Samuel Hoffenstein

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Samuel Goodman Hoffenstein (born October 9, 1890 in the Russian Empire , † October 6, 1947 in Los Angeles ) was an American poet and screenwriter .

Life

Samuel Hoffenstein's parents emigrated with him to the United States in 1894 . He attended Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania , where he graduated in 1911. He began his professional career as a newspaper reporter and was a theater critic for the New York Evening Sun from 1914 to 1915 . From 1916 to 1927 he worked as a press agent for theater producer Al Woods. He also wrote articles and humorous poems for Vanity Fair and the New York Tribune . His poems were later published in the anthologies Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing (1928) and Pencil in the Air (1947).

In 1931 he moved to Los Angeles , where he was signed to Paramount Pictures and wrote his first screenplay for Josef von Sternberg's An American Tragedy ( An American Tragedy , 1931). In 1932, along with Percy Heath, he received his first Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ( Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ). In 1934 he was loaned to RKO Pictures to musically adapt the Cole-Porter - Musical Gay Divorce (1932), on the libretto of which he had worked, for the big screen. This became the Astaire and Rogers film Dance With Me! ( The Gay Divorcee ). In the 1940s, Hoffenstein was a permanent employee of 20th Century Fox . He worked several times with the director Julien Duvivier , including for The Great Waltz ( The Great Waltz , 1938) and the two star-studded episodic films Six Destinies ( Tales of Manhattan , 1942) and The Second Face ( Flesh and Fantasy , 1943). In 1945, together with Jay Dratler and Elizabeth Reinhardt, he was nominated again for an Oscar for Otto Preminger's film noir Laura in the category Best Original Screenplay.

Hoffenstein, who married Edith Morgan in 1927, died of a heart attack in 1947, three days before his 57th birthday . The last film he wrote the script for, Give My Regards to Broadway , was released posthumously.

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Hoffenstein, Samuel . In: Samantha Cook: Writers and Production Artists . St. James Pr., 1993, p. 373.
personal data
SURNAME Hoffenstein, Samuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hoffenstein, Samuel Goodman (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1947
Place of death los Angeles