Charles William Brackett | |
|---|---|
 Brackett in 1942 | |
| Born | November 26, 1892 |
| Died | March 9, 1969 (aged 76) |
| Alma mater | Williams College |
| Occupation(s) | Screenwriter, producer |
| Years active | 1925–1962 |
| Spouses | Elizabeth Fletcher (m. 1919;died 1948)Lillian Fletcher (m. 1953) |
| Children | 2 |
Charles William Brackett (November 26, 1892 – March 9, 1969) was an American screenwriter and film producer. He collaborated with Billy Wilder on sixteen films.
Brackett was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, the son of Mary Emma Corliss and New York State Senator, lawyer, and banker Edgar Truman Brackett. The family's roots traced back to the arrival of Richard Brackett in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, near present-day Springfield, Massachusetts. His mother's uncle, George Henry Corliss, built the Centennial Engine that powered the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. A 1915 graduate of Williams College, he earned his law degree from Harvard University. He joined the Allied Expeditionary Force during World War I, and was awarded the French Medal of Honor.
He was a frequent contributor to the Saturday Evening Post , Collier's , and Vanity Fair , and a drama critic for The New Yorker . He wrote five novels: The Counsel of the Ungodly (1920), Week-End (1925), That Last Infirmity (1926), American Colony (1929), [1] and Entirely Surrounded (1934).
Brackett was a president of the Screen Writers Guild (1938–1939) and for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (1949–1955). He either wrote and/or produced over forty films, including To Each His Own , Ninotchka , The Major and the Minor , The Mating Season (1951), Niagara , The King and I , Ten North Frederick , The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker and Blue Denim .
Beginning in August 1936, Brackett worked with Billy Wilder, writing the film classics The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard , both of which won Academy Awards for their respective screenplays. Brackett described their collaboration process as follows: "The thing to do was suggest an idea, have it torn apart and despised. In a few days it would be apt to turn up, slightly changed, as Wilder's idea. Once I got adjusted to that way of working, our lives were simpler." [2]
His partnership with Wilder ended in 1950 and Brackett went to work at 20th Century-Fox as a screenwriter and producer. His script for Titanic (1953) won him another Academy Award.
He received an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1958.
Brackett died on March 9, 1969. [3] His diaries covering his screenwriting and social life from 1932 to 1949 were edited by Anthony Slide into Slide's book It's the Pictures That Got Small: Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age.
Brackett married Elizabeth Barrows Fletcher, a descendant of Stephen Hopkins of the Mayflower , on June 2, 1919. They had two daughters, Alexandra Corliss Brackett, Mrs. Larmore (1920–1965) and Elizabeth Fletcher Brackett (1922–1997). His wife died on June 7, 1948. In 1953, Brackett married Lillian Fletcher, the sister of his first wife. They had no children. [4]
Brackett was a Republican who voted for Alf Landon in 1936 and supported Barry Goldwater in the 1964 United States presidential election. [5]
("*" indicates collaboration with Wilder)
| Year | Category | Film | Result | Shared with |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1939 | Best Adapted Screenplay | Ninotchka | Nominated | Billy Wilder & Walter Reisch |
| 1941 | Best Adapted Screenplay | Hold Back the Dawn | Nominated | Billy Wilder |
| 1945 | Best Picture | The Lost Weekend | Won | — |
| 1945 | Best Adapted Screenplay | The Lost Weekend | Won | Billy Wilder |
| 1946 | Best Story | To Each His Own | Nominated | |
| 1948 | Best Adapted Screenplay | A Foreign Affair | Nominated | Billy Wilder & Richard L. Breen |
| 1950 | Best Picture | Sunset Boulevard | Nominated | — |
| 1950 | Best Original Screenplay | Sunset Boulevard | Won | Billy Wilder & D. M. Marshman Jr. |
| 1953 | Best Original Screenplay | Titanic | Won | Richard L. Breen & Walter Reisch |
| 1956 | Best Picture | The King and I | Nominated | — |
| 1957 | Honorary Award | — | Won | — |
Billy Wilder was an Austrian-born filmmaker and screenwriter. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. He received seven Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and two Golden Globe Awards.
Ninotchka is a 1939 American romantic comedy film made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. It was written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch, based on a screen story by Melchior Lengyel. Ninotchka is Greta Garbo's first full comedy, and her penultimate film; she received her third and final Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1990, Ninotchka was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2011, Time also included the film on the magazine's list of "All-Time 100 Movies".
Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American black comedy film noir directed by Billy Wilder and co-written by Wilder and Charles Brackett. It was named after a major street that runs through Hollywood.
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William H. Daniels ASC was a film cinematographer who was Greta Garbo's personal lensman, serving as the cinematographer for such Garbo-starring films as Torrent (1926), The Mysterious Lady (1928), The Kiss (1929), Anna Christie, Romance, Grand Hotel (1932), Anna Karenina (1935), and Camille (1936). Early in his career he worked regularly with director Erich von Stroheim, providing cinematography for such films as The Devil's Pass Key (1920) and Greed (1924). Daniels went on to win an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on The Naked City (1948).
Philip Ives Dunne was an American screenwriter, film director and producer, who worked prolifically from 1932 until 1965. He spent the majority of his career at 20th Century Fox. He crafted well regarded romantic and historical dramas, usually adapted from another medium. Dunne was a leading Screen Writers Guild organizer and was politically active during the "Hollywood Blacklist" episode of the 1940s–1950s. He is best known for the films How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Robe (1953) and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965).
Donald McGill Marshman Jr. credited as D. M. Marshman, was an American screenwriter known mainly for his contribution to the film script for Sunset Boulevard.
John Francis Seitz, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer and inventor.
Charles Reginald Jackson was an American writer. He wrote the 1944 novel The Lost Weekend.
Billy Wilder (1906–2002) was an Austrian filmmaker. Wilder initially pursued a career in journalism after being inspired by an American newsreel. He worked for the Austrian magazine Die Bühne and the newspaper Die Stunde in Vienna, and later for the German newspapers Berliner Nachtausgabe, and Berliner Börsen-Courier in Berlin. His first screenplay was for the German silent thriller The Daredevil Reporter (1929). Wilder fled to Paris in 1933 after the rise of the Nazi Party, where he co-directed and co-wrote the screenplay of French drama Mauvaise Graine (1934). In the same year, Wilder left France on board the RMS Aquitania to work in Hollywood despite having little knowledge of English.
The Major and the Minor is a 1942 American romantic comedy film starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland. It was the first American film directed by Billy Wilder. The screenplay credited to Wilder and Charles Brackett is "suggested by" the 1923 play Connie Goes Home by Edward Childs Carpenter, based on the 1921 Saturday Evening Post story "Sunny Goes Home" by Fannie Kilbourne.
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David Lewis was a prominent Hollywood film producer in the 1940s and 1950s, who produced such films as Dark Victory (1939), Arch of Triumph (1948), and Raintree County (1957). He worked for Warner Brothers, Paramount and M-G-M and was elected a vice president of Enterprise Productions, Inc. in 1946.
The 8th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film for 1950 films, were held on February 28, 1951, in the Ciro's nightclub in West Hollywood, California, at 8433 Sunset Boulevard, on the Sunset Strip.
Doane Harrison was an American film editor whose career spanned four decades. For nearly twenty years, from 1935–54, he was a prolific editor of films for Paramount Pictures, including eleven films with director Mitchell Leisen. For twenty-five years, from 1941–1966, Harrison was editor, editorial supervisor or associate producer on all the films directed by Billy Wilder, who is now considered one of the great 20th-century filmmakers.
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David Hempstead was an American film producer known for None but the Lonely Heart (1944), The Sky's the Limit (1943), directed by Edward H. Griffith, and Joan of Paris (1942), directed by Robert Stevenson. He co-wrote the script of Hell and High Water (1954) alongside Jesse Lasky.
Al Martin was an American screenwriter and TV writer known for his work on B-movies across a wide range of genres.
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