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Post by manfromplanetx on Mar 16, 2023 5:40:47 GMT
Harold Pinter began his career as playwright in 1957, in a writing career spanning fifty years he rose to international fame and became one of the 20th centuries most influential dramatists. A recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Pinter also added screenwriting to his list of glowing accomplishments... "Altogether, I have written twenty-four screenplays. Two were never shot. Three were rewritten by others. Two have not yet been filmed. Seventeen (including four adaptations of my own plays) were filmed as written. I think that's unusual. I certainly understand adapting novels for the screen to be a serious and fascinating craft."
In the writer's room...
THE CARETAKER (1962); THE PUMPKIN EATER (1963); THE SERVANT (1963); THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM (1965); ACCIDENT (1966); THE BIRTHDAY PARTY (1967); THE GO-BETWEEN (1969); THE HOMECOMING (1969); LANGRISHE GO DOWN (1970) adapted for TV 1978; A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU (1972) not filmed; THE LAST TYCOON(1974); THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN (1980); BETRAYAL (1981); VICTORY (1982) not filmed; TURTLE DIARY (1984); THE HANDMAID'S TALE (1987); REUNION (1988); THE HEAT OF THE DAY (1988); THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS (1989); THE TRIAL (1989); THE DREAMING CHILD (1997) not filmed; THE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR (2000) not filmed; SLEUTH (2007)
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Post by Richard Kimble on Mar 16, 2023 20:51:09 GMT
I don't want to be unreasonable, but this thread was started to give attention to screenwriters and screenwriting, both pretty much ignored in film discussions. And still we have directors horning in. (I almost wrote about this yesterday, when someone posted about Lois Weber). As much as I like Samuel Fuller, I really don't want to see the thread taken over by writer-directors.
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spiderwort
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Post by spiderwort on Mar 19, 2023 1:48:32 GMT
Horton Foote wrote some wonderful original plays and screenplays, and in one case adapted a great novel into a great film. My favorites are TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (adaptation), THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL (original), TENDER MERCIES (original), TOMORROW (original), A YOUNG LADY OF PROPERTY (TV original), and THE TRAVELING LADY (TV original, later made into the film, BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL).
Larry McMurtry wrote two of my all-time favorite films: HUD, which was adapted from his novel, "Horseman, Pass By" by screenwriters Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, which he and Peter Bogdanovich adapted for the screen from his novel. McMurtry has many more laudable titles, including his Oscar winning script for BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, which he wrote with Diana Ossana. But HUD and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW are my favorites.
Another favorite is Paddy Chayefsky, the writer of many films I love: MARTY, NETWORK, THE HOSPITAL, THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY (adapted from William Bradford Huie's novel), and THE CATERED AFFAIR, adapted from his own play.
And William Inge was primarily a playwright whose award winning plays were adapted by others into films. But he wrote one original screenplay, for which he won an Oscar: SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, my favorite film of all time.
And then there's Paul Osborn, who began as a playwright, and, with the exception of adapting his play ON BORROWED TIME to the screen, he went on to become a prominent and wonderful screenwriter, adapting novels and other's plays into films: EAST OF EDEN, WILD RIVER, PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, SAYONARA, SOUTH PACIFIC, THE YEARLING, MADAM CURIE, and CRY HAVOC! to name a few.
EAST OF EDEN, WILD RIVER, and PORTRAIT OF JENNIE are among my all time favorite films.
More to come. . .
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Post by manfromplanetx on Mar 19, 2023 9:00:54 GMT
Waldemar Young (July 1, 1878 – August 30, 1938) Waldemar Young wrote scenarios and screenplays for 81 films between 1917 and 1938. As a journalist Young began a creative writing career on the staffs of various newspapers, for a time he was drama editor for the San Francisco Examiner. During this time Young learned the art of writing exciting and readable stories, while also learning to craft a lean and graceful sentence. Both skills would serve him well when he finally joined the booming new film industry. Young was drawn to Hollywood and started writing romantic comedies. Gradually as his reputation grew, he was offered work by the big silent film stars, among them Mary Pickford for whom he wrote Suds (1920). By 1924 Young was a contract writer at Metro-Goldwyn, and he began working with Lon Chaney and director Tod Browning. Young wrote some of his most highly regarded screenplays for MGM (1924-29) and Paramount (1930 and 1932-36). Notable collaborations were: Tod Browning The Unholy Three (1925), The Unknown (1927), Where East Is East (1929), with Cecil B. DeMille epics, The Sign of the Cross (1932), and Cleopatra (1934)), as well as some of Gary Cooper's biggest box-office hits of the period The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay, and The Plainsman (1936). Waldemar Young had a strong sense of what the public liked to see and later hear in their stars. He produced scenarios and witty scripts that were often audience-pleasers. Young's legacy and successful career highlights a solid written record of box office favourites and entertaining classic films which continue to be enjoyed today... In the writer's room, Waldemar Young never got out of the habit of typing and preparing his own scripts without the help of a secretary...
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lune7000
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Post by lune7000 on Mar 19, 2023 14:25:22 GMT
Waldemar Young (July 1, 1878 – August 30, 1938) Waldemar Young wrote scenarios and screenplays for 81 films between 1917 and 1938. As a journalist Young began a creative writing career on the staffs of various newspapers, for a time he was drama editor for the San Francisco Examiner. During this time Young learned the art of writing exciting and readable stories, while also learning to craft a lean and graceful sentence. Both skills would serve him well when he finally joined the booming new film industry. Young was drawn to Hollywood and started writing romantic comedies. Gradually as his reputation grew, he was offered work by the big silent film stars, among them Mary Pickford for whom he wrote Suds (1920). By 1924 Young was a contract writer at Metro-Goldwyn, and he began working with Lon Chaney and director Tod Browning. Young wrote some of his most highly regarded screenplays for MGM (1924-29) and Paramount (1930 and 1932-36). Notable collaborations were: Tod Browning The Unholy Three (1925), The Unknown (1927), Where East Is East (1929), with Cecil B. DeMille epics, The Sign of the Cross (1932), and Cleopatra (1934)), as well as some of Gary Cooper's biggest box-office hits of the period The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay, and The Plainsman (1936). Waldemar Young had a strong sense of what the public liked to see and later hear in their stars. He produced scenarios and witty scripts that were often audience-pleasers. Young's legacy and successful career highlights a solid written record of box office favourites and entertaining classic films which continue to be enjoyed today... In the writer's room, Waldemar Young never got out of the habit of typing and preparing his own scripts without the help of a secretary...
Hollywood being a giant PR machine, I have to think this is a staged photo
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lune7000
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Post by lune7000 on Mar 19, 2023 14:28:15 GMT
From Robert B. Weide’s 2011 PBS film Woody Allen: A Documentary. Allen shows us the machine he has used for sixty years, the only typewriter he has ever owned: an early fifties manual Olympia SM-3. “I bought this when I was sixteen,” Allen says. “It still works like a tank.” Every comedy sketch, every screenplay, every essay ever written by Allen was composed on the one typewriter. When Weide asks Allen how he manages without the “cut-and-paste” functions of a word processor, he pulls out a pair of scissors and an old Swingline stapler. “It’s very primitive, I know,” says Allen, “but it works very well for me.” “Allen’s persistence in using the one and only typewriter of his life, and in practicing cut-and-staple editing are certainly curious, quaint, idiosyncratic, even endearing,” writes Richard Brody in the Front Row blog at The New Yorker; “but they’re also proof on the wing of two of Allen’s lifelong qualities–untimeliness and hermeticism–as well as of the enduring struggle in his films between writing and experience.”
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Post by manfromplanetx on Mar 19, 2023 20:27:51 GMT
Waldemar Young (July 1, 1878 – August 30, 1938) Hollywood being a giant PR machine, I have to think this is a staged photo I think the correct term is... a "publicity shot".
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spiderwort
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Post by spiderwort on Mar 21, 2023 14:48:41 GMT
Bo Goldman
Based upon his spec script, Shoot the Moon, Bo was hired by Milos Forman to write the screenplay for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, for which he won his first Oscar. He won his second Oscar for Melvin and Howard. Finally, after winning two Oscars, he was able to get Shoot the Moon done in 1982 (I had the good fortune to read it in 1974). His other credits include The Rose, City Hall and Scent of a Woman, for which he received another Oscar nomination. He retired in the late '90s, but is still revered by many in the business today. He turned 90 last fall. Interesting side-note: his son-in-law is Oscar nominated actor/writer/director, Todd Field.
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lune7000
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Post by lune7000 on Mar 23, 2023 0:53:55 GMT
One of the issues with writers in the classic movie era is that so often a movie would be written by a team of people and then it would be sent off to another group of people to do rewrites. A film might actually be a hodgepodge of different styles and dialogue from different people. It must have been very frustrating to work under that system then- but I guess it still goes on today.
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Post by manfromplanetx on Mar 28, 2023 23:45:16 GMT
Reginald Rose (1920-2002). American author, playwright, film and television writer. Rose developed an interest in writing as a teen, with a social conscience he contributed greatly to the progressive development of 1950s television drama, controversial political and social issues became his primary target and the focus of his writing. Having served in the U.S. Army, from 1942 to 1946, Rose entered mainstream work as publicity writer for Warner Brothers Pictures, and advertising copywriter. Rose confidently turned to writing plays for television. CBS bought the first script he wrote, The Bus to Nowhere which aired live in 1951. On the strength of his first teleplay Rose became a regular writer for CBS's Studio One, a popular weekly show that produced live drama. “It's not easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first”.In 1954 Rose wrote his most famous work Twelve Angry Men, citing that the inspiration was from his own service on a trial. Rose had been a jury member on a manslaughter case and experienced himself the confines of the jury room and the associated drama for over eight hours. The play was broadcast on September 20,1954 and won an Emmy Award for best written drama and a Writer's Guild of America Award. Twelve Angry Men was then published in an expanded form as a stage play in 1955 and was later made into a successful film in 1957. Coproduced by leading man Henry Fonda and Rose, who’s television play script was left virtually intact for the feature film. Reginald Rose continued to write television scripts throughout the 1960s and beyond. One of his best-known shows was the series The Defenders (1961–1965), about a father and son team of defense lawyers. Rose originally wrote the story "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" as a teleplay which aired live in 1955, he later adapted the story for a Twilight Zone episode shown in April 1963. Rose wrote eleven feature film screenplays including Anthony Mann’s magnificent Man of the West (1958) Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978), The Wild Geese (1978) and Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981). “It takes a great deal of courage to stand alone even if you believe in something very strongly”.
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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 13, 2023 22:06:25 GMT
Gene Coon (1924-1973) was the showrunner on Star Trek for much of its first two seasons. He is credited with inventing The Klingons as well as the Prime Directive, among other aspects of Trek canon. William Shatner called him "the unsung hero" of the Star Trek saga. But Coon was a lifelong smoker and died age only 49, before fan conventions and the Trek revival. He missed out on the celebrity that would enrich Gene Roddenberry.
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Post by manfromplanetx on Apr 21, 2023 22:57:57 GMT
Daniel Mainwaring (1902 –1977) was a prolific author and scenarist, who wrote most of his crime/action novels and screenplays under the pseudonym Geoffrey Homes. Mainwaring is perhaps best known, and he certainly assured himself a place in film history with his poetic hardboiled screenplay, for the noir classic "Out of the Past" (1947), which was based on his own book, "Build My Gallows High" (1946). Under the shadow of the 1950s Hollywood witch-hunts Mainwaring wrote scripts in tune with social issues and the middle-class paranoia of the era. Mainwaring wrote The Lawless (1950) for Joseph Losey, This Woman is Dangerous (1952) Felix E. Feist, The Hitch Hiker (1953) Ida Lupino, The Phoenix City Story (1955) Phil Karlson, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) directed by Don Siegel, a classic blend of science fiction, film noir paranoia and political hysteria. Notably Mainwaring also wrote screenplays for The Big Steal (1949), Baby Face Nelson (1957), and The Gun Runners (1958). Joseph Losey was eloquent in his praise "...This is one of the things that makes me very close to Dan Mainwaring—his experience of Americana, the nostalgia of the good things about small towns. I remember the smell of burning leaves at night in the autumn too. And I remember the smell of Christmas, the sparkle in the air at football games, and the sound of distant trains. And Dan remembers them all. He's a much underrated writer and he's a really quite noble man. He damaged himself with drink and he was very badly hurt by the blacklist"... “The mind is a strange and wonderful thing. I'm not sure it'll ever be able to figure itself out. Everything else maybe, from the atom to the universe, everything except itself." Mainwaring on Out of the Past… “When I finished the script, I took it down to Newport where Bogart was living. He was going to do it, but Warners wouldn't let him. So, then we took it to Mitchum”...
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Nick91
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Post by Nick91 on May 9, 2023 8:50:11 GMT
I think a lot of screenwriters, especially those who specialized in a certain genre, were guilty of recycling plots. For example, making several povert row Westerns in the 1930s had to be among the easiest jobs in the industry. I mean, how bad would a script have to be for Republic Pictures or Monogram to reject it? No one expected box-office success and/or critical acclaim from them, did they?
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Post by Richard Kimble on May 9, 2023 18:54:39 GMT
I think a lot of screenwriters, especially those who specialized in a certain genre, were guilty of recycling plots. For example, making several povert row Westerns in the 1930s had to be among the easiest jobs in the industry. I mean, how bad would a script have to be for Republic Pictures or Monogram to reject it? No one expected box-office success and/or critical acclaim from them, did they? Writing westerns offered a certain degree of freedom, per a TV writer (unfortunately I forget his name) of the '50s and '60s. Start off with a an action scene (fistfight, chase, or something like that) and end with a shootout. But in between you were able to concentrate on character and personal interactions. Medical shows were more difficult, as you had to get the details right. But once you had that you were free to explore character (reactions of patient to illness, attitudes of family/friends, etc). His least favorite show to write for? Perry Mason. Every single moment of screen time, apart from the tag, was dedicated to plot. Any scenes exploring character (criminals dealing with the guilt of their crimes, or Paul Drake getting exhausted by his investigations and contemplating another line of work, etc) were rejected by the producers, if they were even written in the first place. That's why the PM characters come across as so cardboard.
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Post by Richard Kimble on Jun 9, 2023 22:15:29 GMT
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Post by Richard Kimble on Jul 15, 2023 20:54:43 GMT
I know I said I wanted to concentrate on people who specialized in screenwriting, but I found this 1980 documentary on James Agee & thought some might be interested. Agee (1909-1955) was man of letters with a deep interest in film. He was Life magazine's film critic and in 1949 wrote the classic essay "Comedy's Greatest Era", which revived interest in silent clowns in general & Keaton in particular. He also wrote screenplays, working on The African Queen (Huston is interviewed in the doc) & The Night Of The Hunter. He also wrote an unproduced script for Chaplin.
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spiderwort
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Post by spiderwort on Jul 15, 2023 21:04:45 GMT
I know I said I wanted to concentrate on people who specialized in screenwriting, but I found this 1980 documentary on James Agee & thought some might be interested. Agee (1909-1955) was man of letters with a deep interest in film. He was Life magazine's film critic and in 1949 wrote the classic essay "Comedy's Greatest Era", which revived interest in silent clowns in general & Keaton in particular. He also wrote screenplays, working on The African Queen (Huston is interviewed in the doc) & The Night Of The Hunter. He also wrote an unproduced script for Chaplin. He also wrote two books not mentioned that are my favorites: the novel "A Death in the Family," for which he posthumously received the Pulitzer Prize. It later became the Pulitzer Prize winning play and then the beautiful film, All the Way Home. He also wrote the great WPA Depression era work, "Let us Now Praise Famous Men," with photos by Walker Evans.
Thanks for the link. Can't wait to see it. He was a wonderful writer!!
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jul 19, 2023 0:54:22 GMT
Pioneering American screenwriter, novelist and playwright Anita Loos (1888 – 1981) became the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood. In 1915, it was D. W. Griffith who first put her on the payroll at the Triangle Film Corporation. Probably best known for her 1925 comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and her 1951 Broadway adaptation of Colette's novella Gigi, Loos however was a prolific scenarist with an incredible list of screenwriting credits, working behind the scenes many went uncredited. D.W. Griffith directed T he New York Hat (1912), a film based on Loos screenplay, starring Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore She wrote hundreds of scripts during the silent era of cinema, noted for their feminine wit, sharp observation and humor. Loos collaborated with director (and future husband John Emerson) on several romantic comedies which helped make Douglas Fairbanks a star. In later years, many of the scripts that carried both of their names are regarded as Loos’ work. It was often convenient, in the Hollywood system of the 1930s and '40s, to have a male co-writer, as some directors were unwilling or uncomfortable discussing a script with a woman. By the end of the 1920's, Anita Loos was personal assistant of Richard Rubin, vice-president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Irving Thalberg,the legendary production mind behind MGM, discovered that Anita Loos knew how to make a movie move so well that instead of assigning her one script, he assigned her everything. She spent the greater part of her 18 years at Hollywood’s top studio as their script doctor, a job which saved hundreds of movies and stars from box office and artistic oblivion. In the late 1930s, Loos befriended Aldous Huxley and helped him find work writing screenplays in Hollywood. Her film output slowed during and after the war, particularly as several of her scripts which often celebrated liberated and fearless women, ran afoul with the eras production code guidelines. Passing away at 92 years of age, leaving a tremendous legacy, Anita Loos outlived most of her contemporaries and friends. She wrote several volumes of fascinating memoir, following her decades of Hollywood and Broadway life. Loos had an amazing and successful writing career, from the earliest days of Hollywood she blazed an original and creative trail for screenwriters, not just the female ones, to follow… In the writer's room... Not all the glamorous women of Hollywood worked in front of the cameras. One of the most talented and glamorous ladies of early Hollywood was Anita Loos, a gifted beauty who shone bright behind the scenes as a top scriptwriter and studio executive.
With Jean Harlow Red Headed Woman (1932)
With George Cukor on the set of The Women (1939)
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jul 21, 2023 3:05:19 GMT
Sidney Howard (1891-1939) The American dramatist, playwright and screenwriter was regarded as a liberal intellectual whose writing helped to bring a deeper psychological realism to American stage and screen drama. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925. Despite his well-known left-wing political sympathies (he supported William Foster, the Communist Party candidate for president, in 1932), Howard was sought after and hired by MGM where he wrote a number of successful screenplays. Notable are Howard's screen adaptations of Sinclair Lewis novels, Arrowsmith (1931) and Dodsworth (1936) a film I consider to be one of the most mature adult Hollywood dramas of the 1930s. Perhaps most famous was his adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s epic Gone with the Wind (1939). Sinclair Lewis was a great admirer of Howard's stage work and was pleased with the film adaptations of his own work, the two, whose political opinions aligned, became good friends. Writing the screenplay for Gone With the Wind was a complex challenge there are around 50 speaking roles. Sidney Howard accepted the commission, but he refused to move to Hollywood from his 700-acre farm in Massachusetts, thousands of miles away. This caused much distress to producer David O. Selznick who wanted Howard close by his side. Eventually there was a compromise and Howard reluctantly spent some time in Hollywood. Howard completed his preliminary report on the treatment of the script in 1936. In August 1937 he sent over a completed 400-page script which is roughly equivalent to six hours of feature film. Distraught Selznick considered the screenplay untouchable, so Howard moved across to California and for several months devoted himself to retouching the dialogue. However, the results still did not satisfy the demanding producer, who then sought the help of a number of other screenwriters. Finally condensed by writer Ben Hecht, who had a reputation for being able to straighten out the most convoluted and chaotic of scripts. Surprisingly Hecht did not think that the film was anything special, so he requested not to appear in the screenwriting credits... Although revised by other writers Sidney Howard was the only writer honored, the posthumous winner of the 1940 Academy Award for an adapted screenplay for Gone With the Wind. Tragically Sidney Howard was killed in a freak tractor related accident on his farm a few months before the release of the famous film, he was only 48 years and had so much more life to live... In the writer's room...Sidney Coe Howard
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jul 22, 2023 1:19:25 GMT
Joan Harrison (20 June 1907 – 14 August 1994) was an English screenwriter and producer. Harrison became the first female screenwriter to be nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar when the category was introduced in 1940. She was the first screenwriter to receive two Academy Award nominations in the same year in separate categories, for co-writing the screenplay for the films Foreign Correspondent (1940) (original) and Rebecca (1940) (adapted), both directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with whom she had a long professional relationship. The groundbreaking, Oscar-nominated script for “Rebecca” (1940) put a woman’s voice front-and-center, literally. It was the first film to begin with a female voice-over and presaged the technique as a trope of film noir. Harrison had written two films that had garnered 17 nominations between them. When Alfred Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in March 1939 to begin his contract with David O. Selznick, Joan Harrison emigrated with him as an assistant and writer. She continued contributing to his screenplays, Suspicion (1941), and Saboteur (1942), while also working with other directors, writing and producing, notable also is her work on the feminist noir “Phantom Lady,” directed by Robert Siodmak. Joan Harrison married thriller novelist Eric Ambler in 1958; the couple remained married until her death in 1994. Long dismissed or relegated to the background in most Hitchcock biographies, a timely biography of Harrison by Christina Lane, Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock, was published in 2020. Phantom Lady chronicles the untold story of Hollywood’s most powerful female writer-producer of the 1940s.... "In 1933, Joan Harrison was a 26-year-old former salesgirl with a dream of escaping her stodgy London suburb and the dreadful prospect of settling down with one of the local boys. A few short years later, she was Alfred Hitchcock’s confidante and the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of his first American film, Rebecca. Harrison had quickly grown from being the worst secretary Alfred Hitchcock ever had to one of his closest collaborators, critically shaping his brand as the “Master of Suspense.” Forging an image as “the female Hitchcock”... In the writer's room circa 1943 Discussing over breakfast the latest project... with Alma Reville (Lady Hitchcock) working on the script of Suspicion (1941) Harrison was uncredited for her contribution to this screenplay, here with Wanda Hendrix and Robert Montgomery reviewing the script of Ride the Pink Horse (1947)
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