Clay M. Greene

Clay Meredith Greene (March 12, 1850 – September 5, 1933) was an American screenwriter, theatre critic and journalist, but he was chiefly known as a dramatist. He was often referred to as either the "first American" or "first white American child" born in San Francisco, a claim spread by Greene himself. A graduate of Santa Clara University (SCU), Greene was the author of the Passion Play Nazareth which was written for and staged as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the founding of SCU in 1901. The play was performed repeatedly every three years at SCU during Greene's lifetime.

He began his professional life as a stockbroker and journalist. With his brother Harry Ashland Greene, he co-founded the brokerage firm Greene & Company. While working in that field, he began writing plays, his first being Struck Oil (1874). By 1878 Greene had moved to New York City, where he was soon working as both a playwright and journalist. He and his wife lived in a home in Bayside, Queens, for approximately thirty years. He wrote an estimated 80 plays and musicals, several of which were staged on Broadway. His plays brought him wealth and popular celebrity during his lifetime, but none of his works endured after his death.

With playwright Steele Mackaye, Greene co-founded the American Dramatic Author's Society in 1878, the first U.S. organization dedicated to protecting the rights of dramatists. He served as the president of the New York City arts social club The Lambs (called "The Shepherd") from 1891 to 1898, and again from 1902 to 1906. Financial problems forced him to sell his estate on Long Island not long after he married his second wife in 1911, when he moved back to San Francisco. From 1913 to 1916 he worked as a screenwriter for the Lubin Manufacturing Company, also occasionally as an actor on camera and as a film director. He remained in San Francisco until his death in 1933.