Donald Ogden Stewart: Golden Age Hollywood Screenwriter
Donald Ogden Stewart (November 30, 1894 – August 2, 1980) was an American writer and screenwriter best known for sophisticated golden age comedies and melodramas including The Philadelphia Story, Tarnished Lady, and Love Affair. He won an Academy Award for The Philadelphia Story in 1940.
Early Life and Education
Stewart was born in Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from Yale University in 1916, where he joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Phi chapter), and served in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War I.
Career and Achievements
After the war, Stewart began writing and achieved early success with A Parody Outline of History, a satire of H. G. Wells’s The Outline of History (1920). This work led to his membership in the Algonquin Round Table, where he befriended Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, and Ernest Hemingway. In 1924, he published Mr. and Mrs. Haddock Abroad through George H. Doran, a satirical send-up of the “ugly American” tourist.
Stewart became a Broadway playwright in the 1920s before transitioning to Hollywood. Upon arriving in the film industry, he initially adapted other playwrights’ works while his own scripts were shelved. He appeared in a small acting role in the 1930 film Not So Dumb. By the 1930s, he had established himself primarily as a screenwriter, collaborating frequently with director George Cukor and working with Michael Curtiz and Ernst Lubitsch.
His 1922 parody on etiquette, Perfect Behavior, was a favorite of P. G. Wodehouse. Stewart was also the model, along with Ernest Hemingway’s friend Bill Smith, for the character Bill Gorton in Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises.
Notable Events and Milestones
As World War II approached, Stewart joined the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and publicly admitted to membership in the Communist Party USA. During the Second Red Scare, he was blacklisted in 1950. The following year, he and his wife, activist and writer Ella Winter (married in 1939), emigrated to England. In 1968, Stewart signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, committing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. His 1975 memoir is titled By a Stroke of Luck.
Awards and Honors
Stewart won an Academy Award for his screenplay adaptation of The Philadelphia Story (1940).
Additional Resources
Stewart’s prolific career spanned from the 1920s through the 1970s, encompassing stage, film, and memoir writing. More detailed information about his life, complete filmography, and legacy is available through Wikipedia and other biographical archives.
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