John Steinbeck(1902-1968)
- Writer
- Soundtrack
John Steinbeck was the third of four children and the only son born to
John Ernst and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. His father was County
Treasurer and his mother, a former schoolteacher. John graduated from
Salinas High School in 1919 and attended classes at Stanford
University, leaving in 1925 without a degree. He was variously employed
as a sales clerk, farm laborer, ranch hand and factory worker. In 1925,
he traveled by freight from Los Angeles to New York, where he was a
construction worker. From 1926-1928, he was a caretaker in Lake Tahoe,
CA. His first novel, "Cup of Gold," was published in 1929. During the
1930s, he produced most of his famous novels ("To a God Unknown,"
"Tortilla Flat," "In Dubious Battle," "Of Mice and Men," and his
Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Grapes of Wrath"). In 1941, he moved with
the singer who would become his second wife to New York City. They had
two sons, Thom (b. 1944) and John IV (b. 1946). In 1948, his close
friend Ed Ricketts died, he went through a divorce, he took a a tour of
Russia, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
His wrote the screenplay for Viva Zapata! (1952), and 17 of his works have been
made into movies. He received three Academy Award nominations. He was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. US President Lyndon B. Johnson
awarded him the United States Medal of Freedom in 1964, and he was
commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp on what would have been his 75th
birthday. His ashes lie in Garden of Memories Cemetery in
Salinas.