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Frank Stanley Nugent (May 27, 1908 – December 29, 1965) was an American screenwriter, journalist, and film reviewer. He wrote 21 film scripts, 11 for director John Ford. He wrote almost a thousand reviews for The New York Times before leaving journalism for Hollywood. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953 and twice won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Comedy. The Writers Guild of America, West ranks his screenplay for The Searchers (1956) among the top 101 screenplays of all time.
One account of his output at the Times says that "He was known for his acerbic wit and poison-tipped pen, and even his news articles had verve and voice; his features were chatty, clever, and intimate, if occasionally smug." Nugent praised director John Ford without reservation, writing of Stagecoach in 1939:
Of Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, released the following year, he wrote:
His critiques were sometimes sharp-tongued. He called Mannequin with Joan Crawford and Spencer Tracy a "glib, implausible and smart-gowned little drama, as typical Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as Leo himself". Of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), he wrote: "The film is almost unrelievedly brutal and without the saving grace of unreality which makes Frankenstein's horrors a little comic." He aimed his barbs at individuals as well, like "the screen's latest leading man, John Trent, former transport pilot. Mr. Trent is square-jawed, rangy and solidly masculine. Eventually he may deteriorate and become an actor as well."
He particularly disliked the work of Tyrone Power for 20th Century Fox, and began his review of The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939) by saying: "If only because it has omitted Tyrone Power, 20th Century Fox's picture must be considered one of that company's more sober and meritorious contributions to the historical drama." In response, Fox and the theater that presented the film reduced their advertising in The New York Times for months, costing the paper $50,000. His review of Fox's The Grapes of Wrath led to an offer from Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck to work as a script editor for $400 a week, a very generous salary at the time. By then he had written almost a thousand film reviews for the Times.
Nugent was working on a magazine article about The Fugitive (1947), while the film was being shot, when he met the film director John Ford on the set in Mexico. Their meeting led to Nugent's long and fruitful association with the John Ford Stock Company. Ford hired him to work on his next film, Fort Apache (1948), and Nugent wrote screenplays for several more of Ford's westerns, including 3 Godfathers (also 1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Wagon Master (1950) and The Searchers. Of the 21 film scripts Nugent worked on, 11 were for Ford. They had a difficult working relationship, as did everyone who worked with Ford, but Nugent later said "it was a small price to pay for working with the best director in Hollywood." In assessing their work together, Glenn Frankel credits Nugent with providing Ford with more sophisticated male-female relationships than his other scripts and tempering the racism so endemic to the western genre's portrayal of Native Americans. Nugent's screenplay for Fort Apache, for example, altered his source material's "visceral loathing" for the Indigenous characters, transforming them into "victims of government-sanctioned criminal exploitation". In the place of like-minded Native leaders, he introduced contrast between the young, hot-blooded warrior and the wiser veteran, which became a standard feature of the Hollywood western.
His screenplay for The Searchers (1956), has been ranked among the top 101 screenplays of all time by the Writers Guild of America, West. 101 screenplays Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) It was named the Greatest Western of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008. It placed 12th on the American Film Institute's 2007 list of the 100 Greatest American Films. AFI's website listing Top 100 films
He wrote other westerns for Stuart Heisler ( Tulsa), for Robert Wise ( Two Flags West), for Raoul Walsh ( The Tall Men), and for Phil Karlson ( They Rode West and Gunman's Walk). Nugent also worked on Mister Roberts.
His screenplays in other genres include The Red Beret, North West Frontier, Trouble in the Glen, The Quiet Man, The Rising of the Moon and Donovan's Reef.
For his work on for The Quiet Man, he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay. The Quiet Man won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Comedy in 1953 and he won the same award in 1956 for Mister Roberts (1955). Awards Internet Movie Database.
Of his long association with Ford, Nugent once wrote:
Nugent served as the President of the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) from 1957 to 1958 and as its representative on the Motion Picture Industry Council from 1954 to 1959. He also served a three-year stint (1956–59) as chairman of the building fund committee that oversaw the construction of its headquarters in Beverly Hills.
Nugent suffered from heart problems for several years before dying of a heart attack on December 29, 1965, in Los Angeles.
Career in films
Nugent continued to write for the Times on a freelance basis during his first several years in Hollywood. For Zanuck he worked on scripts, reviewing others' screenplays and providing criticism. He said later that "Zanuck told me he didn't want me to write, that he just thought the studio would save money if I criticized the pictures before they were made." Fox terminated him in 1944 and Nugent turned to work as a freelance writer. His sharp critiques served Zanuck, but won him no screenwriting work, while his criticism of his colleagues' work, just as clever as when he was a journalist, was not designed to win collaborators. He returned one script to Zanuck with a note saying: "My opinion of this script is unchanged. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with it that a waste basket can't cure."
Personal life
On January 3, 1939, he married Dorothy J. Rivers. New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia performed the ceremony in his City Hall chambers. They divorced in 1952. He married his second wife, Jean Lavell, in 1953.
Feature film screenwriting credits
Credited as Frank S. Nugent or Frank Nugent for screenplay or the story that provides the basis for the screenplay.
+ Table key Indicates films directed by John Ford
Additional sources
External links
Categories: 1908 Births, 1965 Deaths, Columbia University Graduate School Of Journalism Alumni, American Male Screenwriters, American Film Critics, Writers Guild Of America Award Winners, 20th-century American Non-fiction Writers, Regis High School Alumni, 20th-century American Male Writers, American Male Non-fiction Writers, Screenwriters From New York, 20th-century American Screenwriters
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