Philip Dunne (writer)

Philip Ives Dunne (February 11, 1908 – June 2, 1992) 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.

Although a Roman Catholic, he attended Middlesex School (1920–1925) and Harvard University (1925–1929).

Immediately after graduation, he boarded a train for Hollywood for his health and to seek work.

Dunne was not initially interested in working in the film industry but that was the first place he got a job.

Via a recommendation from a friend of his brother he obtained work at Fox as a reader at $35 a week.

Also among readers at the time was Leonard Spigelgass.

Dunne later recalled:

"We got nothing but the worst stuff; all the good books and plays went through the New York readers’ department. We got the pathetic originals written by out-of-work screenwriters. I kept seeing ways that I thought I could improve them. I'd write a synopsis, and I'd make it better. I couldn't help it. It would be an obvious thing that the guy had missed. And when you learn to synopsize a story, you learn to construct it. At the same time, I was moonlighting writing short stories, so all these things came together.'"

In 1931, Dunne was fired from Fox after less than a year at the studio in a cost-cutting move.

He was briefly under contract at MGM, writing a comedy for them, but was unhappy with his work and resigned after handing in his first draft.

Dunne also worked uncredited on Me and My Gal (1932).

This script was subsequently filmed as Student Tour (1934), which Dunne never saw.

The first important screenplay of Dunne's career was The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), produced by Edward Small.

Dunne was brought on to the project after the novel had been distilled to a treatment by director Rowland V. Lee and Dan Totheroh, and Dunne helped finesse the script into scenes and did the dialogue.

Dunne later credited Lee as an important mentor for him.

Small kept Dunne on to work on the script for The Melody Lingers On (1935).

He was also credited for Helldorado (1935), the latter at Fox for Jesse Lasky, another early mentor.

He did some minor uncredited work on Under Pressure (1935) and Magnificent Obsession (1935).

Dunne received a lot of acclaim for his adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans (1936) for Small which he wrote with John L. Balderstone.

For Universal he wrote Breezing Home (1937) which he later said was the first of what he considered only four original screenplays he would write in his career.

After working for various studios, he moved to 20th Century Fox in 1937, where he would remain for 25 years (excepting 4 years civilian war service during World War II), scripting 36 films in total and directing 10.

He also produced several of his later films.

His first assignment at Fox was Lancer Spy (1937), with George Sanders.

He then did three films in collaboration with Julien Josephson which established him as one of the leading writers at the studio: Suez (1938), Stanley and Livingstone (1939), and The Rains Came (1939).

Alone Dunne wrote Swanee River (1939), and Johnny Apollo (1940) (rewriting Rowland Brown's draft).

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).

Dunne received two Academy Award nominations for screenwriting: How Green Was My Valley (1941) and David and Bathsheba (1951).

He wrote How Green Was My Valley (1941) originally developed with William Wyler then taken over by John Ford.

He also wrote Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake (1942).

From 1942 to 1945, Dunne was the Chief of Production for the Motion Picture Bureau, U.S. Office of War Information, Overseas Branch.

He wrote films such as Salute to France (1943).

Notably, he produced the non-fiction short The Town (1944), directed by Josef von Sternberg, which has received some critical acclaim.

Dunne returned to Fox after the war and quickly re-established himself as one of the studio's leading writers with credits including The Late George Apley (1947), and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).

He also received a Golden Globe nomination for his 1965 screen adaptation of Irving Stone's novel The Agony and the Ecstasy, as well as several peer awards from the Writers Guild of America (WGA), including the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement.

Many notable directors worked with Dunne's screenplays, including Carol Reed, John Ford, Jacques Tourneur, Elia Kazan, Otto Preminger, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and Michael Curtiz, among others.

Dunne was born in New York City, the son of Chicago syndicated columnist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne and Margaret Ives Abbott, the first American woman to win an Olympic medal and the daughter of the Chicago Tribune's book reviewer and novelist, Mary Ives Abbott.

Dunne claimed the script was hurt by later rewrites from another writer, but the script, rather than the original novel, formed the basis of the 1992 film version.