Ivan Moffat(1918-2002)

Ivan was a British screenwriter, socialite and producer. Nominated for an Academy Award with Fred Guiol for adapting Edna Ferber's G"Giant" and honored by the American Film Institute for his screenplays for "Shane" and "Giant". Born in Havana Cuba from a significantly famous photographer and artist, Curtis Moffatt and actress and poet Iris Tree. His grandfather was Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. His family family tree is directly traceable to Alec Guiness and through marriage to Ivana Lowell to Freud. A notorious member at Dartington Hall School and the London School of Economics. During this era he joined the Communist Party. He was befriended by Dylan Thomas and Christopher Isherwood. In 1943 he joined the United States Army, a writer for the Signal Corps. This group became known as the Hollywood Irregulars. It was here that he met and collaborated with George Stevens as a writer and assistant director. He supported the filming of the liberation of Paris and the infamous discovery of the Dachau concentration camps, an event that altered George Steven's emotionally for life. After the war Moffat joined Stevens as an assistant producer at Liberty Films. He contributed to the writing of "I Remember Mama", Shane", Place in the Sun", "Bhowani Junction", "D-Day the Sixth of June", "A Place in the Sun" and "Giant" as well as "The Wayward Bus", Boy on a Dolphin", "They Came to Cordura", "Tener is the Night", :"The Great Escape","The Greatest Story Evert Told" and "The Chase". He counted George Stevens, Christopher Isherwood and Billy Wilder among st his dearest friends. He has two sons, Jonathan and Patrick Moffat, Lorna Moffat and god daughter Jill Ann Davis.