Lynn Riggs, born August 31, 1899 near Claremore, Oklahoma to a mother who was 1/8 Cherokee. He started attending the University of Oklahoma in 1920 and taught English for a year, but developed tuberculosis and did not graduate. After recuperating in Santa Fe, New Mexico he traveled to New York and began writing plays.
After receiving a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1928, he traveled to Europe and began writing his most famous play Green Grow the Lilacs, while in Paris.
The play went onto become the musical and movie Oklahoma!
Being gay, he was often a non-romantic escort in Hollywood for actresses such as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
He was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1943.
He passed away in NYC in June 1954 from stomach cancer.
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