| Nunnally Johnson | |
|---|---|
| Born | Nunnally Hunter Johnson December 5, 1897 Columbus, Georgia |
| Died | March 25, 1977 (aged 79) Los Angeles, California |
| Spouse(s) | Dorris Bowdon (1939-1977) |
Nunnally Hunter Johnson (December 5, 1897—March 25, 1977) was an American filmmaker who wrote, produced, and directed motion pictures.
Contents |
Career[edit]
He began his career as a journalist, writing for the Columbus Enquirer Sun, the Savannah Press, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the New York Herald Tribune. He also wrote short stories and a collection of these, There Ought To Be a Law, was published in 1930.
Johnson's first connection with film work was the sale of screen rights to one of his stories in 1927. Johnson asked his editor if he could write film criticism articles in 1932. When this request was denied, he decided to relocate to Hollywood and work directly in the film industry.
Quickly finding work as a scriptwriter, Johnson was hired full-time as a writer by 20th Century-Fox in 1935. He soon began producing films as well and co-founded International Pictures in 1943 with William Goetz. Johnson also directed several films in the 1950s, including two starring Gregory Peck.
Johnson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Screenplay in 1940 for The Grapes of Wrath and the Directors Guild of America Best Directors Award in 1956 for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
Johnson died of pneumonia in Hollywood in 1977 and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.[1]
Personal life[edit]
Johnson was born, the first of two sons, to Johnny Pearl "Onnie" (née Patrick) and James Nunnally "Jim" Johnson. He and his younger brother, Cecil Patrick Johnson, were raised in Columbus, Georgia. His father was a journeyman mechanic, turned tinsmith and copper-smith, turned pipe and sheet-metal shop superintendent for the Central of Georgia Railway.[2][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.[5] 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]
Johnson's first marriage, in 1919 at Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights,[10] was to Alice Love Mason, with whom he had one daughter, Marjorie Fowler (film editor, born July 16, 1920). Alice was an editor with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.[11] Mason and Johnson divorced in 1920. His second marriage was to Marion Byrnes in 1927, also a staff member of the Daily Eagle,[12] with whom he also had a daughter, Nora Johnson. Byrnes's and Johnson's marriage ended in 1938.
While filming The Grapes of Wrath, Johnson met his third wife, a fellow southerner, actress Dorris Bowdon, a Mississippi native. The two were married at the home of Charles MacArthur and Helen Hayes, in Nyack-on-the-Hudson (Nyack, New York), on February 4, 1940.[13] Together they had three children; daughter Christie Johnson Lucero, daughter Roxanna Johnson Lonergan and Johnson's only son, Scott Johnson.
In 1964, Johnson adapted his daughter Nora Johnson's novel The World of Henry Orient into a film of the same title, starring Peter Sellers.
Filmography[edit]
| Year | Title | Functioned as | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writer | Producer | Director | ||
| 1927 | Rough House Rosie | Yes* | ||
| 1933 | A Bedtime Story | Yes | ||
| Mama Loves Papa | Yes* | |||
| 1934 | Moulin Rouge | Yes | ||
| The House of Rothschild | Yes | |||
| Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back | Yes | |||
| Kid Millions | Yes | |||
| 1935 | Cardinal Richelieu | Yes** | Yes | |
| Baby Face Harrington | Yes | |||
| Thanks a Million | Yes | |||
| The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo | Yes | Yes | ||
| 1936 | The Prisoner of Shark Island | Yes | Yes | |
| The Country Doctor | Yes | |||
| Dimples | Yes | |||
| The Road to Glory | Yes** | Yes | ||
| Banjo on My Knee | Yes | Yes | ||
| 1937 | Nancy Steele Is Missing! | Yes | ||
| Cafe Metropole | Yes | |||
| Slave Ship | Yes | |||
| Love Under Fire | Yes | |||
| 1939 | Jesse James | Yes | Yes | |
| Wife, Husband and Friend | Yes | Yes | ||
| Rose of Washington Square | Yes | Yes*** | ||
| 1940 | The Grapes of Wrath | Yes | Yes | |
| I Was an Adventuress | Yes** | Yes | ||
| Chad Hanna | Yes | Yes | ||
| 1941 | Tobacco Road | Yes | ||
| 1942 | Roxie Hart | Yes | Yes | |
| Moontide | Yes** | |||
| The Pied Piper | Yes | Yes | ||
| Life Begins at Eight-Thirty | Yes | Yes | ||
| 1943 | The Moon Is Down | Yes | Yes | |
| Holy Matrimony | Yes | Yes | ||
| 1944 | Casanova Brown | Yes | Yes | |
| The Keys of the Kingdom | Yes | |||
| 1945 | The Woman in the Window | Yes | Yes | |
| The Southerner | Yes | |||
| Along Came Jones | Yes | |||
| 1946 | The Dark Mirror | Yes | Yes | |
| 1947 | The Senator Was Indiscreet | Yes | ||
| 1948 | Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid | Yes | Yes | |
| 1949 | Everybody Does It | Yes | Yes | |
| 1950 | Three Came Home | Yes | Yes | |
| The Gunfighter | Yes** | Yes | ||
| The Mudlark | Yes | Yes | ||
| 1951 | The Long Dark Hall | Yes | ||
| The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel | Yes | Yes | ||
| 1952 | Phone Call from a Stranger | Yes | Yes | |
| We're Not Married! | Yes | Yes | ||
| O. Henry's Full House | Yes** | |||
| My Cousin Rachel | Yes | Yes | ||
| 1953 | How to Marry a Millionaire | Yes | Yes | |
| 1954 | Night People | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Witness to Murder | Yes** | |||
| Black Widow | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1955 | How to Be Very, Very Popular | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1956 | The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1957 | Oh, Men! Oh Women! | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| The Three Faces of Eve | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1959 | The Man Who Understood Women | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1960 | The Angel Wore Red | Yes | Yes | |
| Flaming Star | Yes | |||
| 1962 | Something's Got to Give | Yes | ||
| Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation | Yes | |||
| 1963 | Take Her, She's Mine | Yes | ||
| 1964 | The World of Henry Orient | Yes | ||
| 1965 | Dear Brigitte | Yes** | ||
| 1967 | The Dirty Dozen | Yes | ||
* Writer of original story
** Uncredited writer
***Co-producer
Bibliography[edit]
- 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 (2006-04-27). "Nunnally Johnson (1897-1977)". The New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2009-03-11.
References[edit]
- ^ Obituary Variety, March 30, 1977, page 79.
- ^ Stempel, Tom (1980). Screenwriter, The Life and Times of Nunnally Johnson. A. S. Barnes. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-498-02362-0.
- ^ Johnson, Nora (1979), Flashback: Nora Johnson on Nunnally Johnson, Doubleday, p. 20, ISBN 978-0-385-13406-4
- ^ Stempel. - p.24.
- ^ Official List of Officers of the Officers' Reserve Corps of the Army of the United States 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 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.
External links[edit]
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