Saturday Evening Post," the second, a book which one reviewer called a "good enough conventional story, hampered by neither originality nor brilliancy." A decade later Quillen referred to these books as "fortunately out of print." In 1934 Hollywood screen writer Lamar Trotti and producer George Marshall visited Quillen to use him as a prototype for a Will Rogers film, Life Begins at 40, in which Rogers played a small-town newspaper editor. The film credits mentioned Quillen for "contributing dialogue." Personal life Unable to find the adoptive son for whom he had advertised, Quillen and his wife adopted a baby girl, Louise, to whom Quillen later wrote a noted series of public epistles, "Letters from a Bald-Headed Dad to His Red-Headed Daughter." Shortly after the adoption, his wife died following routine surgery. In 1922, Quillen married another woman from Fountain Inn, Marcelle Babb. Despite years of ill health, Quillen continued to smoke and avoid doctors. He died at a nursing home in Asheville, North Carolina in 1948 and was buried in Fountain Inn. Not surprisingly, he had written and published his own obituary sixteen years earlier, which read in part, "He was a writer of paragraphs and short editorials. He always hoped to write something of permanent value, but the business of making a living took most of his time and he never got around to it. In his youth he felt an urge to reform the world, but during the latter years of his life he decided that he would be doing rather well if he kept himself out of jail." Notes External links Historical Marker Database, "Monument to Eve." 1887 births 1948 deaths Writers from Greenville, South Carolina People from Osage County, Kansas Writers from Kansas American male journalists American humorists United States Army soldiers Burials in South Carolina People from Hamilton County, Kansas People from Fountain Inn, South Carolina