Anton M. Oliver (1888-1977?)

Writer, Mechanical Engineer, Violinist, Actor, Salesman, Advertising Agent
Born May 20, 1888, Budapest, Austria-Hungary
Died 1977?

Anton Mareček Oliver was born on May 20, 1888, in Budapest to Johann Oliver and Paulina Pavlik. He served for a year as a lieutenant in the Austrian infantry and graduated from Vienna University in 1909. Oliver arrived in the United States before World War I and lived in Akron, Ohio, beginning in 1912. He worked as a mechanical engineer there, according to a contemporary advertisement doing "steam tests, shop drawings, special machinery, and [the] working out of patents." In about 1929, he moved to Hagerstown, Maryland. By 1940 he was in Pelham, New York.

Oliver was a violinist and played with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. On February 4, 1912, he married Beatrice Stowers, a singer, in Summit County, Ohio, presumably in Akron. He later married Ruth Frances Fiske, also a singer, as well as the former social editor and a columnist for the Mount Vernon (New York) Daily Argus, originally of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, and of New York, New York, on November 15, 1953.

In 1917, when he filled out his draft card, Oliver was in Spokane, Washington, and employed by the Goodyear Tire Company. Oliver also worked for the Campbell-Ewald Company, Rickard and Company, and the Pangborn Corporation. He spent eight years with the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, the last three as executive assistant to the president. In 1947, he formed Beatty and Oliver advertising agency with Robert S. Beatty. Anton Oliver was also a writer for The Coal Industry, India Rubber Review, The Kindergarten-Primary Magazine, and Power Plant Engineering. His lone story for Weird Tales was "The Living Nightmare" from the second issue, April 1923.

Anton M. Oliver may have married a woman named Erika Kloz. That Anton M. Oliver died in 1977 and was buried at Muddy Brook Cemetery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Anton M. Oliver's Story in Weird Tales

"The Living Nightmare" (Apr. 1923)

Further Reading

None that I can find.

Anton M. Oliver's short story "The Living Nightmare" was in the April 1923 issue of Weird Tales. The cover was by R.M. Mally.

Thanks to Donna Brown of the Mason Library, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, for further research.
Updated on November 14, 2018. Revised and corrected on April 23, 2023.
Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley