50 Oscar winning screenwriters

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.

John Monk Saunders was born on 22 November 1895 in Hinckley, Minnesota, USA. He was a writer and director, known for The Dawn Patrol (1930), Wings (1927) and Devil Dogs of the Air (1935). He was married to Fay Wray and Avis Bissell (Hughes). He died on 11 March 1940 in Ft. Myers, Florida, USA.

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.

Harvard graduate Robert Lord studied English literature and playwriting in George Pierce Baker's renowned Workshop 47. He subsequently put this training into practice as a story writer for the New Yorker. Before long, one of his contributions, The Lucky Horseshoe (1925), attracted the attention of Hollywood producers and motivated Lord to relocate to the West Coast. After work on Tom Mix westerns, he soon landed a prestige assignment in the shape of the disaster epic The Johnstown Flood (1926), a palpable box office success, for which Lord wrote the original story. His hard-edged style of prose impressed Warner Brothers, who signed him under contract in 1927.

A favorite of production manager Hal B. Wallis, Lord remained at the studio until 1941, by which time he had won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for One Way Passage (1932) and been nominated for another, the controversial social drama Black Legion (1937), a hard-hitting indictment of bigotry and mob rule. Lord again wrote the original story and also served as associate producer. A hit with both critics and audiences, the picture starred Humphrey Bogart, who, at the time was merely another contract player in danger of being typecast as heavies in run-of-the-mill potboilers. "Black Legion" reaffirmed Bogart's star qualities and he never forgot the role Robert Lord had played in rescuing his career.

Following the death of Mark Hellinger in 1947, Bogart went out of his way to procure Lord as vice-president of his independent Santana Productions. In his new role as Santana's main producer, Lord was given carte blanche to hire such experienced writers as Daniel Taradash and John Monks Jr. (for Knock on Any Door (1949)). He was also instrumental in acquiring the rights for suitable literary material, best of which was In a Lonely Place (1950), based on a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes. While Lord was never officially credited with writing any of Santana's screenplays, he was nonetheless significantly involved in their early development (as, for example, in defining the character of Dixon Steele). On the flip side, Lord's friendship with Bogart rather clouded his objectivity in that he frequently interfered in the creative process by insisting on editorial revisions (particularly, whenever he felt the star's character was not portrayed in a sufficiently sympathetic light).

After Bogart sold his interest in Santana to Columbia in 1955, Lord effectively retired from the film industry. He died in April 1976 in Los Angeles at the age of seventy-five.

Arthur Caesar was born on 9 March 1892 in Bucharest, Romania. He was a writer, known for Manhattan Melodrama (1934), Anne of the Indies (1951) and Transient Lady (1935). He was married to Dira (Dora?) Platts. He died on 20 June 1953 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

"Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers out there are starving!" When Patrick Dennis's fictional Auntie Mame uttered this pithy observation, she could have been speaking of Charles MacArthur. Charlie never shied away from the feast, and he certainly never went hungry. Arriving in November 1895 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Charlie was the second youngest of seven children born to stern evangelist William Telfer MacArthur and Georgiana Welsted MacArthur. His early life was dominated by his father's ministry, leading the family to travel cross country wherever the elder MacArthur's calling took them. Charlie spent much of his time during those years hiding in the bathroom -- the only place offering even a modicum of privacy for a member of such a large family -- reading virtually anything he could get his hands on. He developed a passion for the written word that would last him to his dying day. Resisting Reverend MacArthur's insistent urging that his son follow him into the ministry, young Charlie left the family's rural New York home soon after finishing high school. Heading off to the Midwest, he took a reporter's job at The Oak Leaves, a suburban Chicago newspaper owned by two of his older brothers and run by his older sister. His first professional taste of crafting something for others to read whetted his appetite for even more. Intently determined to pursue a calling which for him was as strong as the calling his father had heard, Charlie went to the City News Bureau of Chicago as the first step in his journey toward life as a journalist. Though only 19, the irreverent sense of humor and dislike for mindless authoritarianism for which he would later be so well known was already quite evident in the application he filled out for the job. In the space entitled "Tell us in exactly seventy-five words why you wish to become a reporter," Charlie wrote: "I want to become a reporter more because I like the work than for any other reason. I feel that even if I should branch off in another profession, the experience obtained in getting up on your toes after news would be valuable. These are my reasons. More words would be useless." The excitement of working in brash and brawling pre-1920s Chicago didn't quite satisfy Charlie's hunger for something more, however, and he soon hooked up with General "Black Jack" Pershing, galloping off to Mexico to join in the hunt for the infamous Pancho Villa. When World War I broke out, Charlie joined the Army's 149th Field Artillery, part of the Rainbow Division. During his time in France, he and his battery mate shot down a German plane with nothing more than a machine gun. Later in the war, Charlie sustained a mild shrapnel wound. In 1919 he penned his only book, A Bug's Eye View of the War (later republished in 1929 by Harper Collins as War Bugs) about his unit's adventures and misadventures during some of the most brutal and bloodiest fighting in history. Returning to Chicago just in time for Prohibition, the Roaring 20s, and Al Capone, Charlie became one of Chicago's most well-known and widely read reporters. He authored some of the most enduring pieces ever printed in the pages of the Chicago Tribune and Daily News. His style was inventive, charming, and witty. Readers couldn't get enough. Once, when writing about a dentist accused of sexually molesting his female patients, Charlie chose the headline "Dentist Fills Wrong Cavity". He also wrote several short stories, two of which, "Hang It All" (1921) and "Rope" (1923), were published in H.L. Mencken's The Smart Set magazine. His star continued to rise, and he eventually headed off to the greener pastures of New York City. Once settled in the Big Apple, he began to shift his efforts toward playwrighting. His first true Broadway success was in 1926 with the play "Lulu Belle", written in collaboration with Edward Sheldon. It would later be remade into a 1948 movie starring Dorothy Lamour and George Montgomery. His next play, "Salvation", written in collaboration with Sidney Howard, enjoyed a moderate Broadway run. During the summer of 1927, Charlie and long-time friend and collaborator, Ben Hecht, rented the premises of the Nyack Girl's Academy as a haven from which they could create their own special brand of playwrighting. Helen Hayes (the future Mrs. Charles MacArthur) would tell friends of times when she or Rose Hecht would visit to bring in food or other supplies for their men, and the building would be positively filled with shouts of laughter and merriment. The result of this seclusion was the 1928 Broadway debut of "The Front Page". The phenomenal stage success of "The Front Page" prompted Charlie to head to Hollywood and screenplay work. Having already developed such works as The Girl Said No (1930), Billy the Kid (1930) and The Unholy Garden (1931), he hit the jackpot in 1931, first with the movie version of The Front Page (1931) (again collaborating with Ben Hecht), which won Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Lewis Milestone), and Best Actor (Adolphe Menjou), and then, with the release of The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931), which netted a 1932 Best Actress Oscar for its star, Helen Hayes. The film also won awards at that year's Venice Film Festival for both its leading lady and its director, Edgar Selwyn. Charlie's screenplay for Rasputin and the Empress (1932), the only movie ever to feature siblings John Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore together in the same film, gained him his own first Academy Award nomination (in 1934, for Best Original Story). Even though their efforts had turned mostly to filmmaking by this point, it was also during this period that Hecht and MacArthur produced their second smash theatrical effort, "Twentieth Century", which debuted on Broadway in December 1932, and was later made into the well-received 1934 movie starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard. Unhappy with the machinations of Hollywood's fledgling film industry, however, MacArthur and Hecht decided to set up their own shop in Astoria, New York, producing, writing, directing, and even making uncredited onscreen appearances in a series of films such as The Scoundrel (1935) (poking fun at themselves by playing downtrodden patrons of a charity flop house) and Crime Without Passion (1934) (in which they portrayed -- what else? -- newspaper reporters). Their work earned much critical acclaim, culminating in the 1936 Best Writing (Original Story) Academy Award for The Scoundrel (1935). Their 1939 collaboration to turn Rudyard Kipling's epic poem into the movie Gunga Din (1939), starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., was recognized in 1999 by the National Film Registry, and their adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1939) garnered the two yet another Academy Award Best Writing (Screenplay) nomination in 1940. That year also saw the remake of "The Front Page" into the popular movie, His Girl Friday (1940), starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant. The advent of World War II prompted Charlie to interrupt his writing career and sign on in his country's service once again. He began his second stint of service years as a Major in the Chemical Warfare Service, returning home at the war's conclusion a Lt. Colonel. By now, the father of two children, Mary and James MacArthur, and husband to "The First Lady of the American Theatre", Charlie had amassed a considerable amount of fame in his own right, yet was still looking for something different. Resuming his theatrical and film work, he also took on the duties of editing and publishing the foundering Theatre World magazine, but left after little more than a year, dissatisfied with the politics and constraints of working in a corporate atmosphere. The tragic loss of his 19-year-old daughter to polio in 1949 was a blow from which Charlie would never quite recover. Though he continued to work on screenplays and movie scripts up until his death in 1956, some of which enjoyed a modicum of success, he would never again completely recapture the freewheeling enthusiasm of his earlier days. When his son grew old enough to begin considering a career of his own, his father advised, "Do anything you like, son, but never become a playwright. It's a death worse than fate!" Charles MacArthur left behind a lasting imprint upon both those who knew him personally and those who knew him only through his published works. Supremely disdainful of anything even remotely false or affected, Charlie nevertheless did follow the path his father wished him to take, albeit in his own inimical fashion. His words carried a truth and sincerity few writers have been able to achieve. His unique mix of subtle irony, gentle sarcasm, and poignant pathos reached as deeply into his audience at least as well as any fiery sermon from a pulpit ever could. As Ben Hecht said in the eulogy he delivered at his friend's memorial service (and later expanded upon in his 1957 book, "Charlie: The Improbable Life and Times of Charles MacArthur"), "Charlie was more than a man of talent. He was himself a great piece of writing. His gaiety, wildness and kindness, his love for his bride Helen, and his two children, and for his clan of brothers and sisters -- his wit and his adventures will live a long, long while".

Pierre Collings was born on 22 September 1900 in Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada. He was a writer and cinematographer, known for The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926) and A Woman of the World (1925). He was married to Natalie H. Collings. He died on 21 December 1937 in North Hollywood, California, USA.

Sheridan Gibney was born on 11 June 1903 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Six Million Dollar Man (1974) and The Locket (1946). He died on 12 April 1988 in Missoula, Montana, USA.

Robert Carson was born on 6 October 1909 in Washington, USA. He was a writer, known for A Star Is Born (1937), A Star Is Born (2018) and A Star Is Born (1954). He was married to Mary Jane Irving. He died on 19 January 1983 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

William Wellman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter-director of the original A Star Is Born (1937), was called "Wild Bill" during his World War I service as an aviator, a nickname that persisted in Hollywood due to his larger-than-life personality and lifestyle.

A leap-year baby born in 1896 on the 29th of February in Brookline, MA, Wellman was the great-great-great grandson of Francis Lewis, one of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. Wellman's father was a stockbroker and his mother, the former Cecilia McCarthy, was born in Ireland. Despite an upper-middle-class upbringing, the young Wellman was a hell-raiser. He excelled as an athlete and particularly enjoyed playing ice hockey, but he also enjoyed joyriding in stolen cars at nights.

Cecilia Wellman served as a probation officer for "wayward boys" (juvenile delinquents) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and was such a success in her field that she was asked to address Congress on the subject of delinquency. One of her charges was her own son, as the young Bill was kicked out of school at the age of 17 for hitting his high school principal on the head with a stink bomb. He tried making a living as a candy salesman and a cotton salesman, but failed. He worked for a lumber yard but was fired after losing control of a truck and driving it through the side of a barn. Eventually he wound up playing professional ice hockey in Massachusetts. While playing at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, an actor named Douglas Fairbanks took note of him. Impressed by Wellman's good looks and the figure he cut on ice, the soon-to-be silent-film superstar suggested to him that he had what it took to become a movie actor. Wellman's dream was to become an aviator, but since his father "didn't have enough money for me to become a flier in the regular way . . .I went into a war to become a flier."

When he was 19 years old, through the intercession of his uncle, Wellman joined the air wing of the French Foreign Legion, where he learned to fly. In France he served as a pilot with the famous Lafayette Flying Corps (better known as the Lafayette Escadrille), where he won his nickname "Wild Bill" due to his devil-may-care style in the air. He and fellow pilot Tom Hitchcock, the great polo player, were in the Black Cat group. Wellman was shot down by anti-aircraft fire and injured during the landing of his plane, which had lost its tail section. Out of 222 Escadrille pilots 87 were killed, but Wellman was fated to serve out the duration of the war. In the spring of 1918 he was recruited by the US Army Air Corps, joining "because I was broke, and they were trying to get us in." Commissioned an officer, he was sent back to the US and stationed at Rockwell Field, in San Diego, CA, to teach combat fighting tactics to the new AAC pilots.

Wellman would fly up to Hollywood and land on Fairbanks' polo fields to spend the weekend. Fairbanks told the returning hero that he would help him break into the movies when the war was over, and he was as good as his word. Fairbanks envisioned Wellman as an actor and cast him as the juvenile in The Knickerbocker Buckaroo (1919) and as a young officer in Evangeline (1919), but acting was something Wellman grew to hate, a hatred he later transferred to actors in his employ. He was fired by fellow macho director Raoul Walsh from "Evangeline" for slapping the lead actress, who Wellman didn't know was Walsh's wife. Disgusted with acting, Wellman told Fairbanks he wanted to be a director, and Fairbanks helped him into the production end of the business. It was a purely financial decision, he later recalled, as directors made more money than supporting actors at the time.

Goldwyn Pictures hired him as a messenger in 1920 and he soon worked his way up the ladder, first as an assistant cutter, then as an assistant property man, property man, assistant director and second-unit director before making his uncredited directorial debut later that year at Fox with Twins of Suffering Creek (1920) starring Dustin Farnum (the silent film B-Western star whom Dustin Hoffman's star-struck mother named the future double-Oscar winner after). Wellman later remembered the film as awful, along with such other B-Westerns as Cupid's Fireman (1923), starring Buck Jones, whose westerns he began directing in 1923 after serving his apprenticeship.

Fox Films gave Wellman his first directing credit in 1923 with the Buck Jones western Second Hand Love (1923) and, other than the Dustin Farnum picture The Man Who Won (1923), he turned out Jones pictures for the rest of his time at Fox. The studio fired him in 1924 after he asked for a raise after completing The Circus Cowboy (1924), another Buck Jones film. Moving to Columbia, he helmed When Husbands Flirt (1925), then went over to MGM for the slapstick comedy The Boob (1926) before landing at Famous Players-Lasky (now known as Paramount Pictures after its distribution unit), where he directed You Never Know Women (1926) and The Cat's Pajamas (1926). It was as a contract director at the now renamed Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky Corp. that he had his breakout hit, due to his flying background. Paramount entrusted its epic WW I flying epic Wings (1927) to Wellman, and the film went on to become the first Academy Award-winning best picture.

Paramount paid Wellman $250 a week to direct "Wings". He also gave himself a role as a German pilot, and flew one of the German planes that landed and rolled over. The massive production employed 3,500 soldiers, 65 pilots and 165 aircraft. It also went over budget and over schedule due to Wellman's perfectionism, and he came close to being fired more than once. The film took a year to complete, but when it was released it turned out to be one of the most financially successful silent pictures ever released and helped put Gary Cooper, whom Wellman personally cast in a small role, on the path to stardom. "Wings" and Wellman's next flying picture, The Legion of the Condemned (1928)--in which Cooper had a starring role--initiated the genre of the World War One aviation movie, which included such famous works as Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels (1930) and Howard Hawks' The Dawn Patrol (1930). Despite his success in bringing in the first Best Picture Oscar winner, Paramount did not keep Wellman under contract.

Wellman's disdain for actors already was in full bloom by the time he wrapped "Wings". Many actors appearing in his pictures intensely disliked his method of bullying them to elicit an performance. Wellman was a "man's man" who hated male actors due to their narcissism, yet he preferred to work with them because he despised the preparation that actresses had to go through with their make-up and hairdressing before each scene. Wellman shot his films fast. The hard-drinking director usually oversaw a riotous set, in line with his own lifestyle. He married five women, including a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl, before settling down with Dorothy Coonan Wellman, a former Busby Berkeley dancer. Wellman believed that Dorothy saved him from becoming a caricature of himself. She appeared as a tomboy in Wild Boys of the Road (1933), a Depression-era social commentary picture made for the progressive Warner Bros. studio (and which is a favorite of Martin Scorsese). It came two years after Wellman's masterpiece, The Public Enemy (1931), one of the great early talkies, one of the great gangster pictures and the film that made James Cagney a superstar. Scorsese says that Wellman's use of music in the film influenced his own first gangster picture, Mean Streets (1973) .

Wellman was as adept at comedy as he was at macho material, helming the original A Star Is Born (1937) (for which he won his only Oscar, for best original story) and the biting satire Nothing Sacred (1937)--both of which starred Fredric March--for producer David O. Selznick. Both movies were dissections of the fame game, as was his satire Roxie Hart (1942), which reportedly was one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite films.

During World War Two Wellman continued to make outstanding films, including The Ox-Bow Incident (1942) and Story of G.I. Joe (1945), and after the war he turned out another war classic, Battleground (1949). In the 1950s Wellman's best later films starred John Wayne, including the influential aviation picture The High and the Mighty (1954), for which he received his third and last best director Oscar nomination. His final film hearkened back to his World War One service, Lafayette Escadrille (1958), which featured the unit in which Wellman had flown. He retired as a director after making the film, reportedly enraged at Warner Bros.' post-production tampering with a film that meant so much to him.

Other than David O. Selznick, not many people in Hollywood particularly liked the hell-raising iconoclast Wellman. Louis B. Mayer's daughter Irene Mayer Selznick, the first wife of David O. Selznick, said that Wellman was "a terror, a shoot-up-the-town fellow, trying to be a great big masculine I-don't-know-what". The Directors Guild of America in 1973 honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

William Wellman died (from leukemia) in 1975.

Eleanore Griffin, the Oscar-winning screenwriter who won her Academy Award along with co-writer Dore Schary for Boys Town (1938), was born on April 29, 1904, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Griffin began writing screenplays at Universal in 1937, being credited for the comedies When Love Is Young (1937) (directed by Hal Mohr) and Love in a Bungalow (1937) (directed by Ray McCarey, the younger brother of famed director Leo McCarey). Moving over to MGM, she penned the Mickey Rooney / Judy Garland musical Thoroughbreds Don't Cry (1937) for Maurice Rapf's production unit. It was there she hit paydirt with the script based on the true story of the priest who launched Boys Town in 1917, a reformatory for wayward boys. Directed by Norman Taurog, "Boys Town" was nominated for Five Academy Awards, bringing Oscars for Best Actor to 'Spencer Tracy (I)' (v) and for Best Original Story to Griffin and Dore Schary. It also made Edward Flanagan famous and spawned a sequel, Men of Boys Town (1941).

Griffin worked as a screenwriter for almost 30 years, but ironically, "Boys Town" - which came very early in her career - would remain the summit of her achievement. Part of this was due to the exigencies of studio production, in which even a highly paid screenwriter would win an Oscar one year and be penning B-picture potboilers the next. However, it was the vertical integration of the studios, which was complete by the time she established herself in Hollywood in the late 1930s, that likely limited her career, as it did all women from the mid-1930s to the turn of the century.

Women had been a major force in the film industry during the silent era, particularly in the area of screenwriting (since dialogue wasn't needed, and inter-titles were a separate discipline, screenplays were called "scenarios", with the concept of "play" devolving onto the movie itself, which commonly was called a "photoplay" in the first generations of cinema). June Mathis, who helped make Rudolph Valentino a superstar, wrote the scenarios and screenplays for over over 100 films, and also as an "editorial director" on others, from the mid-Teens until 1930.

Women directors were not uncommon during the silent era (in fact, the first "feature" film was directed by a woman, back in 1896), but with the vertical integration of the movie industry in the 1930s women were squeezed out after the advent of the Talkies. It is a truism of organizational theory that the more complex the structure, the more control is exerted over all aspects of the organization, and the more conformity is demanded from organizational players. The corporate hierarchies were dominated by men, and the pressure for conformity made the vertical, publicly traded studios inhospitable to women, who by their very gender, could not conform to the dominant corporate paradigm.

After the early Talkie period, it was unusual for there to be powerful women, i.e., directors or producers, and conformity was demanded even the writers (a craft with decidedly little power due to the industrial mode of production used by the vertically integrated studios, in which piece-work was the dominant paradigm). Only Frances Marion, a double Oscar winner able to write across genres, survived and it is significant that her two Oscars came during the early talkie period, in 1930 for Best Writing Achievement for the prison picture The Big House (1930) and in 1932 for the Best Original Story for The Champ (1931). Though she worked on such prestigious pictures as Camille (1936) at MGM, the most powerful of Hollywood studios, she only received one more Oscar nod, in 1934, for Best Writing, Original Story for The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933). By 1937, the year Griffin got her start at Univesal, the career of Hollywood's greatest woman screenwriter was virtually over.

After Griffin's Oscar victory at MGM, she moved over to Paramount for the musical-comedy St. Louis Blues (1939), directed by Raoul Walsh. At Columbia she contributed to the treatment of Howard Hawks' classic Only Angels Have Wings (1939), the screenplay of which was written by Jules Furthman. She also contributed the story for Mitchell Leisen's Army Air Crops melodrama I Wanted Wings (1941).

During World War II her career lost its momentum, despite the legions of male screenwriters who went to war. At Columbia she wrote the story for the B-movie series entry Blondie in Society (1941), as well as the stories for the comedy Hi, Beautiful (1944) starring 'Noah Beery' Jr.' and Hattie McDaniel at Universal and for Henry Hathaway's melodrama Nob Hill (1945) starring George Raft at Fox. Back at MGM she contributed the story for George Sidney's The Harvey Girls (1946)_ and wrote the screenplay for the 'Margaret O'Brien' vehicle Tenth Avenue Angel (1948).

Most writers in Hollywood during the sound era made their living rewriting, polishing or adding to scripts. Griffin's next major credited spurt of activity came in the mid-1950s, when she wrote two Henry Koster films, the religious drama A Man Called Peter (1955) and Good Morning, Miss Dove (1954)_ starring 'Jennifer Jones' in the title role.

Her contribution to Universal's 1959 remake Imitation of Life (1959), Fannie Hurst's novel, was largely forgotten due to the film being almost wholly attributed to Douglas Sirk, a main beneficiary of the auteur theory that elevated the director to the status of a film's sole author (which is rather ridiculous within the industrial paradigm of Hollywood film, particularly in a factory such as Universal, which ground out product for the Big and little screens like so much sausage). For "Life" producer Ross Hunter she adapted another of Hurst's novels into a film, Back Street (1961), which starred Susan Hayward and John Gavin.

Her last credited film was an adaptation of Norman Vincent Peale's autobiography "Minister To Millions", produced by Frank Ross as One Man's Way (1964).

Eleanore Griffin died on July 25, 1995, in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. She was 91 years old.

Lewis R. Foster was born on 5 August 1898 in Brookfield, Missouri, USA. He was a director and writer, known for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Captain China (1950) and Tropic Zone (1953). He was married to Dorothy Wilson and Helen Mae. He died on 10 June 1974 in Tehachapi, California, USA.

Benjamin Glazer was born on 7 May 1887 in Belfast, Ireland [now Northern Ireland], UK. He was a writer and producer, known for 7th Heaven (1927), Arise, My Love (1940) and Paris Calling (1941). He was married to Sharon Lynn. He died on 18 March 1956 in Hollywood, California, USA.

Harry Segall was born on 10 April 1892 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a writer, known for Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Monkey Business (1952) and Angel on My Shoulder (1946). He was married to Dorothy Segall, Martha Salonen and Lenore Mittelman. He died on 25 November 1975 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Educated at the Universities of Prague and Stuttgart, Emeric Pressburger worked as a journalist in Hungary and Germany and an author and scriptwriter in Berlin and Paris. He was a Hungarian Jew, chased around Europe (he worked on films for UFA in Berlin and Paris) before World War II, finally finding sanctuary in London--but as a scriptwriter who didn't speak English. So he taught himself to understand not only the finer nuances of the language but also of the British people. A few lucky breaks and introductions via old friends led to his meeting with "renegade" director Michael Powell. They then went on to make some of the most interesting (IMHO) and complex films of the 1940s and 1950s under the banner of "The Archers". Pressburger often showed a deep understanding of the British only granted to those "outside, looking in". He always prided himself on being "more English than the English". After all, some of us were just BORN English, but he CHOSE to become English. He spent his last days at Shoemakers Cottage, Aspall, Stowmarket, Suffolk in the English countryside that he loved so well.

Oscar winner and Pulitzer Prize recipient William Saroyan, who gained world fame with his classic book "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" (1934), was born in California to Armenak and Takoohi Saroyan.

With his unmistakably American literary works, deeply rooted in his Armenian heritage, William Saroyan soon established himself as one of the preeminent short story writers, playwrights and novelists in the United States.

In 1939 and 1940 William Saroyan's "My Heart's in the Highlands" and "The Time of Your Life" were staged for theater and "Love's Old Sweet Song" opened on Broadway, winning the New York Critics Circle Award.

In 1943 his MGM screenplay "The Human Comedy" was novelized and published and received great reviews, and he won the Academy Award for Best Writing Original Story for "The Human Comedy".

He wrote the lyrics of Ross Bagdasarian's famous # 1 hit song "Come On-a My House", performed by Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, and Rosemary Clooney, which was featured in Madonna's "Swept Away" (2002) and Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952).

William Saroyan is one of the most important American writers of the 20th century -- along with such masters as John Updike, John Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller, who admired him. Saroyan is perhaps the only major and influential writer to receive both the Pulitzer Prize and the Academy Award, and his work continues to appear on the theater stage and the silver screen worldwide.

Leo McCarey was born on 3 October 1896 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a director and writer, known for An Affair to Remember (1957), Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). He was married to Virginia Stella Martin. He died on 5 July 1969 in Santa Monica, California, USA.

Charles G. Booth was born on 12 February 1896 in Lancashire, England, UK. He was a writer, known for The House on 92nd Street (1945), Fury at Furnace Creek (1948) and The Magnificent Fraud (1939). He died on 22 May 1949 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.

British novelist and playwright Clemence Dane was born Winifred Ashton in Kent, England, in 1888. A gifted student, she was educated in a variety of private schools and, at age 16, was hired to teach French in Geneva, Switzerland. A year later she returned to England and studied art for three years in London, and another year in Dresden, Germany, and showed promise as a portrait painter. However, she gave up her art career to accept a position as a teacher in Ireland. She left that position for a career as a stage actress, and did that for several years until World War I broke out. She plunged into war work and drove herself so relentlessly that her health broke down. While recuperating she wrote her first novel, "Regiment of Women", under the pseudonym Clemence Dane, a name she picked in honor of the famous London church of St. Clemence Dane (later destroyed in a German bombing raid in 1940).

"Regiment of Women" was an almost instant success. Her next novel, "Legend", was also successful, and several reviewers suggested that it should be turned into a play. She followed their advice, and the play, now called "A Bill of Divorcement", had a successful run on Broadway and the London stage with Katharine Cornell, and was made into a film several times, most notably with Katharine Hepburn and John Barrymore (A Bill of Divorcement (1932)). She alternated writing novels, plays and essays, and even wrote a personal and professional study of actor/writer Hugh Walpole.

She died in London, England, in 1965 at age 77.

Valentine Davies was born on 25 August 1905 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Miracle on 34th Street (1947), The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and It Happens Every Spring (1949). He was married to Elizabeth Strauss. He died on 23 July 1961 in Malibu, California, USA.

Richard Schweizer was born on 23 December 1899 in Zurich, Switzerland. He was a writer and director, known for The Search (1948), Marie-Louise (1944) and Kleine Scheidegg (1937). He was married to Ruth Margaret Langnese. He died on 30 March 1965 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Douglas Morrow was born on 13 September 1913 in Oswego, New York, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for The Stratton Story (1949), Men of Annapolis (1957) and Target (1958). He died on 9 September 1994 in Kingston, New York, USA.

A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, Edward Anhalt started his career in early television before turning to writing and producing films, often in collaboration with his wife Edna Anhalt. A prolific screenwriter, Anhalt and his wife won an Academy Award for Panic in the Streets (1950). He got his second Oscar for Becket (1964).

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.

Frank Cavett was born on 27 December 1905 in Jackson, Ohio, USA. He was a writer and assistant director, known for Going My Way (1944), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947). He was married to Mary Oakes. He died on 25 March 1973 in Santa Monica, California, USA.