Nunnally Johnson

Nunnally Hunter Johnson (December 5, 1897 – March 25, 1977) was an American filmmaker who wrote, produced, and directed motion pictures.

Nunnally Johnson
Johnson in 1939
Born	Nunnally Hunter Johnson (1897-12-05)December 5, 1897 Columbus, GA, U.S.
Died	March 25, 1977(1977-03-25) (aged 79) Los Angeles, CA U.S.
Spouse(s)	Alice Love Mason (1919–1920; 1 child) Marion Byrnes (1927–1938; 1 child) Dorris Bowdon (1940–1977; 3 children)
Children	5, including Marjorie Fowler and Nora Johnson

Biography

Early life

Nunnally Johnson was born on December 5, 1897 in Columbus, Georgia. He was the first of two sons born to Johnnie Pearl "Onnie" (née Patrick) and James Nunnally "Jim" Johnson. He and his younger brother, Cecil Patrick Johnson, were raised in Columbus, Georgia. His father was a journeyman mechanic, turned tinsmith and coppersmith, turned pipe and sheetmetal shop superintendent for the Central of Georgia Railway.[1][2] His mother founded what later became the PTA in Columbus, Georgia, and was the first woman to serve on the Muscogee County Board of Education. Johnson Elementary School in Columbus was built and named for her in 1949.[3] Nunnally graduated from Columbus High School in 1915.[4] While living in Columbus in 1919, at 1312 Third Street, Nunnally was a second lieutenant in the field artillery reserve corps.[5] His brother Cecil graduated from Georgia Tech in 1924,[6] married Gene Clair Norris,[7] and moved to Bellingham, Washington, where he was first a gas department superintendent and later a vice-president with Puget Sound Power & Light.[8][9]

Career

Johnson began his career as a journalist, writing for the Columbus Enquirer Sun, the Savannah Press, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the New York Evening Post and the New York Herald Tribune. He also wrote short stories and a collection of these, There Ought To Be a Law, was published in 1930. His first connection with film work was the sale of screen rights to one of his stories in 1927. Johnson asked his editor if he could write film criticism articles in 1932. When this request was denied, he decided to relocate to Hollywood and work directly in the film industry.

Quickly finding work as a scriptwriter, Johnson was hired full-time as a writer by 20th Century-Fox in 1935. He soon began producing films as well and co-founded International Pictures in 1943 with William Goetz. Johnson also directed several films in the 1950s, including two starring Gregory Peck. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Screenplay in 1940 for The Grapes of Wrath and the Directors Guild of America Best Director Award in 1956 for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. In 1964, Johnson adapted his daughter Nora Johnson's novel The World of Henry Orient into a film of the same title, starring Peter Sellers.

Personal life

His first marriage in 1919 at Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights,[10] was to Alice Love Mason, with whom he had one daughter, film editor Marjorie Fowler. Mason was an editor with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.[11] Mason and Johnson divorced in 1920. His second marriage was to Marion Byrnes in 1927, also a staff member of the Daily Eagle,[12] with whom he also had a daughter, Nora Johnson. Byrnes's and Johnson's marriage ended in 1938.

While filming The Grapes of Wrath, Johnson met his third wife, actress Dorris Bowdon, a Mississippi native. The two were married at the home of Charles MacArthur and Helen Hayes in Nyack-on-the-Hudson (Nyack, New York), on February 4, 1940.[13] Together they had three children. They resided in a mansion located at 625 Mountain Drive in Beverly Hills, California.[14] It was designed by architect Paul R. Williams.[14]

Actor Jack Johnson is his grandson with Dorris.

Death

Johnson died of pneumonia in Hollywood in 1977 and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.[15]

Filmography

Year	Title	As
		Writer	Producer	Director
1927	Rough House Rosie	Yes*
1933	A Bedtime Story	Yes
	Mama Loves Papa	Yes*
1934	Moulin Rouge	Yes
	The House of Rothschild	Yes
	Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back	Yes
	Kid Millions	Yes
1935	Cardinal Richelieu	Yes**	Yes
	Baby Face Harrington	Yes
	Thanks a Million	Yes
	The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo	Yes	Yes
1936	The Prisoner of Shark Island	Yes	Yes
	The Country Doctor		Yes
	Dimples		Yes
	The Road to Glory	Yes**	Yes
	Banjo on My Knee	Yes	Yes
1937	Nancy Steele Is Missing!		Yes
	Cafe Metropole		Yes
	Slave Ship		Yes
	Love Under Fire		Yes
1939	Jesse James	Yes	Yes
	Wife, Husband and Friend	Yes	Yes
	Rose of Washington Square	Yes	Yes***
1940	The Grapes of Wrath	Yes	Yes
	I Was an Adventuress	Yes**	Yes
	Chad Hanna	Yes	Yes
1941	Tobacco Road	Yes
1942	Roxie Hart	Yes	Yes
	Moontide	Yes**
	The Pied Piper	Yes	Yes
	Life Begins at Eight-Thirty	Yes	Yes
1943	The Moon Is Down	Yes	Yes
	Holy Matrimony	Yes	Yes
1944	Casanova Brown	Yes	Yes
	The Keys of the Kingdom	Yes
1945	The Woman in the Window	Yes	Yes
	The Southerner	Yes
	Along Came Jones	Yes
1946	The Dark Mirror	Yes	Yes
1947	The Senator Was Indiscreet		Yes
1948	Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid	Yes	Yes
1949	Everybody Does It	Yes	Yes
1950	Three Came Home	Yes	Yes
	The Gunfighter	Yes**	Yes
	The Mudlark	Yes	Yes
1951	The Long Dark Hall	Yes
	The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel	Yes	Yes
1952	Phone Call from a Stranger	Yes	Yes
	We're Not Married!	Yes	Yes
	O. Henry's Full House	Yes**
	My Cousin Rachel	Yes	Yes
1953	How to Marry a Millionaire	Yes	Yes
1954	Night People	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Witness to Murder	Yes**
	Black Widow	Yes	Yes	Yes
1955	How to Be Very, Very Popular	Yes	Yes	Yes
1956	The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit	Yes	Yes	Yes
1957	Oh, Men! Oh Women!	Yes	Yes	Yes
	The Three Faces of Eve	Yes	Yes	Yes
1959	The Man Who Understood Women	Yes	Yes	Yes
1960	The Angel Wore Red	Yes		Yes
	Flaming Star	Yes
1962	Something's Got to Give	Yes
	Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation	Yes
1963	Take Her, She's Mine	Yes
1964	The World of Henry Orient	Yes
1965	Dear Brigitte	Yes**
1967	The Dirty Dozen	Yes

* Writer of original story
** Uncredited writer
***Co-producer

Bibliography

• Manchel, Frank. (1990). Film Study: An Analytical Bibliography. In Chapter 5 Comparative Literature. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 1252. ISBN 0-8386-3412-5. Google Book Search. Retrieved on March 11, 2009.
• Lloyd, Craig (April 27, 2006). "Nunnally Johnson (1897–1977)". The New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 11, 2009.
• Johnson, Nunnally (1969). Recollections of Nunnally Johnson oral history transcript. University of California Oral History Program.

References

1. Stempel, Tom (1980). Screenwriter, The Life and Times of Nunnally Johnson. A. S. Barnes. pp. 20. ISBN 978-0-498-02362-0.
2. Johnson, Nora (1979), Flashback: Nora Johnson on Nunnally Johnson, Doubleday, p. 20, ISBN 978-0-385-13406-4
3. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on July 29, 2017. Retrieved July 29, 2017.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
4. Stempel. – p.24.
5. Official List of Officers of the Officers' Reserve Corps of the Army of the United States, 1, United States Adjutant-General's Office, 1919, pp. 34, 123
6. The Blueprint (Georgia Institute of Technology) – Class of 1924, Atlanta, Georgia: Blueprint Yearbook, 1924, p. 205
7. Vogel, Sonja O. (2007), The Patrick Family, SALOP Vogel, p. 8
8. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Convention of the Pacific Coast Gas Association, 23, Pacific Coast Gas Association, 1932, p. 566
9. Poor's Publishing Company, Standard and Poor's Corporation (1957), Poor's Register of Directors and Executives, United States and Canada, Part 2, Standard and Poor's Corp., p. 2410
10. Nora Johnson. – p.8.
11. Stempel. – p.28.
12. Stempel. – p.33.
13. Stempel. – p.103.
14. Victoria Talbot, 'Beverly Hills Cultural Heritage Commission Splits 2 To 2 on Mountain Drive Landmark Vote', The Beverly Hills Courier, October 3, 2014, Vol. XXXXVIIII, No. 39, p. 4
15. Obituary Variety, March 30, 1977, page 79.

External links

• Nunnally Johnson on IMDb
• Works by Nunnally Johnson at Project Gutenberg
• Nunnally Johnson at Find a Grave
• Nunnally Johnson Collection (MC 255) at Columbus State University Archives