Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford
By George Randolph Chester
Writer George Randolph Chester created Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, a fictional con artist, for a series of stories that first appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine. In 1907, he published a book titled Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford: A Cheerful Account of the Rise and Fall of an American Business Buccaneer. J. Rufus Wallingford.
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George Randolph Chester
Chester was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on January 27, 1869.
Biography
He was the author of famous works such as Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford and Five Thousand an Hour: How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress, made into silent films in his lifetime. His success in selling stories to The Saturday Evening Post, leaving his position with the Cincinnati Enquirer and moving to New York City to write fiction, was the impetus for James Bearsley Hendryx to buy a typewriter and try his hand at writing fiction.
Chester’s first wife, Elizabeth Chester (whom he had married in Davenport, Iowa, in July 1895), divorced George in 1911, using the evidence that he was living at Gainsborough Studios in London with Lillian Josephine Chester. Elizabeth filed for divorce, and George and Lillian married while they were in Europe after hearing that the divorce was finalized. However, Elizabeth had only been granted an interlocutory decree, which made the divorce not final and, therefore, made his subsequent marriage to Lillian controversial. George and Lillian worked on several stories and plays together. George and Lillian only directed one film, The Son of Wallingford (1921), which has been lost. Chester died on February 26, 1924, of a heart attack in his New York City home.
George Randolph Chester
