Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright

The path to being the 1958 Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year begins with a flop. Ketti (Hartley) Frings was a novelist, screenwriter, and playwright whose first Broadway Play was panned by critics.

“I was not too bruised by its lack of success,” Frings recalled. “You can only learn from your mistakes.” And learn she did.

In the ensuing 16 years, the multitalented storyteller wrote six screenplays, one of which–Come Back, Little Sheba–won Shirley Booth an Oscar.

In 1958, Frings’s triumphant return to the stage with Look Homeward, Angel won the New York Drama Critics Circle award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.