Alan Campbell

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Alan Campbell (born February 21, 1904 in Richmond , Virginia , † June 14, 1963 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American screenwriter .

Life

Alan Campbell was the only child of Hortense (née Eichel) and Harry Lee Campbell in 1904 in Richmond , Virginia . His father was of Scottish descent and his mother came from a Jewish family who emigrated to the United States from Alsace and settled in Richmond after the American Civil War . After his parents divorced, Alan Campbell lived with his mother, who made a living as a tax clerk. After graduating from the Virginia Military Institute with a degree in civil engineering , Campbell worked for the Virginia State Highway Department. Dissatisfied with his job, he decided two years later to become an actor. In the late 1920s he finally moved to New York , where he worked for a time for The New Yorker magazine and appeared on Broadway several times until 1934 , including in the musical Show Boat and in Noël Coward's play Design for Living . In 1933 Campbell met the author Dorothy Parker , who was eleven years his senior , and whom he married a year later. Together they went to Hollywood , where from 1935 they wrote scripts for producer David O. Selznick and studios such as Paramount Pictures and United Artists . In 1938, she was for the film A Star Is Born ( A Star Is Born ) together with Robert Carson for the Oscar in the category Best Original Screenplay nomination. In 1954 this script was filmed again.

At his wife's insistence, Campbell enlisted in the US Army in 1942 and was initially stationed in Miami , Harrisburg and Long Island . At an officers' school he received the rank of lieutenant before he was transferred to London in November 1943 . There he worked for the Air Force ISR Agency , the intelligence service of the US Air Force , during World War II . He then served in Paris and Germany . In November 1946 he finally returned to New York.

Alienated by the war, Campbell and Parker divorced in 1947. They remarried three years later. Their second marriage lasted, despite further separations, until Campbell's death in 1963 when he took his own life with a sleeping pill overdose. His grave is in the Hebrew Cemetery in his hometown of Richmond. In the biopic Mrs. Parker and her vicious circle ( Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle , 1994) about the life of Dorothy Parker Campbell was played by Peter Gallagher .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marion Meade: Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? . Villard Books, 1988, ISBN 0-394-54440-4 , p. 228.
personal data
SURNAME Campbell, Alan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Richmond , Virginia
DATE OF DEATH June 14, 1963
Place of death los Angeles