Aurania Rouverol (née Ellerbeck; August 13, 1886 – June 23, 1955) was an American writer best known for her play Skidding, in which she created Andy Hardy and his family,[1] who were turned into a popular series of sixteen movies from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Aurania Ellerbeck was born, the 22nd baby,[2] in Utah to Thomas Witten Ellerbeck, one of the chief clerks of Brigham Young.[3] She went to Stanford University[4][5][6] and studied playwriting at Radcliffe. She worked as an actress on stage.[7]
She died in Palo Alto, California, aged 68 years.[8]
She married Joseph Augustas Rouverol (Rouveyrol[9]) in 1946[10] and was the mother of actress and author Jean Rouverol (1916–2017).[11]
Women from Utah had voted for quite a while and my mother, Aurania Ellerbeck, was a Republican feminist. She had been a change-of-life baby, the youngest of twenty-two children, only eight of whom were born to her mother. My grandfather was an apostate Mormon. After two years of trying to figure out a name for her, someone noticed that a Cunard liner named the 'Aurania' had docked in San Pedro, and they all thought, "What a nice name!" My mother went to Radcliffe to study playwriting, and while she was there in...
The Stanford English Club takes pleasure in presenting the first of a proposed series of Year Books, initiated with the hope that it may conduce to the encouragement of original literary work at Stanford University.....'Little Kingdom' by Aurania Ellerbeck
Aurania Ellerbeck Rouveyrol, Palo Alto, Calif.