Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Johnson | |
---|---|
Los Angeles, California U.S. | |
Occupations |
|
Spouses | Alice Love Mason
(m. 1919; div. 1920)Marion Byrnes
(m. 1927; div. 1938) |
Children | 5, including Marjorie Fowler and Nora Johnson |
Nunnally Hunter Johnson (December 5, 1897 – March 25, 1977) was an American screenwriter, film director, producer and playwright. As a filmmaker, he wrote the screenplays to more than fifty films in a career that spanned from 1927 to 1967. He also produced more than half of the films he wrote scripts for and directed eight of those movies. In 1940 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Grapes of Wrath and in 1956, he was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Some of his other notable films include Tobacco Road (1941), The Moon Is Down (1943), Casanova Brown (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), The Mudlark (1950), The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951), My Cousin Rachel (1952), The Three Faces of Eve (1957), Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962), and The Dirty Dozen (1967). As a playwright he wrote the books for several Broadway musicals, including the musical revue Shoot the Works (1931), Arthur Schwartz's Park Avenue (1946), Bob Merrill's Henry, Sweet Henry (1967), and Jule Styne's Darling of the Day (1968). He also wrote the 1943 Broadway play The World's Full of Girls.
Biography
Early life
Nunnally Johnson was born on December 5, 1897, in Columbus, Georgia, the elder of two sons born to Johnnie Pearl (née Patrick) and James Nunnally Johnson. He and his younger brother, Cecil Patrick Johnson, were raised in Columbus. Their father was a journeyman mechanic, turned tinsmith and coppersmith, turned pipe and sheetmetal shop superintendent for the Central of Georgia Railway.[1][2] His mother founded what later became the PTA in Columbus, and was the first woman to serve on the Muscogee County Board of Education. Johnson Elementary School in Columbus was built and named for her in 1949.[3]
Nunnally graduated from Columbus High School in 1915.[4] While living in Columbus in 1919, at 1312 Third Street, Nunnally was a second lieutenant in the field artillery reserve corps of the U.S. Army during World War I.[5] His brother Cecil graduated from Georgia Tech in 1924,[6] married Gene Clair Norris,[7] and moved to Bellingham, Washington, where he was first a gas department superintendent and later a vice president with Puget Sound Power & Light.[8][9]
Career
Johnson began his career as a journalist, writing for the
Finding work as a scriptwriter, Johnson was hired full-time as a writer by
Personal life
His first marriage in 1919 at Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights,
While filming
Actor
Death
Johnson died of pneumonia in Hollywood in 1977 and was interred in the
Filmography
* Writer of original story
** Uncredited writer
***Co-producer
Bibliography
- Manchel, Frank. (1990). Film Study: An Analytical Bibliography. In Chapter 5 Comparative Literature. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 1252. ISBN 0-8386-3412-5. Google Book Search. Retrieved on March 11, 2009.
- Lloyd, Craig (April 27, 2006). "Nunnally Johnson (1897–1977)". The New Georgia Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on September 17, 2007. Retrieved March 11, 2009.
- Johnson, Nunnally (1969). Recollections of Nunnally Johnson oral history transcript. University of California Oral History Program.
References
- ISBN 978-0-498-02362-0.
- ISBN 978-0-385-13406-4
- ^ "Family Life". Archived from the original on July 29, 2017. Retrieved July 29, 2017.
- ^ Stempel. – p.24.
- ^ Official List of Officers of the Officers' Reserve Corps of the Army of the United States, vol. 1, United States Adjutant-General's Office, 1919, pp. 34, 123
- ^ The Blueprint (Georgia Institute of Technology) – Class of 1924, Atlanta, Georgia: Blueprint Yearbook, 1924, p. 205
- ^ Vogel, Sonja O. (2007), The Patrick Family, SALOP Vogel, p. 8
- ^ Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Convention of the Pacific Coast Gas Association, vol. 23, Pacific Coast Gas Association, 1932, p. 566
- ^ Poor's Publishing Company, Standard and Poor's Corporation (1957), Poor's Register of Directors and Executives, United States and Canada, Part 2, Standard and Poor's Corp., p. 2410
- ^ Nora Johnson. – p.8.
- ^ Stempel. – p.28.
- ^ Stempel. – p.33.
- ^ Stempel. – p.103.
- ^ a b Victoria Talbot, 'Beverly Hills Cultural Heritage Commission Splits 2 To 2 on Mountain Drive Landmark Vote', The Beverly Hills Courier, October 3, 2014, Vol. XXXXVIIII, No. 39, p. 4
- ^ Obituary Variety, March 30, 1977, page 79.
External links
- Nunnally Johnson at IMDb
- Works by Nunnally Johnson at Project Gutenberg
- Nunnally Johnson at Find a Grave
- Nunnally Johnson Collection (MC 255) at Columbus State University Archives