Meet...playwright/screenwriter Sidney Howard

What should you know about Sidney Howard?

A journalist, playwright and screenwriter during the 1920s and 1930s, Sidney Howard was the first person to win a Pulitzer Prize and an Academy Award. Born in 1891 in Oakland, CA, he began writing while at the University of California-Berkeley for various student publications. He later studied at Harvard and served in the military during World War I before moving to New York City in 1919. There he began working as a journalist, writing for Life, The New Republic and Hearst International.

For what did he win his awards?

Between 1921 and 1938, Howard wrote more than 50 plays, but his most successful was They Knew What They Wanted in 1924. It won the Pulitzer the following year. Set in the California wine country, the play follows the story of an Italian immigrant and his mail-ordered bride. It was later adapted into the Frank Loesser musical The Most Happy Fella. Nearly all of Howard's plays had successful runs in New York. Three of his plays were produced in the early and mid-1950s, more than 13 years after his death.


While he wrote plays he also delved into screenwriting for which he received three Oscar nominations, winning once. The first nomination in 1932 was for his adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel Arrowsmith. The second nomination in 1937 was for another Lewis novel adaptation, Dodsworth, which he had also adapted for the New York stage, but it was the third time that was the charm for Howard.

In 1940, just months after his death, Howard won an Oscar for his adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. His final distinction was to be the first person to be awarded the Oscar posthumously. He had died in an accident in August 1939 before the film was completed.

How is Howard remembered?


Aside from his awards, Howard was also a major force in New York theater in the 1920s and 1930s. He, along with other powerful playwrights such as Robert Sherwood, founded The Playwrights' Company in 1938 to rival the Theatre Guild on Broadway. The producing company was responsible for such memorable plays as Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Tea and Sympathy and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof before it disbanded in the 1960s.

His three Oscar nominated movies are available on DVD and as are a handful of his plays. Of course, his screenplay of Gone with the Wind is available in various editions from the published shooting script to an illustrated version.




Sources: FilmReference.com, Perspectives in American Literature: a Research and Reference Guide, Writers' Guild of America





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