Ivan Moffat

Ivan Romilly Moffat (18 February 1918 – 4 July 2002) was a British screenwriter, film producer and socialite who, with Fred Guiol, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for adapting Edna Ferber's eponymous novel into the film Giant (1956). Moffat was the grandson of actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.

After studying at the London School of Economics, Moffat became a socialite and began to make films to promote the war effort. During World War II he filmed activities of the US Army, meeting director George Stevens, whom he soon followed to Hollywood and assisted at Paramount Pictures. In the 1950s, between his two marriages, Moffat had a string of love affairs, notably with Elizabeth Taylor and Lady Caroline Blackwood. Beginning in 1956 he wrote or co-wrote screenplays for a number of well-known films, in addition to Giant, and in the 1970s wrote for television.

Early life

Ivan Moffat was born in

After the war, Moffat settled in Hollywood, joining Stevens as an assistant producer at Liberty Films, which was soon purchased by Paramount Pictures.^[2][4] There he assisted Stevens on such movies as I Remember Mama (1948), Shane (1951) and A Place in the Sun (1951).^[2] In 1956, Moffat worked on the screenplays for Bhowani Junction, D-Day the Sixth of June and Giant. The screenplay for Giant brought Moffat and co-writer Fred Guiol an Oscar nomination.^[2] During the filming of the latter Moffat, unlike Stevens, was friendly with the film's star James Dean. He also renewed his friendship with Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he had earlier had a brief affair during the filming of A Place in the Sun.^[4]

Among other screenplays that Moffat wrote or co-wrote were

In the 1970s, Moffat wrote episodes of the television series Colditz,^[4] and in 1985 he wrote the story and co-wrote the script for the television film Florence Nightingale, which starred Jaclyn Smith.^[2] Moffat is interviewed extensively in the documentary George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1985) and on the DVDs of Shane and Giant.^[4]

Personal life

Moffat became friends with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre in Paris, marrying their protege Natasha Sorokin at the end of World War II, with whom he had one daughter, Lorna Moffat. The marriage soon collapsed. Moffat had a string of affairs with women in the 1950s.^[4] Moffat's friend Christopher Isherwood wrote in his diary that Moffat "is always so pretty and bright eyed and clean – he has to be for I imagine his evenings usually end, if they don't begin, visiting some girl".^[2] In 1956 he began a long on again, off again affair with then-married Lady Caroline Blackwood, fathering her daughter Ivana Lowell in 1966, after he was remarried.^[2][5][6]

In 1961, Moffat married The Hon. Katharine Smith (1933–2002),

• Beerbohm family

References