Biography

Frank S. Nugent

Jump to

Frank S. Nugent was an American screenwriter known for his collaborations with director John Ford. For a writer with only 21 feature films credited to his name, his influence is surprisingly ubiquitous and far-reaching. During his lifetime Nugent won two WGA Awards for Best Written Comedy for The Quiet Man (1952) and Mister Roberts (1955) respectively. He also wrote two films in Ford's famous "Cavalry Trilogy" and his script for The Searchers (1956) has been named by the WGA as one of the 101 greatest screenplays of all time. It's no exaggeration to say that every subsequent western movie bore the influence of Nugent's writing.

Nugent began his career as a film critic for The New York Times. He was very prolific and became known for his vicious reviews of popular movies. Producer Darryl F. Zanuck noticed his writings and decided to hire him as a script doctor. After working on a number of scripts, Nugent met John Ford (a director he liked) and the two decided to work together, thus beginning one of Hollywood's most fruitful writer-director collaborations. Nugent wrote for Ford for several decades, writing some of his best-known and most successful films.
- IMDb mini biography by: Jackson Diianni

Following his journalistic beginnings, he worked under contract as a script doctor for 20th Century Fox. After leaving Fox, he became a freelance journalist and columnist for magazines like "Colliers", "Saturday Evening Post" and "Good Housekeeping". In addition to his subsequent work for John Ford (of whom he had been an ardent admirer from his time as a key reviewer for "The New York Times"), he was a contract writer for Columbia from 1957-60.
Film critic with the "New York Times", which eventually led to his screenwriting career. He is mostly known for his westerns with John Ford.
President of the Writer's Guild of America from 1957-58.
Educated at Columbia University. Studied journalism.

[reviewing 'Show Boat' (1936)]: Universal's excellent screen transcription, preserving the Jerome Kern score and accepting Oscar Hammerstein's book and lyrics, is the pleasantest kind of proof that it was not merely one of the best musical shows of the century but that it contained the gossamer stuff for one of the finest musical films we have seen.
[from his review of Show Boat (1936)] Universal's excellent screen transcription, preserving the Jerome Kern score and accepting Oscar Hammerstein II's book and lyrics, is the pleasantest kind of proof that it was not merely one of the best musical shows of the century but that it contained the gossamer stuff for one of the finest musical films we have seen.
[from his review of The Wizard of Oz (1939)] "The Wizard of Oz" t is all so well-intentioned, so genial and so gay that any reviewer who would look down his nose at the fun-making should be spanked and sent off, supperless, to bed.

Suggest an edit or add missing content