Donald Ogden Stewart

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Donald Ogden Stewart (born November 30, 1894 in Columbus , Ohio , USA , † August 2, 1980 in London , England ) was an American screenwriter , dramaturge and actor .

Life

Donald Stewart graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in the US state of New Hampshire , and then from Yale University in New Haven ( Connecticut ), where he received his bachelor's degree in English in 1916 . Then completed Stewart his military service in the US Navy and served as a soldier in the First World War .

After living in Europe for almost two years after the war , Stewart moved to New York City in 1920 , where he initially tried it as a stockbroker . Since this career dream failed miserably, Stewart began to write scripts and novels, but initially without the necessary success. Stewart also met his first wife Beatrice in New York, whom he married in 1924. The two had two sons, Ames and Donald. In 1938 Donald and Beatrice divorced.

Stewart's first play, Los Angeles , was staged on Broadway in late 1927 , and only a year later, in 1928, he was also on the stage as an actor in Holiday .

In 1926 Stewart's play Brown of Harvard was adapted into a script and filmed by director Jack Conway . Stewart's attempts as an actor were rarely crowned with success in the late 1920s / early 1930s, so that he now devoted himself entirely to writing screenplays. He wrote the screenplay for Laughter together with Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast and Douglas Z. Doty in 1930 and was nominated for an Oscar in the category Best Original Story in 1931 together with his colleagues . It would be ten years before he received another Oscar nomination in 1941 and received an Oscar in the category Best Adapted Screenplay for The Night Before the Wedding .

Donald Stewart was also politically active. When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 , he joined the Anti-Nazi League , active in the USA , an association that was regarded as a cell of the Communist Party during the McCarthy era . That is why Stewart was blacklisted in 1951 . In order to distance himself from the persecution in his own country, Stewart decided to go to England for some time. It was here that the next stroke of fate befell him when he learned that the US Department of the Interior had declared his passport invalid and forbade him to enter the USA.

After being able to write screenplays for only a handful of films in England, he retired with his second wife Ella, whom he married in 1939. Here he wrote his autobiography in 1970 . In London itself, Donald O. Stewart died of a heart attack at the age of 85 .

Filmography (selection)

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Awards

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personal data
SURNAME Stewart, Donald Ogden
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heagerty, Travers John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American screenwriter, dramaturge and actor
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Columbus , Ohio , USA
DATE OF DEATH 2nd August 1980
Place of death London , England