An actor and writer, he enlisted in the British Army during World War I and fought in France. Received a medical discharge because of shell shock. He returned to England and continued to write plays. Best known for his 1923 play, "Outward Bound", about a group of people who find themselves on an ocean liner with no apparent crew, who eventually realize they are all dead and the ship is an "examining room" that determines whether they are to go to heaven or hell. It has been made into a film several times in the US and Europe over the years and has been regularly performed as a play in both the US and the UK.
