Edwin Justus Mayer

Edwin Justus Mayer (born November 8, 1896 in New York ; † September 11, 1960 there ) was an American screenwriter and comedy specialist.

The early years

The descendant of Bohemian immigrants - the father Paul Mayer came from Karlsbad - began to work in the office after graduating from school before he turned to writing. At first he worked as a newspaper reporter. From the end of March to mid-July 1924, Mayer stayed in Europe, where he traveled to a number of countries and also followed in the footsteps of his ancestors in Germany and Austria. Back in New York, Mayer began to write plays that would later be performed on Broadway: The Firebrand (1924, filmed ten years later as The Affairs of Cellini ), Children of Darkness (1930 and 1958), The Firebrand of Florence (1945, musical with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ira Gershwin based on Mayer's 1924 piece) and The Last Love of Don Juan (1955).

With the film

At the end of the 1920s he made his first contacts in Hollywood when the producer Samuel Goldwyn hired him as his press representative. Even in the silent film era, Mayer was allowed to write film titles (such as for The Devil Dancer and Our Blushing Brides ), and later also the dialogues. Shortly before the age of talkies, he was allowed to try his hand at writing a script for the first time. Mayer's specialty was the feather-light comedy, the playful comedy and the elegant romance. In these genres he achieved mastery in the interplay with Ernst Lubitsch , for whom he wrote the manuscripts on Perlen zum Glück (created under Lubitsch's leadership), to be or not to be and scandal at court .

For Mitchell Leisen's turbulent sophisticated comedy Midnight - Revelation at midnight , a masterpiece of this genre, he participated in the story template in 1938. In the same year he was also one of the numerous unnamed authors who worked on the classic film Gone With the Wind . Mayer, a dialogue specialist, usually cooperated with colleagues in the preparation of his manuscripts.

His son was the film producer and screenwriter Paul Avila Mayer and his granddaughter is the director Daisy von Scherler Mayer .

Filmography (selection)

script

• 1928: Not so dumb
• 1929: The Unholy Night
• 1930: In Gay Madrid
• 1930: romance
• 1931: Never the Twain Shall Meet
• 1931: The Magician of Paris ( The Phantom of Paris )
• 1932: Joan and Jerry ( Merrily We Go to Hell )
• 1932: Wild Girl
• 1932: Uproar in Utopia ( Tonight is Ours )
• 1933: I am Susanne ( I Am Suzanne! )
• 1934: Thirty days Princess ( Thirty-day Princess )
• 1934: The Grand Duchess and the Waiter ( Here is My Heart )
• 1935: The Farm on the Mississippi ( So Red the Rose )
• 1935: Give us the night ( Give Us This Night )
• 1935: pearls for happiness
• 1936: Till We Meet Again
• 1938: The privateers of Louisiana ( The Buccaneer )
• 1938: Exile Express
• 1939: Rio
• 1941: escape route unknown ( They Met in Bombay )
• 1941: to be or not to be
• 1944: Scandal at court ( A Royal Scandal )

Web links

• Edwin Justus Mayer in Internet Movie Database (English)