Donald Ogden Stewart

Not to be confused with David Ogden Stiers.

Donald Ogden Stewart
black-and-white photo of Stewart
Born(1894-11-30)November 30, 1894
Columbus, Ohio
DiedAugust 2, 1980(1980-08-02) (aged 85)
London, England
Spouses
Beatrice Ames
​
(m. 1924⁠–⁠1938)​
​
(m. 1939⁠–⁠1980)​
AwardsAcademy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
1940 The Philadelphia Story

Donald Ogden Stewart (November 30, 1894 – August 2, 1980) was an American writer and screenwriter best known for his sophisticated golden age comedies and melodramas, such as The Philadelphia Story (based on the play by Philip Barry), Tarnished Lady and Love Affair. Stewart worked with a number of the directors of his time, including George Cukor (a frequent collaborator), Michael Curtiz and Ernst Lubitsch. Stewart was a member of the Algonquin Round Table and, with Ernest Hemingway's friend Bill Smith, the model for Bill Gorton in The Sun Also Rises. His 1922 parody on etiquette, Perfect Behavior, published by George H. Doran and Co., was a favorite book of P. G. Wodehouse.‍[1]

Life and career

His hometown was Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from Yale University, where he became a brother to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Phi chapter), in 1916, and served in the U.S. Naval Reserve in World War I.

After the war he started to write, and found success with A Parody Outline of History, a satire of The Outline of History (1920) by H. G. Wells. This led him to becoming a member of the Algonquin Round Table. Around that time a friend of his got him interested in theater and he became a playwright on Broadway in the 1920s. He was friends with Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, and Ernest Hemingway, who partly based the character of Bill Gorton in The Sun Also Rises on Stewart. In 1924, he wrote Mr. and Mrs. Haddock Abroad for the publishing house George H. Doran, a send-up of the "ugly American" tourist.

He became interested in adapting some of his plays to film, but on first entering Hollywood he had to adapt the plays of others as his own were initially shelved. Once there he mostly wrote, but he also had a small acting part in the film Not So Dumb. By the 1930s, he had become known primarily as a screenwriter, and won an Academy Award for The Philadelphia Story (1940). As World War II approached, he became a member of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, and admitted to being a member of the Communist Party USA at one of its public meetings.

During the Second Red Scare, Stewart was blacklisted in 1950; the following year, he and his wife, activist and writer Ella Winter (they had married in 1939), emigrated to England. In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.‍[2] His 1975 memoir is entitled By a Stroke of Luck.

Stewart died in London in 1980. His widow died three days later. Stewart had two sons from a previous marriage.‍[1]‍[3]

Film portrayal

Stewart was portrayed by the actor and playwright David Gow in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.

Partial filmography

As a writer

As an actor

  • Holiday (1928) – Nick Potter
  • Humorous Flights (1929) – Donald Ogden Stewart
  • Night Club (1929/I)
  • Not So Dumb (1930) – Skylar Van Dyke/Horace Patterson

Journalism

References

  1. ^ a b "Donald O. Stewart, Screenwriter, Dies; Writer of Screenplay for the Movie 'Philadelphia Story' Was Also Well Known for Parodies", The New York Times, August 3, 1980, ISSN 0362-4331, LCCN sn78004456, OCLC 1645522, retrieved April 18, 2008
  2. ^ "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest", New York Post, January 30, 1968, ISSN 1090-3321, OCLC 12032860
  3. ^ Cook, Joan (August 5, 1980), "Ella Winter Stewart, Journalist and Widow Of Donald O. Stewart; Was War Correspondent Back After 17 Years", The New York Times, ISSN 0362-4331, LCCN sn78004456, OCLC 1645522, retrieved April 18, 2008
  4. ^ Allen, Woody (2016). Kapsis, Robert E. (ed.). Woody Allen: Interviews, Revised and Updated. Conversations With Filmmakers Series (2nd ed.). Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. xxxiii. doi:10.2307/jj.399520. ISBN 978-1-4968-0440-2. ISSN 1556-1593. JSTOR jj.399520.
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