuhi.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/spydus/MSG/ARCHIVESNR/index.html, Wellington, New Zealand