In 1915–1916, he operated the 100-seat Little Thimble Theater with
Guido Bruno at 10
Fifth Avenue in
New York City. The theater staged the works of
George Bernard Shaw and
August Strindberg, and Charles contributed verse to
Brunos Weekly under the pseudonym Tom Sleeper. Late in 1915, he brought his players to
Ellis Island to perform for Chief Clerk Augustus Sherman and more than four hundred detained immigrants. These avant-garde activities came to a halt when his father put him to work. For a number of years, Charles Edison ran
Edison Records. Charles became president of his father's company
Thomas A. Edison, Inc. in 1927, and ran it until it was sold in 1957, when it merged with the
McGraw Electric Company to form the
McGraw-Edison Electric Company. Edison was board chairman of the merged company until he retired in 1961.
U.S. Navy On January 18, 1937,
President Roosevelt appointed Charles Edison as
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, then as Secretary on January 2, 1940,
Claude A. Swanson having died several months previously. Edison only kept the job until June 24, when he resigned to run for
Governor of New Jersey. During his time in the Navy department, he advocated construction of the large s, and that one of them be built at the
Philadelphia Navy Yard, which secured votes for Roosevelt in
Pennsylvania and
New Jersey in the
1940 presidential election; in return, Roosevelt had BB-62 named the .
Governor of New Jersey In 1940, he won election as the 42nd
Governor of New Jersey, running in reaction to the
political machine run by
Frank Hague, but broke with family tradition by declaring himself a
Democrat. As governor, he proposed updating the
New Jersey State Constitution. Although it failed in a
referendum and nothing was changed during his tenure, state legislators did reform the constitution later. In 1962, Edison was one of the founders of the
Conservative Party of New York State. In 1967, Edison hosted a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, which led to the founding of the Charles Edison Youth Fund, later the Charles Edison Memorial Youth Fund. Attending the meeting were Rep.
Walter Judd (R-MN), author
William F. Buckley Jr., organizer
David R. Jones, and Edison's political advisor
Marvin Liebman. The name of the organization was changed in 1985 to
The Fund for American Studies, in keeping with Edison's request to drop his name after 20 years of use. ==Personal life==