Jack Wagner (screenwriter)

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For other people named Jack Wagner, see Jack Wagner (disambiguation).
Jack Wagner
Jack Wagner, left, on the set of The Sea Beast (1926) starring John Barrymore, foreground
Born(1891-05-20)May 20, 1891
Monterey, California
DiedJuly 13, 1963(1963-07-13) (aged 72)
Occupation(s)Screenwriter and cinematographer

Jack Wagner (May 20, 1891 – July 13, 1963) was an American

Academy Award nominee screenwriter and cinematographer mostly during the silent era of motion pictures.[1]

Biography

Born in

Christian Science Monitor during the Mexican Revolution. He lived in Mexico from about 1895 to 1909 before moving to Los Angeles to work for D. W. Griffith on his early films. Between the years 1909 and 1912, Wagner worked mostly as a furniture painter, set designer and second unit cameraman. He then turned his attention to gag writing and found a job with Mack Sennett writing gags for Keystone Cops shorts. His specialty was comedy construction, especially the famed car chase scenes. He often alternated between writing comedy and working behind the camera as a principal photographer or assistant cameraman.[2]

When the United States entered

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.[2]

In the mid-1920s he wrote gags for

Academy Award.[2]

Even after this success, he struggled with writer's block. When he came up with the story idea for A Medal for Benny (1945), he again was troubled with putting the story to paper. He had known John Steinbeck for many years. Steinbeck had considered Jack's mother, Edith Wagner, as his first writing coach while growing up in Salinas, California. Jack and his brothers – Max, Blake and Bob – had been steady friends and drinking buddies with Steinbeck since the 1920s. After much work Steinbeck and Jack wrote the script for Benny and it earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He went on to help Steinbeck with another script on The Pearl. He closed out his career as a producer of Mexican films featuring such actresses as Dolores del Río, among others. He died in Los Angeles.[3][2]

Partial filmography

References

  1. All Movie Guide. AEC One Stop Group, Inc., The New York Times Company. Archived
    from the original on 17 October 2003. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  2. ^
    OCLC 1037983252
    .
  3. JSTOR 41582008
    .

External links
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