Frank Nugent
Encyclopedia
Frank Stanley Nugent was an American journalist
, film reviewer, script doctor
, and screenwriter
who wrote 21 film scripts, 11 for John Ford
. He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
for film The Quiet Man
in 1953; the film also won him his first Writers Guild of America Award
for 'Best Written American Comedy', an award he was to receive again in 1956 for Mister Roberts (1955).
His screenplay for The Searchers
(1956), ranks amongst the top 101 screenplays of all time by Writers Guild of America, West
(WGAW) , while the film itself is now widely acknowledged as one of the best Westerns ever made, being named the Greatest Western of all time by the American Film Institute
in 2008. It also placed 12th on the American Film Institute
's 2007 list of the 100 Greatest American Films of all time..
, started his career as a news reporter with The New York Times
in 1929 and in 1934 moved into reviewing films; two years later he succeeded Andre Sennwald as the NYT's motion picture editor and critic in 1936, a post he held till 1940 . It was Nugent who wrote the very favorable New York Times review of the classic MGM film The Wizard of Oz
in 1939.
Nugent's not so positive review of The Story of Alexander Graham Bell
that same year led to a reduction of 20th Century Fox
's advertising in the Times for six months, costing the Times
$50,000 in lost advertising revenue A review of Fox's The Grapes of Wrath
led to an offer from studio head Darryl F. Zanuck
to work as a script editor at the studio with Zanuck saying "if you can't fire 'em, hire 'em". Nugent freelanced as a journalist during this period.
Nugent met Ford when an assignment for the New York Times Magazine to Mexico to meet with John Ford
during the filming of The Fugitive
(1947) led to a long and fruitful association with the John Ford Stock Company
. Nugent also worked in England (The Red Beret
and North West Frontier), Scotland (Trouble in the Glen
), Ireland (The Quiet Man
and The Rising of the Moon
), and Hawaii (Donovan's Reef
).
Nugent wrote a variety of Western
films such as Fort Apache
, 3 Godfathers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
, Wagonmaster
and The Searchers
for John Ford with other westerns for Stuart Heisler
(Tulsa), Robert Wise
(Two Flags West
), Raoul Walsh
(The Tall Men
), and They Rode West and Gunman's Walk for Phil Karlson
. Nugent also worked on the troubled Mister Roberts .
He served as the President of the Writers Guild of America, West
(WGAW), from 1957 to 1958, 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 . He died on 29 December 1965 in Los Angeles, California
.
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, film reviewer, script doctor
Script doctor
A script doctor, also called script consultant, is a highly-skilled screenwriter, hired by a film or television production, to rewrite or polish specific aspects of an existing screenplay, including structure, characterization, dialogue, pacing, theme, and other elements...
, and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
who wrote 21 film scripts, 11 for John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
. He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
The Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay is one of the Academy Awards, the most prominent film awards in the United States. It is awarded each year to the writer of a screenplay adapted from another source...
for film The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man is a 1952 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film. It was directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. It was based on a 1933 Saturday Evening Post short story by Maurice Walsh...
in 1953; the film also won him his first Writers Guild of America Award
Writers Guild of America Award
The Writers Guild of America Award for outstanding achievements in film, television, and radio has been presented annually by the Writers Guild of America, East and Writers Guild of America, West since 1949...
for 'Best Written American Comedy', an award he was to receive again in 1956 for Mister Roberts (1955).
His screenplay for The Searchers
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...
(1956), ranks amongst the top 101 screenplays of all time by Writers Guild of America, West
Writers Guild of America, west
Writers Guild of America, West is a labor union representing film, television, radio, and new media writers. The Guild was formed in 1954 from five organizations representing writers, which include the Screen Writers Guild...
(WGAW) , while the film itself is now widely acknowledged as one of the best Westerns ever made, being named the Greatest Western of all time by the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
in 2008. It also placed 12th on the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
's 2007 list of the 100 Greatest American Films of all time..
Biography
Frank S. Nugent studied journalism at Columbia UniversityColumbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, started his career as a news reporter with The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
in 1929 and in 1934 moved into reviewing films; two years later he succeeded Andre Sennwald as the NYT's motion picture editor and critic in 1936, a post he held till 1940 . It was Nugent who wrote the very favorable New York Times review of the classic MGM film The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
in 1939.
Nugent's not so positive review of The Story of Alexander Graham Bell
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell is a somewhat fictionalized 1939 screen biography of the famous inventor of the telephone. It was filmed in black-and-white and released by Twentieth Century-Fox. The film stars Don Ameche as Bell and Loretta Young as Mabel, his wife, who contracted scarlet fever...
that same year led to a reduction of 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
's advertising in the Times for six months, costing the Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
$50,000 in lost advertising revenue A review of Fox's The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....
led to an offer from studio head Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl Francis Zanuck was an American producer, writer, actor, director and studio executive who played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of its longest survivors...
to work as a script editor at the studio with Zanuck saying "if you can't fire 'em, hire 'em". Nugent freelanced as a journalist during this period.
Nugent met Ford when an assignment for the New York Times Magazine to Mexico to meet with John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
during the filming of The Fugitive
The Fugitive (1947 film)
The Fugitive is a 1947 drama film starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, based on the novel The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. It was shot on location in Mexico by Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa.-Plot:...
(1947) led to a long and fruitful association with the John Ford Stock Company
John Ford Stock Company
The John Ford Stock Company is the name given to the large collection of actors used repeatedly in the films of American director John Ford. Most famous among these was John Wayne, who appeared in twenty-four films and three television episodes for the director...
. Nugent also worked in England (The Red Beret
The Red Beret
The Red Beret is a 1953 British made Technicolor war film starring Alan Ladd, Leo Genn and Susan Stephen. It deals with the Parachute Regiment during the Second World War. It is notable as the first film made by Warwick Films with many of the crew working on various Warwick Films and Albert R....
and North West Frontier), Scotland (Trouble in the Glen
Trouble in the Glen
Trouble in the Glen is a 1954 British comedy film directed by Herbert Wilcox and starring Margaret Lockwood, Orson Welles and Forrest Tucker...
), Ireland (The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man is a 1952 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film. It was directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. It was based on a 1933 Saturday Evening Post short story by Maurice Walsh...
and The Rising of the Moon
The Rising of the Moon (film)
The Rising of the Moon is a 1957 anthology film directed by John Ford. It consists of three episodes all set in Ireland:*"The Majesty of the Law", based on the short story of that title by Frank O'Connor in Bones of Contention...
), and Hawaii (Donovan's Reef
Donovan's Reef
Donovan's Reef is a 1963 American film starring John Wayne. It was directed John Ford and filmed on location on Kauai, Hawaii.The cast included Elizabeth Allen, Lee Marvin, Dorothy Lamour, and Cesar Romero. The film marked the last time Ford and Wayne ever worked together on a...
).
Nugent wrote a variety of Western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
films such as Fort Apache
Fort Apache
-Places:* Fort Apache, Arizona* Fort Apache Indian Reservation, the White Mountain Apache tribe's reservation and former US Army cavalry post near Whiteriver, Arizona* Fuerte Apache, a housing project outside Buenos Aires, Argentina.-Military:...
, 3 Godfathers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is a 1949 Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne. The film was the second of Ford's trilogy of films focusing on the US Cavalry ; the other two films were Fort Apache and Rio Grande...
, Wagonmaster
Wagonmaster
Wagonmaster was released on June 5, 2007 on the ANTI- Records label, and is the final studio album by American country music artist Porter Wagoner, who died on October 28 that year. A music video was made for the album's only single "Committed to Parkview"....
and The Searchers
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...
for John Ford with other westerns for Stuart Heisler
Stuart Heisler
Stuart Heisler was an American film and television director. He worked as a motion picture editor from 1921 to 1936, then dedicated the rest of his career to that of a film director....
(Tulsa), Robert Wise
Robert Wise
Robert Earl Wise was an American sound effects editor, film editor, film producer and director...
(Two Flags West
Two Flags West
Two Flags West is a 1950 Western drama set during the American Civil War, directed by Robert Wise and starring Joseph Cotton, Jeff Chandler, Linda Darnell, and Cornell Wilde...
), Raoul Walsh
Raoul Walsh
Raoul Walsh was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh...
(The Tall Men
The Tall Men
The Tall Men can refer to:* The Tall Men starring Clark Gable* The Tall Men by William Faulkner....
), and They Rode West and Gunman's Walk for Phil Karlson
Phil Karlson
Phil Karlson was a film director known for his no-nonsense film noirs. Karlson directed 99 River Street, Kansas City Confidential and Hell's Island all with actor John Payne in the early 1950s...
. Nugent also worked on the troubled Mister Roberts .
He served as the President of the Writers Guild of America, West
Writers Guild of America, west
Writers Guild of America, West is a labor union representing film, television, radio, and new media writers. The Guild was formed in 1954 from five organizations representing writers, which include the Screen Writers Guild...
(WGAW), from 1957 to 1958, 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 . He died on 29 December 1965 in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
.
Further reading
- The Searchers: Screenplay, by Frank S Nugent, Alan Le May, John Ford. Published by Warner Bros, 1956. Online Version
- American Film Criticism, from the Beginnings to Citizen Kane: Reviews of Significant Films at the Time They First Appeared, by Stanley Kauffmann, Bruce Henstell. Published by Liveright, 1972. ISBN 0-87140-557-1.
- Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema, 1927-1973, by Richard Corliss. Overlook Press. 1974.
- Talking Pictures: Screenwriters of Hollywood, by Richard Corliss. Published by David & Charles, 1975.
- The New York Times at the Movies, by Arleen Keylin, Christine Bent. Published by Arno Press, 1979. ISBN 0-405-12415-5.
- Close Viewings: An Anthology of New Film Criticism, by Peter Lehman. Published by University Press of Florida, 1990. ISBN 0-8130-0967-7.
External links
- Frank S. Nugent at Allmovie.
- Frank S. Nugent Reviews at New York Times.
- Frank S. Nugent Reviews at Rottentomatoes.