Favorite Screenwriters
And some ones I just find interesting.
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A former boxer, paratrooper and general all-around angry young man, Rod Serling was one of the radical new voices that made the "Golden Age" of television. Long before The Twilight Zone (1959), he was known for writing such high-quality scripts as "Patterns" and "Requiem for a Heavyweight," both later turned into films (Patterns (1956) and Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)). The Twilight Zone (1959) featured forays into controversial grounds like racism, Cold War paranoia and the horrors of war. His maverick attitude eventually drove him from regular network television.- Writer
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Detroit-born Stirling Silliphant (born Sterling Dale Silliphant) was the son of a Canadian immigrant. The family moved to California when he was about two. He grew up in Glendale and graduated from the University of Southern California in 1938. During World War II he was an army lieutenant, and after his discharge in 1946 he got a job with the Walt Disney Studios in the Publicity Department. Shortly afterward he relocated to New York City to take a job as Publicity Director for 20th Century-Fox. In 1953 he moved back to Hollywood with the goal of becoming a writer/producer, and managed to obtain financing for his first film project, The Joe Louis Story (1953), a project he produced but did not write. A few more film jobs followed, and in 1955 he heard that Disney was coming up with a new TV series for children. He personally went to Walt Disney himself with some ideas on what kinds of stories should be featured on the show. Walt liked his ideas and hired him to write and produce a segment of the show, The Mickey Mouse Club (1955), that would showcase different types of careers that children might be interested in when they got older, to be called "What I Went to Be". THe first entry in the series, "Airline Pilot and Airline Hostess", was received well by adults and critics, but unfortunately kids weren't all that thrilled about it. There were to be further entries in the series, but Silliphant and Disney clashed over the lukewarm reception given the first entry, resulting in Disney's firing him and canceling the series altogether.
His dismissal from Disney didn't hurt Silliphant's career, however. He went on to write well-received episodes for many different series, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) and Perry Mason (1957), and helped to create the hit series Route 66 (1960) and Naked City (1958), writing most of the episodes for "Route 66" and acting as Executive Story Editor for "Naked City". He didn't restrict himself to television, however. He authored more than 50 books, wrote numerous screenplays (winning the Oscar for In the Heat of the Night (1967)) for directors such as Sam Peckinpah (The Killer Elite (1975)) and Clint Eastwood (The Enforcer (1976) and penned a string of well received made-for-television movies, such as Pearl (1978) and Fly Away Home (1981).
Silliphant married Tiana Du Long in 1974 and they had one child. In the 1980s he moved his family to Thailand, all the while continuing to write mini-series and made-for-TV films.
He died of prostate cancer in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1996.- Writer
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Peter Stone was born on 27 February 1930 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Charade (1963), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) and Father Goose (1964). He was married to Mary O'Hanley. He died on 26 April 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Writer
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One of the most critically and commercially successful screenwriters in Hollywood history, Lehman grew up on Long Island, graduated from NY's City College. One of his first jobs was as a copywriter for a Broadway publicist. This experience would later be reflected in his novel and screenplay, "Sweet Smell of Success." He also worked as a radio comedy writer, and as editor of a financial magazine. He freelanced short stories for the likes of Collier's magazine and one of these fiction piece 'The Comedian' led to his first job in Hollywood as a screenwriter for Paramount in the mid 1950s. Nick Roddick, in Dictionary of Literary Biography, praised Lehman as "a champion of the well-crafted, what-happens-next screenplay." Served as president of the Writers Guild of America from 1983-85.- Writer
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The son of a railway superintendent, Nunnally Johnson was schooled in Columbus, Georgia, graduating in 1915. He worked for the local newspaper as a delivery boy, became a junior reporter for the Savannah Press and then moved on to New York in 1919. There, his journalistic career really took off, particularly as a principal news reporter for the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Evening Post for which he wrote a humorous weekly column. An exceptionally literate individual, possessed of great wit, he was at his best writing social satire, lampooning conventions. This side of him was well showcased by some fifty short stories he submitted to the Saturday Evening Post and the New Yorker between 1925 and 1932.
Stymied in his efforts at writing film critique, Johnson made his way to Hollywood in 1932 and was initially signed by United Artists as a screenwriter. He only stayed a year before joining 20th Century Fox, where he became closely associated with Darryl F. Zanuck, not only in the capacity of writer, but also as associate producer and occasional director. His first contract ran from 1935 to 1942, his second from 1949 to 1963. During the interval, he co-founded International Pictures with independent producer William Goetz but the venture proved to be short-lived. The company was absorbed after less than three years by Universal, Goetz becoming head of production for the expanded Universal-International. Johnson returned to Fox.
During his time as a screenwriter, Johnson rarely ever worked in collaboration. Instead he showcased his own original work as well as displaying an innate flair for adapting classic novels into film scripts. Of particular note are his efforts for director John Ford, which included John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road (1941) and - also as producer/director - the psychological drama The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Add to that the gangster satire Roxie Hart (1942), and the brilliantly clever Fritz Lang-directed film noir The Woman in the Window (1944), both of which Johnson also produced. Not confined to any single genre, Johnson applied himself with equal vigour to westerns (The Gunfighter (1950)), war films (The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951)) and comedies (How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)). His consistently intelligent treatment of such diverse A-grade material made him the highest paid writer in Hollywood.- Writer
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Dudley Nichols was born on 6 April 1895 in Wapakoneta, Ohio, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Sister Kenny (1946), The Informer (1935) and Stagecoach (1939). He was married to Esther "Esta" Varez. He died on 4 January 1960 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Writer
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Carl Foreman was born on 23 July 1914 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Guns of Navarone (1961), High Noon (1952) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). He was married to Estelle Barr and Evelyn Smith. He died on 26 June 1984 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
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One of the driving, creative forces behind the legendary Hammer Studios, Jimmy Sangster was born on December 2, 1927, in Kinmel Bay, North Wales. He began in the film industry as a production assistant at age 16 during WWII. After this gig, he worked as a gofer and assistant projectionist for Norman's Film Services at London's Wardour Street. Subsequently, he became a film magazine loader and clapper boy at a small studio located on Abbey Road.
At this point, he was drafted by the R.A.F. and was posted to India. After his tour of duty came to an end, he was able to get himself a job as a 3rd assistant director for a low-budget film, that happened to be shooting near his parents' cottage. That film's producer was offered a job with Exclusive Studios, which was to become Hammer Studios. He brought Sangster along with him as an assistant producer.
Hammer Studios producer Anthony Hinds offered Sangster the assistant director job, which he performed for a while before Hinds and 'Michael Carreras' urged him to give screen-writing a go. His script for the science-fiction film X the Unknown (1956) proved to be the turning point in his career. His next project was The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), which he wanted to make his own instead of patterning it after the 1930's Universal picture; he was more interested in the role of the creator than that of the creature. Horror of Dracula (1958) (aka The Horror of Dracula)followed, which proved to be an even bigger hit for the studio. He then turned out subsequent scripts such as The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) and The Mummy (1959) and would even write scripts for competing studios such as Blood of the Vampire (1958) and The Crawling Eye (1958) (aka The Trollenberg Terror).
By now, Sangster had tired of writing Gothic horrors and entered into a phase of his career where he concentrated on psychological thrillers which would be filmed in black & white. These included Scream of Fear (1961) and Paranoiac (1963).
Another short-lived phase of his career came when he was approached to re-write a script titled The Horror of Frankenstein (1970). Feeling that it was too much of a carbon copy of his own The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and wanting to put a fresh spin on it, he injected his re-write with much sex and humor. His proviso for the re-write was that he get to direct for once, which Hammer allowed him to do. After "Horror of Frankenstein", he directed Lust for a Vampire (1971), filling in for frequent Hammer director Terence Fisher, after the latter had broken his leg. His final directorial effort was "Fear in the Night"; unfortunately, these three films would prove to be disappointments commercially and critically.
Around this time, Sangster moved to Hollywood where his screen-writing credits would include Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972), The Legacy (1978) and Phobia (1980), as well as episodes of such television series as Banacek (1972), Cannon (1971) and Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974) and some detective novels.
Sangster retired some time back, maintaining homes in both California and England. In 1997, his autobiography "Do You Want It Good or Tuesday?" was published. Sadly, the legendary writer passed away on August 19, 2011.
His many years in the business are indicative of the talent of a prolific and much-respected screenwriter, whose films continue to be enjoyed to this day.- Writer
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Paul Dehn's show-business career began in 1936 as a movie reviewer for several London newspapers. He later wrote plays, operettas and musicals for the stage. Dehn's first screenplay, for Seven Days to Noon (1950), garnered him an Oscar. He later wrote everything from James Bond films to entries in the "Planet of the Apes" series, and also was a lyricist for several film musicals.- Writer
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Philip Dunne was born on 11 February 1908 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and director, known for Ten North Frederick (1958), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Last of the Mohicans (1992). He was married to Amanda Duff. He died on 2 June 1992 in Malibu, California, USA.- Writer
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Author, producer, and composer who earned a Bachelor of Science degree from CCNY, then a Purple Heart during World War II while serving in the US Army. Joining ASCAP in 1955, his chief musical collaborators included George Bassman and Harry Warren. His popular-song compositions include "Marty" and "Middle of the Night".- Writer
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I.A.L. Diamond was born on 27 June 1920 in Ungheni, Romania [now Moldova]. He was a writer and producer, known for The Apartment (1960), Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970). He was married to Barbara Diamond. He died on 21 April 1988 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.- Writer
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Horton Foote, the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist and Oscar-winning screenwriter, was born on March 14, 1916, in Wharton, Texas. He says at the age of ten, he had a "calling" to become an actor, and when he was 16 he convinced his parents to allow him to go to acting school. With their blessing he went to Pasadena, California, where he studied acting for two years at the Pasadena Playhouse. Subsequently, he moved to New York City and studied at Tamara Daykarhanova's Theatre School where he was inculcated with Michael Chekhov's version of the Second Studio technique developed at the Moscow Art Theatre. In time, Foote the dramatist would be hailed as the "American Chekhov," and his education does link him to the Russian master.
Foote was one of the founders of the American Actors Company. He racked up some minor roles on stage, and decided that becoming a dramatist was his best insurance policy for ensuring he received decent roles. In 1944 he made his Broadway debut with "Only the Heart." His fate was sealed when he received better reviews for his writing than for his acting.
Throughout the 1940s Foote continued to write for the theater, including experimental works. He started to write for television to support himself, soon becoming one of the mainstays of the Golden Age of television drama. He wrote teleplays for Playhouse 90 (1956), The Philco Television Playhouse (1948) and The United States Steel Hour (1953). Foote won an Oscar for Best Adapted screenplay for Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), which was the movie debut of Robert Duvall. Foote also continued to prosper on Broadway, with his plays "The Chase," "The Trip to Bountiful" with Lillian Gish and "The Traveling Lady" with Kim Stanley.
After the film of "Mockingbird," Foote adapted "The Traveling Lady" as the movie Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965), but he began to grow disillusioned with Hollywood due to its treatment of his work. Despite being produced by multiple Oscar-winner Sam Spiegel, adapted by Lillian Hellman, and directed by Arthur Penn, as well as featuring one of Marlon Brando's finest performances, the film version of The Chase (1966) was a debacle. It was excoriated by the critics and a flop at the box office.
Now out of favor both in Hollywood and on Broadway, Foote went into an exile of sorts in New Hampshire. Ten years after "To Kill a Mockingbird," Duvall gave a brilliant performance in Tomorrow (1972), the movie made from Foote's adaptation of William Faulkner's eponymous story. The film is a small masterpiece, and was well-reviewed by critics. Foote, whom Duvall calls "the rural Chekhov," wrote an original screenplay for the actor ten years after their collaboration on "Tomorrow." Tender Mercies (1983) brought both of them Oscars, for Best Original Screenplay for Foote and Best Actor for Duvall. A couple of years later, Geraldine Page would win the Best Actress Oscar for Foote's The Trip to Bountiful (1985), which brought him his third Academy Award nomination.
In the 1970s he presented his nine-play cycle "Orphans' Home," based on his family. He remained active as as dramatist and screenwriter throughout the 1980s and '90s, and in 1995, his play "The Young Man From Atlanta," was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Nominated for an Emmy in 1959 for adapting Faulkner's short story "The Old Man" for "Playhouse 90," he would win the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries or a Special 42 years later for his second adaptation of the story (Old Man (1997)). He remains active in the 21st century, well into his 90s.
Among Foote's prose works are "Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood" (1999), an account of life in Wharton, Texas. Hoote created the fictional town of Harrison, Texas, which he used as the locale for many of his plays. The first two installments of his autobiography, "Farewell," and "Beginnings," were published in 1999 and 2001, respectively.
In addition to his Pulitzer Prize and two Oscars, Foote was honored with the William Inge Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theatre in 1989, a Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1998, the Writer's Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement award in 1999, and the PEN American Center's Master American Dramatist Award in 2000.
Horton Foote's success can be attributed to his honest examination of the human condition, and why some people survive tragedies while others are destroyed. His central themes of the sense of belonging and longing for home have resonate with audiences for 60 years.- Writer
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Charles Brackett, born in Saratoga Springs, New York, of Scottish ancestry, followed in his attorney-father's footsteps and graduated with a law degree from Harvard University in 1920. He practised law for several years, before commencing work as drama critic for The New Yorker (1925-29), in addition to submitting short stories to The Saturday Evening Post. In 1932, Brackett left for Hollywood as a screenwriter. He was signed by Paramount primarily on the strength of his novel "Week-End". Brackett remained at the studio until 1950, doubling up as producer from 1945.
During his tenure at Paramount, Brackett became part of one of the most celebrated screenwriting partnerships in the motion picture business, alongside Billy Wilder. They were eventually dubbed by Life Magazine as "the happiest couple in Hollywood". Despite having very different personalities and arguing incessantly -- Wilder being the more extroverted and cynical, while Bracket was, to quote Gloria Swanson, 'quieter, more refined' -- their collaboration endured until 1951, spanning fourteen motion pictures. Many of their most popular hits, such as Ninotchka (1939), Ball of Fire (1941) and The Lost Weekend (1945), were noted for their intricate scripting and witty, sardonic dialogue. The culmination of their efforts was Sunset Blvd. (1950), which won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay. Following this, the team split up at the peak of their success, each going their separate ways.
Brackett moved on to work under contract at 20th Century Fox for the next eight years. With Walter Reisch, he co-wrote the screenplays for Niagara (1953) and Titanic (1953), winning his third Oscar for the latter. He also produced the superior western Garden of Evil (1954), the historical drama The Virgin Queen (1955) and the lavish musical The King and I (1956). Brackett retired due to illness after producing State Fair (1962).- Writer
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Irving Ravetch was born on 14 November 1920 in Newark, New Jersey, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Hud (1963), The Cowboys (1972) and Norma Rae (1979). He was married to Harriet Frank Jr.. He died on 19 September 2010 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
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Harriet Frank Jr. was born on 2 March 1923 in Portland, Oregon, USA. She was a writer and producer, known for Hud (1963), The Cowboys (1972) and Norma Rae (1979). She was married to Irving Ravetch. She died on 28 January 2020 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
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Leigh Douglass Brackett was born in 1915 in Los Angeles. She was the author of numerous short stories and books regarding science fiction and has been referred to as the Queen of Space Opera. Hollywood director Howard Hawks was so impressed by one of her novels that he had his secretary call in "this guy Brackett" to help William Faulkner write the script for The Big Sleep (1946). As a screenwriter, she is best known for her work in The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo (1959), and Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980). She died of cancer in 1978 in Lancaster, California.- Writer
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Novelist and screenwriter, educated at Dominican College in San Rafael, California. An avid movie enthusiast in her youth, she came to films after replying to an advertising campaign launched by actress Clara Kimball Young, who was on the lookout for better scripts. Coffee won the competition and sold her the screenplay for The Better Wife (1919) for $100. Shortly after, she was offered a one-year Hollywood contract. Her initial work in the movie colony consisted of devising title cards and collaborating on adaptations from original material, invariably for romantic melodramas. By the end of the 1920's, Coffee had evolved into a sought-after 'script doctor', in addition to becoming a specialist in writing 'women's pictures' (her discernible talent being able to temper any inherent maudlin sentimentality with touches of humour or wit).
Coffee was under contract to MGM from 1929 to 1936. She eventually departed in 1937, following a dispute over salary. Her next stop was Warner Brothers, where she remained until 1944. Either as writer or co-writer, Coffee shared responsibility for the box-office success of two seminal Bette Davis vehicles: The Great Lie (1941) and Old Acquaintance (1943). Her work during the 1950's was less distinguished, though she had further hits with the suspense thriller Sudden Fear (1952) and the musical romance Young at Heart (1954).
Her husband was the novelist William J. Cowen, whom she had met while composing the script for The Volga Boatman (1926) for Cecil B. DeMille (Cowen was one of DeMille's assistants). Coffee retired to England during the 1970's. She wrote her memoirs in 1973, entitled "Reflections of a Hollywood Screenwriter".- Writer
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Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ketti Frings, who also distinguished herself as a screenwriter, was born Katherine Hartley on February 28, 1909 in Columbus, Ohio. After attending Principia College, she got a job in the advertising industry as a copywriter before turning to journalism, writing features for United Press International. Subsequently, she worked as a publicity agent, eventually became a radio scriptwriter and also, under the pen name Anita Kigore, writing copy for movie magazines.
She established herself when her story, "Memo to a Movie Producer", was adapted by screenwriters Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder into the A-List 1941 movie Hold Back the Dawn (1941), which was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture. She herself became a screenwriter by contributing to the screenplay of the 1943 adaptation of Jane Eyre (1943). A decade later, she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Drama for adapting William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Come Back, Little Sheba (1952), a big hit in 1952.
Her first Broadway play, "Mr. Sycamore", starring Lillian Gish was staged in 1942. It was not a success, lasting only 19 performances. She was much more successful with her second Broadway play, winning the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for drama for adapting Thomas Wolfe's sprawling novel "Look Homeward, Angel," for the Broadway stage. She received the first of her two Tony Award nominations for "Angel", which was a hit, playing for 564 performances. Her third play, "The Long Dream", was a flop in 1960, closing after five performances, but the musical "Walking Happy" played 161 performances. In 1967, she was nominated along with Roger O. Hirson for a Tony for writing the book of "Walking Happy."
Her last show on Broadway was the 1978 musical "Angel", adapted from her Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Frings provided the book. "Angel" closed after five performances in 1978. Six years earlier, Frings adapted her play for TV, with the 1972 production of Look Homeward, Angel (1972). Her last credited screenplay was an adaptation of her first play, Mr. Sycamore (1975), in 1975.
She married Kurt Frings in 1938. The couple had two children, Kathie and Peter, before divorcing in 1963.
Afflicted with cancer, Ketti Frings died a fortnight short of her 72nd birthday on February 11, 1981 in Los Angeles.- Writer
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Robert Riskin was born on 30 March 1897 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for It Happened One Night (1934), You Can't Take It with You (1938) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). He was married to Fay Wray. He died on 20 September 1955 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Samson Raphaelson was born on 30 March 1896 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer, known for Suspicion (1941), The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and That Lady in Ermine (1948). He was married to Dorothy Deborah Wegman and Rayna DeCosta Simons. He died on 16 July 1983 in New York City, New York, USA.
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Lewis John Carlino was born on 1 January 1932 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and director, known for The Great Santini (1979), The Mechanic (2011) and Mechanic: Resurrection (2016). He was married to Jill Denise Chadwick and Natelle Lamkin. He died on 17 June 2020 in Whidbey Island, Washington, USA.- David Zelag Goodman was born on 15 January 1930 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer, known for Logan's Run (1976), Straw Dogs (2011) and Straw Dogs (1971). He was married to Marjorie Goodman. He died on 26 September 2011 in Oakland, California, USA.
- Lukas Heller was born on 21 July 1930 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. He was a writer, known for Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), Flight of the Phoenix (2004) and The Dirty Dozen (1967). He died on 2 November 1988 in Camden, London, England, UK.
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Suso Cecchi D'Amico was born on 21 July 1914 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. She was a writer and actress, known for Bicycle Thieves (1948), The Leopard (1963) and Rocco and His Brothers (1960). She was married to Fidele d'Amico. She died on 31 July 2010 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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David W. Rintels was born in 1939 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977), World War II: When Lions Roared (1994) and Andersonville (1996). He is married to Victoria Riskin.- Writer
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Dalton Trumbo, the Oscar-winning screenwriter, arguably the most talented, most famous of the blacklisted film professionals known to history as the Hollywood 10, was born in Montrose, Colorado to Orus Trumbo and his wife, the former Maud Tillery.
Dalton Trumbo was raised at 1124 Gunnison Ave. in Grand Junction, Colorado, where his parents moved in 1908. His father, Orus, worked in a shoe store. Dalton, the first child and only son, was later joined by sisters Catharine and Elizabeth. The young Dalton peddled the produce from his father's vegetable garden around town and had a paper route. While attending Grand Junction High School (Class of 1924), he worked at The Daily Sentinel as a cub reporter. Of his early politics, a much older Dalton Trumbo told how he asked his father for five dollars so he could join the Ku Klux Klan, a mass organization after the First World War. He didn't get the five dollars.
While at university, he realized that his calling was as a writer. He worked on the school's newspaper, humor magazine and yearbook, while also toiling for the Boulder Daily Camera. He left school his first year to follow his family to Los Angeles. The family moved due to financial difficulties after his father had been terminated by the shoe company. In L.A., Dalton enrolled at the University of Southern California but was unable to complete enough credits for a degree. Orus Trumbo died of pernicious anemia in 1926, and Dalton had to take a job to become the breadwinner for his widowed mother and two younger sisters. Dalton Trumbo took on whatever jobs were available, including repossessing motorcycles and bootlegging, which he quit because it was too dangerous. Eventually, Trumbo took a job at the Davis Perfection Bakery on the night shift and remained for nearly a decade. Trumbo continued to write, mostly short stories, becoming more and more anxious and eventually desperate to leave the bakery, fearing that he would never achieve his destiny of becoming an important writer. During this time, he sold several short stories, written his first novel and worked for the "Hollywood Spectator" as a writer, critic and editor. His work also appeared in "Vanity Fair" and "Vogue" magazines. Trumbo's first novel, "Eclipse" (1934), was set in fictional Shale City, Colorado (a thinly veiled Grand Junction) during the 1920s and 1930s, with characters who resembled notable community members. One of its main characters, John Abbott, is modeled after Trumbo's father. Dalton had tried, perhaps unfairly he admitted later, to avenge his father on the town where he had failed.
In 1934, Warner Bros. hired Trumbo as a reader, a job that entailed reading and summarizing plays and novels and advising whether they might be adapted into movies. It lead to a contract as a junior screenwriter at its B-pictures unit. In 1936, the same year he of his first screen credit for the B-move Road Gang (1936), Trumbo met his future soulmate Cleo Fincher and they married two years later. Daughter Nikola was born in 1939 and son Christopher in 1940. A daughter was added, Mitzi, the baby of the family.
He wrote the story for Columbia's Canadian-made Tugboat Princess (1936), clearly influenced by Captain January (1936), which had been made into a silent in 1924 before being remade with superstar Shirley Temple, substituting a tugboat in the original with a lighthouse. His screenplays for such films as Devil's Playground (1937) showed some concern for the plight of the disenfranchised, but the Great Depression still existed, and social commentary was inevitable in all but fantasies and musicals.
After leaving Warners, he worked for Columbia, Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, and beginning in 1937, M.G.M., the studio for which he would do some of his best work in the 1940s. By the late 1930s, he had worked himself up to better assignments, primarily for RKO (though he returned to Warners for The Kid from Kokomo (1939)), and was working on A-list pictures by the turn of the decade. He won his first Oscar nod for RKO's Kitty Foyle (1940), for which Ginger Rogers won the Academy Award for best actress as a girl from a poor family who claws her way into the upper middle class via a failed marriage to a Main Line Philadelphia swell.
By the time of America's entry into World War II, Trumbo was one of the most respected, highest paid screenwriters in Hollywood. He had also established a name for himself as a left-wing political activist whose sympathies coincided with those of the American Communist Party (CPUSA), which hewed to the line set by Moscow.
Trumbo was part of the anti-fascist Popular Front coalition of communists and liberals in the late 1930s, at the time of the Spanish Civil War. The Popular Front against Nazism and Fascism was been torn asunder in August 1939 when the USSR signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. Many party members quit the CPUSA in disgust, but the true believers parroted the party line, which was now pro-peace and against US involvement in WWII.
Trumbo reportedly did not join the Party until 1943 and harbored personal reservations about its policies as regards enforcing ideological conformity. However, the publication of his anti-war novel "Johnny Got His Gun" in 1939 coincided with the shift of the CPUSA's stance from anti-Hitler to pro-peace, and his novel was embraced by the Party as the type of literature needed to keep the US out of the war. Trumbo agreed with the Party's pro-peace platform. The book, about a wounded World War One vet who has lost his limbs, won the American Book Sellers Award (the precursor to the National Book Award) in 1939. In a speech made in February 1940, four months before the Nazi blitzkrieg knocked France out of the war, Trumbo said, "If they say to us, 'We must fight this war to preserve democracy,' let us say to them, 'There is no such thing as democracy in time of war. It is a lie, a deliberate deception to lead us to our own destruction. We will not die in order that our children may inherit a permanent military dictatorship.'"
His speech was a rebuke to New Deal liberals. The Party began demonizing President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who hated Hitler and was pro-British, as a war-monger. The Party ordered its members to henceforth be pro-peace and anti-FDR in their work and statements. In June 1941, after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, the CPUSA shifted gears to become pro-war, supportive of FDR's aggressive behavior towards Nazi Germany.
Shortly after the German invasion, Trumbo instructed his publisher to recall all copies of "Johnny Got His Gun" and to cease publication of the book. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war against the U.S. catapulted the U.S. into both the Asian and European theaters of World War II, the book - always popular with peace-lovers and isolationists who opposed America's involvement in foreign wars - suddenly became popular among native fascists, too. However, it proved hard to get a copy of the book during the war years.
Trumbo joined the CPUSA in 1943, the same year Victor Fleming's great patriotic war movie A Guy Named Joe (1943), with a Trumbo screenplay, appeared on screens. In 1944, Original Story was a separate Oscar category and David Boehm and Chandler Sprague were nominated in that category for an Academy Award. Trumbo's screenplay was overlooked. Like other communist screenwriters, he proved to be an enthusiastic writer of pro-war propaganda, though except for the notorious pro-Stalin Mission to Moscow (1943), few films displayed any overt communist ideas or propaganda. One that did was Tender Comrade (1943) , which Trumbo wrote as a Ginger Rogers vehicle for RKO. Directed by his future Hollywood 10 comrade Edward Dmytryk, it depicted a mild form of socialism and collectivization among women working in the defense industry. He also wrote the patriotic classic Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) for M.G.M., which was based on the Doolittle Raid of 1942.
Trumbo voluntarily invited FBI agents to his house in 1944 and showed them letters he had received from what he perceived were pro-fascist peaceniks who had requested copies of "Johnny Got His Gun", then out-of-print due to Trumbo's orders to his publisher. He turned those letters over to the FBI and later kept in contact with the Bureau, a fact that would later haunt blacklisted leftists, urging that the F.B.I. deal with them. His actions conformed to the CPUSA policy of denouncing anyone who opposed the war.
In 1945, the last year of the war, MGM released the Margaret O'Brien / Edward G. Robinson vehicle, Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945), penned by Trumbo. Robinson was a future member of the Hollywood "gray-list" with those, like Henry Fonda who were suspected of leftist sympathies or for being Fellow Travelers, but who could not be officially blacklisted. Drawing on his own rural childhood, it was a picture of a young girl's life on a farm in rural Wisconsin. The year 1945 was crucial for Trumbo and other Hollywood party members in terms of the CPUSA's desire to have their work reflect the party's ideological agenda.
HCUA was originally created in 1934 as the Special Committee on Un-American Activities to look into the activities of fascist and pro-Nazi organizations. Then popularly known as the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, the Special Committee on Un-American Activities exposed fascist organizations, including a planned coup d'etat against President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the so-called Business Plot. Later on, it became known as the House Un-American Activities Committee or the Dies Committee after the new chairman, Martin Dies. HCUA originally was tasked with investigating the involvement of German Americans with the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
HCUA became a standing committee in 1946, still tasked with investigating suspected threats of subversion or propaganda that attacked "the form of government guaranteed by our Constitution." The focus was solely on the communists and their allies, so-called Fellow Travelers who made common cause with communists during the War Years. Fellow Travelers was a loose term that seemed to embrace many liberal FDR New Deal Democrats.
HCUA subpoenaed suspected communists in the entertainment industry. Trumbo's screenplay for Tender Comrade (1943), which concerned three Army wives who pool their resources while their husbands are away fighting was denounced as communist propaganda. However, writer-producer James Kevin McGuinness, a conservative who was a friendly witness before HCUA, testified that left-wing screenwriters did not inject propaganda into their movie scripts during World War II. McGuiness testified "[The movie industry] profited from reverse lend-lease because during the [war] the Communist and Communist-inclined writers in the motion picture industry were given leave of absence to be patriotic. During that time...under my general supervision Dalton Trumbo wrote two magnificent patriotic scripts, A Guy Named Joe (1943) and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)."
Appearing before HCUA in October 1947 with Alvah Bessie, Herbert J. Biberman, Lester Cole, John Howard Lawson, 'Ring Lardner Jr' , Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, and Samuel Ornitz, Trumbo - like the others - refused to answer any questions. In a defense strategy crafted by CPUSA lawyers, the soon-to-be-known-as "Hollywood 10" claimed that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave them the right to refuse to answer inquiries into their political beliefs as well as their professional associations. One line of questioning of HCUA was to ask if the subpoenaed witnesses were members of the Screen Writers Guild in order to smear the SWG. It was a gambit played by the Committee as it knew that which of the 10 were in the unions, and it knew which were communist. As Arthur Miller has pointed out, HCUA left the Broadway theater alone, despite the fact that there were communists working in it, because no one outside of the Northeastern U.S. really cared about theater or knew who theatrical professionals were, and thus, it could not generate the publicity that HCUA members craved and courted through their hearings.
HCUA cited them for contempt of Congress, and the Hollywood 10 were tried and convicted on the charge. All were fined and jailed, with Trumbo being sentenced to a year in federal prison and a fine of $1,000. He served 10 months of the sentence. The Hollywood 10 were blacklisted by the Hollywood studios, a blacklist enforced by the very guilds they helped create. Trumbo and the other Hollywood 10 screenwriters were kicked out of the Screen Writers Guild (John Howard Lawson had been one of the founders of the SWG and its first president), which meant, even if they weren't blacklisted, they could not obtain work in Hollywood. Those who continued to write for the American cinema had to do so under assumed names or by using a "front", a screenwriter who would take credit for their work and pass on all or some of the fee to the blacklisted writer. Later, as one of the Hollywood Ten, Trumbo claimed for himself the mantle of "Martyr for Freedom of Speech" and attacked, as rats, those who became informers for HCUA by naming names. In 1949, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., wrote in The Saturday Review of Books, that Trumbo was in fact NOT a free speech martyr since he would not fight for freedom of speech for ALL the people, such as right-wing conservatives, but only for the freedom of speech of CPUSA members. The anti-communist Schlesinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian, thought Trumbo and others like him were doctrinaire communists and hypocrites. In response, Trumbo wrote a scathing letter to The Saturday Review to defend himself, characterizing himself as a paladin championing free speech for all Americans under the aegis of the First Amendment, which the Hollywood 10 claimed gave them the right to refuse to cooperate with HCUA.
After his blacklisting and failure of the Hollywood 10's appeals, the Trumbo family exiled themselves to Mexico. In Mexico, chain-smoking in the bathtub in which he always wrote, usually with a parrot given to him by 'Kirk Douglas' perched on his shoulder, Trumbo wrote approximately thirty scripts under pseudonyms and using fronts who relayed the money to him. His works included the film noir classic Gun Crazy (1950) (AKA Gun Crazy), co-written under the pseudonym Millard Kaufman, Oscar-winning Roman Holiday (1953) (with screenwriter Ian McLellan Hunter as a front), and The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955) for director Otto Preminger and upon which blacklisted Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Wilson also worked).
At the 1957 Academy Awards, Robert Rich won the Oscar for best original story of 1956 for The Brave One (1956). Rich was not present to accept the award, which was accepted on his behalf by Jesse Lasky Jr. of the Screen Writers Guild. When journalists began digging in to the background of the phantom Mr. Rich, they found out he was the nephew of a producer. Suspicion then arose that Rich was a pseudonym for the blacklisted Trumbo.
Though Hollywood has always been inundated with writers, Trumbo, even while blacklisted, was prized as a good writer who was fast, reliable and could write in many genres. Despite being a communist, Trumbo's favorite themes were more in the vein of populism than Marxism. Trumbo celebrated the individual rebelling against the powers that be.
With rumors circulating that Trumbo had written the Oscar-winning The Brave One (1956), it triggered a discussion in the industry about the propriety of the blacklist, since so many screenplays were being written by blacklisted individuals who were being denied screen credit. The blacklist only worked to suppress the prices of screenplays by these talented writers. In 1958, Pierre Boulle won the Oscar for the screenplay adapted from his novel The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), which was unusual since Boulle could not speak nor write in English, which may have been the reason he did not attend the awards ceremony to pick up the Oscar in person. It was immediately realized that the screenplay had likely been written by a blacklisted screenwriter. It was - Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman.
Kirk Douglas hired Trumbo to write the script for Spartacus in 1958. In the summer of 1959 Otto Preminger hired Trumbo to write the script for Exodus. On January 20, 1960, the New York Times carried the story that Otto Preminger had hired Dalton Trumbo to write the script for Exodus, and that he would start shooting in April. On August 8, of the same year Kirk Douglas announced in Variety that Trumbo had written the script for Spartacus. Both pictures opened in the winter of 1960.
Trumbo wrote many more screenplays for A-list films, including Lonely Are the Brave (1962), The Sandpiper (1965), Hawaii (1966) , and _Fixer, The (1968). In 1970, he was awarded the Laurel Award for lifetime achievement by the Screen Writers Guild. He made a famous speech that many saw as a reconciliation of the two sides of fight. In 1971, he wrote and directed the movie adaptation of his famous anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun (1971). His last screenwriting credit on a feature film was for Papillon (1973), in which he also had a cameo role.
A six-pack-a-day smoker, he developed lung cancer in 1973. Two years later, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (which had supported the black list), Walter Mirisch, personally delivered a belated Oscar to Trumbo for his The Brave One (1956) script, now officially recognized by AMPAS as his creation. Eighteen years later, AMPAS would award him a posthumous Oscar for Roman Holiday (1953).
Dalton Trumbo died from a heart attack in California on September 10, 1976. At his memorial service, Ring Lardner Jr., his close friend and fellow Hollywood 10 member, delivered an amusing eulogy. "At rare intervals, there appears among us a person whose virtues are so manifest to all, who has such a capacity for relating to every sort of human being, who so subordinates his own ego drive to the concerns of others, who lives his whole life in such harmony with the surrounding community that he is revered and loved by everyone with whom he comes in contact. Such a man Dalton Trumbo was not."- Additional Crew
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Creative horror screenwriter Joseph Stefano has been writing scripts since the early sixties. His first was The Black Orchid (1958). Less than a year later, he met his new friend, Alfred Hitchcock, to do the famous script for Psycho (1960). Stefano decided to drop the assignment for Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). Stefano later wrote a screenplay for Eye of the Cat (1969) and, by the early 1970s, he did numerous made for TV screenplays including Revenge! (1971), Home for the Holidays (1972) and Snowbeast (1977). When the 1980s came around, Stefano had no great intention to write any more scripts, and he was discouraged when Alfred Hitchcock died in 1980. It wasn't until the early 1990s that he wrote the script for the last sequel in the Psycho series (he dropped the other scripts for II and III) - Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990). Stefano has won many awards for his writing.- Writer
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Frank Wilber "Spig" Wead was a US Navy aviator turned screenwriter who helped promote United States Naval aviation from its inception through World War II.
Before and after World War I he was an early proponent of pushing the Navy into air racing and speed competitions. This competition, mainly against the United States Army (and their leader James Doolittle), helped push US military aviation forward. These competitions would give military aviation a much-needed spotlight in the public eye. The public attention that it generated helped push Congress to fund the advancement of military aviation. He served with distinction in World War I. After WWI he was a test pilot for the Navy.
In September of 1923 Wead was a member of the US Navy team that traveled to Cowes, England, to compete in the Schneider Cup Race (Jacques Schneider Maritime Seaplane Trophy). The Schneider Cup (or Schneider Trophy), which was named for the French aviation enthusiast, started in Monaco in 1913. This most prestigious seaplane racing cup resided in Europe until 1923 when Lieutenant David Rittenhouse won the race and brought the cup home to the United States for the Navy team.
On the 22nd and 23rd of June 1924 in Anacostla, DC,, as a lieutenant, Wead along with Lt. John Dale Price, using a Curtis CS-2 with a Wright T-3 Tornado engine, would set new Class C seaplane records for distance (963.123 miles), duration (13 hours, 23 minutes, 15 seconds) and three speed records (73.41 mph for 500 kilometers, 74.27 mph for 1000k, 74.17 mph for 1500k). Wead and Price would strike again on the 11th and 12th of July 1924, with new Class C seaplane records for distance (994.19 miles) and duration (14 hours, 53 minutes, 44 seconds) using a CS-2 with a Wright Tornado engine.
Wead would have no doubt continued to be an excellent naval aviator, as a squadron commander, had it not been for a tragic accident--in April of 1926 he broke his neck in a fall and was paralyzed. While convalescing, at the encouragement of his Navy friends, Wead began writing. That would turn into a second, and even more important, career for him. It would be the promotion of naval aviation through the pen and screen. This second, unforeseen, career would be his true position of importance in promoting naval aviation, far more important than his endeavors as a pilot. Wead's writings would lead him to Hollywood and the eventual friendship and collaboration with director John Ford. Wead would receive two Academy Award nominations in 1938, one for Best Original Story for Test Pilot (1938) and a second for Best Screenplay for The Citadel (1938). Wead also wrote for leading magazines (The Saturday Evening Post and The American Magazine), and he was published writer of at least two books, including "Ceiling Zero" (1936) and "Gales, Ice and Men" (1937). Frank Wead died in 1947.
John Ford would eventually be persuaded to make a movie about Wead, The Wings of Eagles (1957), and would cast John Wayne to play the part of Commander Frank "Spig" Wead. John Dale Price was played by Ken Curtis. Ward Bond would play director Ford in the character of John Dodge. Mrs. Minnie "Min" (Bryant) Wead (Frank's wife) is played by Maureen O'Hara.
Frank A. Andrews' book "Dirigible" (New York: A. L. Burt Co. 1931), is based on the Columbia Picture screenplay of the film Dirigible (1931) by Wead.- Writer
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Ranald MacDougall was born on 10 March 1915 in Schenectady, New York, USA. He was a writer and director, known for Mildred Pierce (1945), The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) and Cleopatra (1963). He was married to Nanette Fabray and Lucille Margaret Brophy. He died on 12 December 1973 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
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William Bowers was born on 17 January 1916 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for The Gunfighter (1950), Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969) and The Godfather Part II (1974). He was married to Marjorie Bowers. He died on 27 March 1987 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
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Abby Mann was born on 1 December 1927 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Kojak (1973) and Skag (1980). He was married to Myra Mann. He died on 25 March 2008 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
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Cesare Zavattini was born on 20 September 1902 in Luzzara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Bicycle Thieves (1948), Umberto D. (1952) and It's Forever Springtime (1950). He was married to Olga Berni. He died on 13 October 1989 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Writer
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After the Liberation Michel Audiard started a career as a movie magazine writer. Under the pen name of Jacques Potier he worked for short-lived titles such as "L'Etoile du Soir" and "Cinévie". One day, André Hunebelle, the popular French filmmaker, asked him if he thought he could write an adventure story for him. And, well...he could! Mission à Tanger (1949) having been reasonably successful, Audiard accepted offers to write other scripts. He wrote many original screenplays, adaptations and dialogues over thirty-five years, these were of uneven quality but always contained at least several brilliantly put lines uttered with relish by consenting actors! Audiard's biting humor, lucid vision of society and human behavior combined with a taste for the cinema as a crowd-pleaser were soon noticed by the public who remained faithful to the end, simply ignoring the opinions of the Parisian film critics who had made Michel one of their favorite scapegoats. In 1968 Audiard directed his own films but dissatisfied with what he was doing, he returned to writing until his untimely death.- Writer
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A.I. Bezzerides was born on 9 August 1908 in Samsun, Ottoman Empire [now Turkey]. He was a writer and actor, known for Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953) and They Drive by Night (1940). He was married to Von Gorne, Yvonne and Silvia Richards. He died on 1 January 2007 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Producer
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Frank Pierson was born on 12 May 1925 in Chappaqua, New York, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Presumed Innocent (1990) and Cool Hand Luke (1967). He was married to Helene Szamet, Dori Pierson and Polly Stokes. He died on 22 July 2012 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- J.P. Miller was born on 18 December 1919 in San Antonio, Texas, USA. He was a writer, known for Helter Skelter (1976), CBS Playhouse (1967) and Playhouse 90 (1956). He was married to Julianne Nicolaus. He died on 1 November 2001 in Stockton, New Jersey, USA.
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Reginald Rose was born on 10 December 1920 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for 12 Angry Men (1957), Studio One (1948) and The Defenders (1961). He was married to Ellen McLaughlin and Barbara E. Langbart. He died on 19 April 2002 in Norwalk, Connecticut, USA.- Writer
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Tad Mosel was born on 1 May 1922 in Steubenville, Ohio, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Up the Down Staircase (1967), The Adams Chronicles (1976) and Dear Heart (1964). He died on 24 August 2008 in Concord, New Hampshire, USA.- Writer
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Ben Maddow was born on 7 August 1909 in Passaic, New Jersey, USA. He was a writer and director, known for The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Savage Eye (1959) and The Man from Colorado (1948). He was married to Flier, Freda. He died on 9 October 1992 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
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Philip Yordan was born on 1 April 1914 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Detective Story (1951), Broken Lance (1954) and Dillinger (1945). He was married to Faith Clift and Marilyn Nash. He died on 24 March 2003 in La Jolla, California, USA.- Writer
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Marguerite Roberts was born on 21 September 1905 in Greeley, Colorado, USA. She was a writer, known for True Grit (1969), College Scandal (1935) and Honky Tonk (1941). She was married to John Sanford. She died on 17 February 1989 in Santa Barbara, California, USA.- Daniel Fuchs was born on 25 June 1909 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was a writer, known for Love Me or Leave Me (1955), Criss Cross (1949) and Between Two Worlds (1944). He died on 26 July 1993 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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George Axelrod was born on 9 June 1922 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). He was married to Joan Axelrod and Gloria Washburn. He died on 21 June 2003 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
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The most renowned female screenwriter of the 20th century, and one of the most respected scripters of any gender, Frances Marion was born in San Francisco. She modeled and acted and had some success as a commercial artist. She entered into journalism and served in Europe as a combat correspondent during World War I. She moved to Los Angeles and was employed by director Lois Weber as an assistant, in which position she received a thorough apprenticeship in the film industry. She began writing scripts and attracted the attention of Mary Pickford. The pair began a long relationship as both friends and artists, with Marion serving as Pickford's official screenwriter. She wrote many of Pickford's most famous and memorable silent films as well as many other of the great successful pictures of the 1920s and 1930s. She won Oscars for her writing on The Big House (1930) and The Champ (1931). Her influence resurrected the career of Marie Dressler and resulted in her greatest glory, and her scripts for Marion Davies are among the most memorable of that actress' oeuvre. At MGM, where she was long under contract, she enjoyed enormous creative freedom for a writer. With the death of Irving Thalberg, MGM's creative head, in 1936, Marion's power and influence waned. In 1946 she left Hollywood and thereafter concentrated on plays and novels. She was at one time married to 1920s cowboy star Fred Thomson and subsequently to director George W. Hill. She died in 1973, one of the most respected names in Hollywood history.- Writer
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Screenwriter, songwriter ("Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo"), composer, screenwriter and author, educated at Barnard College with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She headed the Theatre Guild press department in 1937-1938. Joining ASCAP in 1953, her chief musical collaborators included Jay Livingston, Bronislaw Kaper, and Bernard Green. Her other popular-song and instrumental compositions include "March of the Ill-Assorted Guards", "Take My Love", "The Ballad of Jack and the Beanstalk", "Twelve Feet Tall", "Sweet World", "I'll Go Along With You", "Looka Me", and "He Never Looks My Way".- Writer
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Ben Hecht, one of Hollywood's and Broadway's greatest writers, won an Oscar for best original story for Underworld (1927) at the first Academy Awards in 1929 and had a hand in the writing of many classic films. He was nominated five more times for the best writing Oscar, winning (along with writing partner and friend Charles MacArthur, with whom he wrote the classic play "The Front Page") for The Scoundrel (1935) (the other nominations were for Viva Villa! (1934) in 1935, Wuthering Heights (1939) (shared with MacArthur), Angels Over Broadway (1940) and Notorious (1946), the latter two for best original screenplay). Hecht wrote fast and wrote well, and he was called upon by many producers as a highly paid script doctor. He was paid $10,000 by producer David O. Selznick for a fast doctoring of the Gone with the Wind (1939) script, for which he received no credit and for which Sidney Howard won an Oscar, beating out Hecht and MacArthur's Wuthering Heights (1939) script.
Born on February 28, 1894, Hecht made his name as a Chicago newspaperman during the heady days of cutthroat competition among newspapers and journalists. As a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, he wrote the column "1001 Afternoons in Chicago" and broke the "Ragged Stranger Murder Case" story, which led to the conviction and execution of Army war hero Carl Wanderer for the murder of his pregnant wife in 1921. The newspaper business, which he and MacArthur famously parodied in "The Front Page", was a good training ground for a screenwriter, as he had to write vivid prose and had to write quickly.
While in New York in 1926 he received a telegram from friend Herman J. Mankiewicz, who had recently arrived in Hollywood. The telegram read: "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don't let this get around." Hecht moved to Hollywood, winding up at Paramount, working uncredited on the script for Lewis Milestone's adaptation of Ring Lardner's story The New Klondike (1926), starring silent superstar Thomas Meighan. However, it was his script for Josef von Sternberg's seminal gangster picture Underworld (1927) that got him noticed. From then until the 1960s, he was arguably the most famous, if not the highest paid, screenwriter of his time.
As a playwright, novelist and short-story writer, Hecht always denigrated writing for the movies, but it is for such films as Scarface (1932) and Nothing Sacred (1937) as well The Front Page (1931), based on his play of the same name, for which he is best remembered.
He died on April 18, 1964, in New York City from thrombosis. He was 70 years old.- Writer
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Daniel Taradash was born on 29 January 1913 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. He was a writer and director, known for From Here to Eternity (1953), Picnic (1955) and Storm Center (1956). He was married to Madeleine Forbes. He died on 22 February 2003 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
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Actor, screenwriter and director Crane Wilbur was born Erwin Crane Wilbur on November 17, 1886, in Athens, NY. The nephew of the great stage actor Tyrone Power Sr., Wilbur first took to the boards as an actor, making his Broadway debut billed as Erwin Crane Wilbur on June 3, 1903, in a trilogy of William Butler Yeats plays, "A Pot of Broth" / "Kathleen ni Houlihan" / "The Land of Heart's Desire", put on by the Irish Literary Society at the Carnegie Lyceum.
He began appearing in films in 1910, but he made his name as a cinema actor as the male lead in The Perils of Pauline (1914), the enormously popular serial starring Pearl White. A star during the 1910s, Wilbur's career as a movie actor began petering out after he appeared as the eponymous hero of Breezy Jim (1919). As the Roaring Twenties made their debut, Wilbur went back to the stage. Between 1920-34 he had seven plays presented on Broadway: "The Ouija Board" (1920); "The Monster" (1922; revived 1933); "Easy Terms" (1925); "The Song Wtiter" (1928); "Border-Land" (1932); "Halfway to Hell" (1933); and "Are You Decent" (1934). He also staged "Halfway to Hell" and directed Donald Kirkley and Howard Burman's "Happily Ever After" in 1945. Crane also performed in "The Ouija Board", "Easy Terms" and nine other Broadway shows from 1927-32, including "A Farewell to Arms" (1930) and "Mourning Becomes Electra" (1932).
Wilbur had directed several silent pictures, but he made his sound debut as a director with the controversial The Unborn (1935), touted as "The Most Daring, Sensational Drama Ever Filmed!" The movie is an expose of the "science" of eugenics, tied to a story about the attempted forced sterilization of a married couple by the Welfare Bureau. "Tomorrow's Children" exposed the fact that many people were sterilized against their will and even without recourse to due process of law. The movie was banned in New York state on the grounds that it was "immoral", that it would "tend to corrupt morals" and that it was an incitement to crime. The ban was challenged but was upheld in the courts and on appeal as it was found to disseminate information about birth control, which was illegal at the time.
After this controversy Wilbur went on to a long and productive career, particularly in the mystery-thriller genre, as both a director and a screenwriter. He had a hand in the production of such genre classics as House of Wax (1953), The Bat (1959) (which he also directed) and Mysterious Island (1961).
Wilbur died on October 18, 1973, in Toluca Lake, CA, of complications following a stroke.- Writer
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Herman J. Mankiewicz, now known primarily as the man who co-wrote Citizen Kane (1941) with Hollywood's greatest wunderkind, Orson Welles, was one of the highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood and the head of Paramount's screen-writing department in the late 1920s and early '30s. He reached the pinnacle of his craft soon after arriving in Hollywood, then started to make a quickening descent as alcoholism and cynicism adversely affected his career by the end of that decade. His collaboration with Welles, which brought both men the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1942, gave his career a boost in the early 1940s, and he garnered another Oscar nod the following year for writing The Pride of the Yankees (1942) about the recently deceased New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig.
Herman was born on November 7, 1897 in New York City, the son of Johanna (Blumenau) and Franz Mankiewicz. His parents were Jewish emigrants from Germany, and after living in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the family, along with Herman's kid brother Joe, moved back to the Big Apple in 1913. Mankiewicz took a degree in philosophy at Columbia and became an editor of the "American Jewish Chronicle" before going to fight the Great War with the Marine Corps.
The hard-drinking Mankiewicz, like so many of the screenwriters of the Talkie period, started out as a newspaperman. After World War One was over, he was hired by the Paris-based American Red Cross News Service, eventually moving on to the "Chicago Tribune" where he covered German politics in Berlin. He served as dancer Isadora Duncan's publicist while in Europe.
A married man who ultimately sired three children with his long-suffering wife, the former Sara Aaronson, Mankiewicz returned to the city of his birth to write for the "New York World". He established himself as a prime wit rivaled only by George S. Kaufman, and pieces he wrote appeared in the top magazines of the time, including "Vanity Fair." He eventually worked at the "New York Times" with Kaufman as a drama critic before moving on to the "New Yorker" magazine, where he served in the same capacity. He also tried his hand as a Broadway dramatist. His comedy "The Good Fellow" was a flop in 1926, closing after seven performances, though his next effort, "The Wild Man of Borneo (1941)" that he co-wrote with Marc Connelly, lasted all of 15 performances before closing in 1927.
In the last years of silent pictures, Mankiewicz heeded the admonition of Horace Greeley to "Go West, young man" and moved to Hollywood. He wrote intertitles, most notably for Josef von Sternberg's classic The Last Command (1928). Paramount made him the chief of their scenario department, where he hired talented writers in his own mold, men like Ben Hecht, another hard-drinking, ink-stained wretch from the newspaper industry. "Mank" was a talented wordsmith and he soon became the highest paid writer in Hollywood, as his position was solidified with the advent of sound and the need for real dialogue that could be spoken onscreen by actors, not read by audiences, many of whom moved their lips while following along, eyes agog. The new Talkies demanded fast, crisp dialogue, and Mank was the man to provide it. His biting wit and taste for satire went down well with the audiences for the new Talkies. He eventually brought his kid brother Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Hollywood. (With four Oscars out of 10 nominations, Joe -- a triple threat as writer-director-producer -- eventually surpassed his elder brother, creating some classics of his own such as All About Eve (1950).)
Herman Mankiewicz produced the The Marx Brothers pictures Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933). His penultimate gig as a producer at Paramount was on W.C. Fields's 1932 Olympics comedy Million Dollar Legs (1932), on which brother Joe worked as a writer. Surprisingly, Herman wold not produce another movie until 1949, but his bad-boy behavior, which included gambling as well as hard partying, apparently was taking its toll. Mankiewicz's career was hampered not just by his alcoholism, but also by his cynicism. He despised Hollywood.
Mankiewicz went back to New York in early 1932 to make his Broadway debut as an actor, playing a waiter, in the play "Blessed Event", which was a modest hit. Eventually, Paramount let him go. By 1934, he was a contact writer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and by the end of the decade, his reputation was suffering, as he had lost the lofty perch he once occupied.
Orson Welles claimed that he had to assign producer John Houseman to keep Mankiewicz sober during the drafting of the "Citizen Kane" screenplay. After that film gave his career a boost, film critic Pauline Kael wrote that he became even more erratic and unreliable due to his drinking. Mankiewicz apparently found it hard to fit into the increasingly hierarchical structure of the movie industry, which was far removed from the far more relaxed days of the early talkies.
He died in Hollywood, a place he despised, at the age of 55 on March 5, 1953.- Writer
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Dennis Christopher George Potter was born 17 May 1935 in Berry Hill, a small village in the Forest of Dean, where his grandfather and father were coal miners. Through books, the young Potter found that "words were chariots". He attended school in London and spent two years in the Army. During his three years at Oxford, he wrote The Glittering Coffin (1960), a bitter attack on England.
As a BBC trainee, he wrote/hosted Between Two Rivers (1960), a documentary about the Forest of Dean. In 1961 he joined the Daily Herald, where he was TV critic (1962-64). In 1964 he learned he had psoriatic arthropathy, a disease which plagued him for decades, less so after new drugs/treatments turned up. He lost the 1964 election as a Labour candidate, ending his planned political career. That same year, The Wednesday Play (1964) began on the BBC, and he submitted a novel-in-progress, which became his first TV play, The Confidence Course (1965), about motivational seminar swindlers.
Over three decades, he wrote novels, essays, stage plays, and movies but mainly focused on TV, where his semi-autobiographical explorations into consciousness and memory led to innovations in drama, often acclaimed. His masterpiece is The Singing Detective (1986), regarded by some as the best original work ever created for television. Only near the end of his life did he move into directing with Blackeyes (1989) and Secret Friends (1991). Steven Bochco's Cop Rock (1990) is just one example of Potter's widening influence.
Few Potter plays aired on USA TV, but retrospectives were at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and NYC's Museum of Television & Radio. His plays and interviews are part of the MT&R's permanent collection, available for viewing in NYC and also at the MT&R in Los Angeles.- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
Prolific, multi-talented comedy writer, story editor, actor and director. His father was an Air Force general (Paul Steinberg Zuckerman) turned stockbroker and his mother was silent screen star Ruth Taylor, formerly a member of Mack Sennett's bathing beauties. Buck Henry's first fling with comedy was as a contributor to the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern magazine (known as 'Jacko') while he was still at college. His fellow writers there included such luminaries as Dr. Seuss, novelist Budd Schulberg and the playwright Frank D. Gilroy. Henry attended Harvard Military Academy for a short time before developing an interest in acting which led to a few small roles on Broadway. His budding career was interrupted by military service during the Korean War. In 1961, Henry joined a small improvisational off-Broadway theatre troupe called The Premise for a year before moving to Hollywood. He was to find his greatest popularity in the 60s as one of the principal hosts of Saturday Night Live (1975), writer for The Garry Moore Show (1958) and co-creator/writer (with Mel Brooks) of Get Smart (1965), for which he won an Emmy in 1967. Prior to that, he had already achieved a certain amount of notoriety as co-perpetrator (with Alan Abel) of a hoax which had Henry masquerading as G. Clifford Prout, Jr., president of the bogus Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, making public appearances on network television and other media, demanding that all zoos and wildlife parks be closed until all animals were "properly dressed". At one time he tried to put huge boxer shorts on a baby elephant at San Francisco Zoo. The hoax was eventually exposed after Henry was spotted as an actor by a fellow CBS employee during a Walter Cronkite interview.
One of a new wave of satirists (others including Woody Allen and Alan Arkin) Henry brought an edgier, smarter, more anarchic and at times abrasive style to his writing. Some of his quotable one-liners (in particular for Get Smart) are - and will continue to be - idiomatic. While he was original, clever and invariably funny, not all of Henry's endeavours panned out. Two of his TV parodies proved to be conspicuous failures: Captain Nice (1967) (a send-up of Batman) and Quark (1977) (a Star Trek parody about interstellar garbage collectors). On the plus side, Henry was Oscar-nominated twice: the first time for his screenplay of The Graduate (1967), the second for co-directing (with star Warren Beatty ) the re-make of Heaven Can Wait (1978). Following The Graduate, a New York Times reviewer described him as a cross between Jack Lemmon and Wally Cox , "a terrifying practical joker and a compulsive reader of 200 periodicals a month". He was much in demand as a guest on talk shows (including Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Dick Cavett) and appeared as a self-deprecating actor in most of the films he wrote: as a hotel desk clerk in The Graduate, the cynical Colonel Korn in Catch-22 (1970), a lunatic in Candy (1968), a priest and a TV anchorman in First Family (1980), and so on. In Milos Forman's Taking Off (1971) he also had a rare co-starring role as a father looking for his runaway daughter. Buck Henry passed away at the age of 89 in Los Angeles on January 8 2020.