OBITUARIES : Rose Franken; Wrote Broadway Dramas, Hollywood Screenplays

Rose Franken, a prolific novelist who also wrote Hollywood screenplays and such Broadway dramas as “Claudia,” has died at the age of 92.

A native of Gainesville, Tex., she spent much of her life in New York, moving to Tucson four years ago, said her youngest son, Peter A. Franken, a University of Arizona physics professor. She died Wednesday.

Franken’s first book, “Pattern,” was published in 1925 after catching the eye of Maxwell Perkins, the noted editor. Her series of “Claudia” books, begun in 1939, were the basis for the movie “Claudia and David.”

Her play “Claudia,” which was written in 1941, was judged by critics as best of the season. It starred Dorothy McGuire in the title role (as did the 1943 original “Claudia” movie in which McGuire made her film debut) and was based on the first two of a series of eight novels that Franken wrote about Claudia and David Naughton, their two children, their relatives and their maid, Bertha. The novels were serialized in magazines and also became the source of radio and television plays. She also wrote the plays “Another Language” in 1932 (made into a 1933 film with Helen Hayes), “Outrageous Fortune” in 1943 and “Soldier’s Wife” in 1944.

For the screen, Mrs. Franken wrote the movie “Beloved Enemy” in 1936.

Her other books included an autobiography, “When All is Said and Done,” published in 1963. Her last book, “You’re Well Out of the Hospital,” was published in 1966.