fiction.wikisort.org - Screenwriter

Lenore Jackson Coffee (1896 – 1984) was an American screenwriter, playwright, and novelist.

Lenore J. Coffee
Born	(1896-07-13)July 13, 1896 San Francisco, California, U.S.
Died	July 2, 1984(1984-07-02) (aged 87) Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Screenwriter, playwright, novelist
Spouse(s)	William J. Cowen (c. 1926 – 16 January 1964)

Biography

Lenore was born in San Francisco in 1896 to Andrew Jackson Coffee Jr. and Ella Muffley. She attended Dominican College in San Rafael, California.[1] She began her career answering an ad requesting a screen story for the actress Clara Kimball Young and was awarded a one-year contract at $50 a week.[2]

She was twice nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The first time was for Street of Chance in 1929/30, adapted from the story by Oliver H. P. Garrett, in collaboration with Howard Estabrook; and the second was with Julius J. Epstein in 1938 for Four Daughters, based on Fannie Hurst's short story "Sister Act."

Of the studio system, she is quoted as saying:

"They pick your brains, break your heart, ruin your digestion – and what do you get for it? Nothing but a lousy fortune."

Coffee wrote many stories related to experiences women faced during her time, yet they were not often met with commercial success. Coffee spent many years with Warner Bros., which she mentions in her autobiography as to being the only female writer. One hit that came out of that is the film Four Daughters, which she co-wrote with Julius J. Epstein.[3]

Coffee was married to writer-director William J. Cowen (1886–1964), with whom she wrote Family Portrait: A Play in Three Acts (1939). It was performed at the Morosco Theatre on Broadway from March 8 – June, 1939; and the Strand Theatre in the West End, in February 1948.[4] On 10 April, 1955, a TV adaptation aired as an episode of the BBC Sunday Night Theatre series.

Bibliography

• Family Portrait: A Play in Three Acts (1939) with William J. Cowen; adapted for TV in 1955
• The Face of Love (1950) novel
• Another Time, Another Place (1955)[5] novel, published in England as Weep No More; filmed in 1958
• Storyline: Recollections of a Hollywood Screenwriter (1973) memoir

Further reading

• “Lenore Coffee: Easy Smiler, Easy Weeper” interview in Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age (1986) pp. 133-150, ed. Patrick McGilligan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• "Shaping the Craft of Screenwriting: Women Screen Writers in Silent Era Hollywood" (2017) essay by Donna Casella

Film credits

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lenore Coffee.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Lenore Coffee.

• Lenore J. Coffee at IMDb
• Lenore Coffee at Women Film Pioneers Project
• Lenore Coffee at the Internet Broadway Database

На других языках

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- [en] Lenore Coffee

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[ru] Коффи, Ленор Джей

Лено́р Дже́ксон «Джей» Ко́ффи (англ. Lenore Jackson «J.» Coffee; 13 июля 1896, Сан-Франциско, Калифорния, США — 2 июля 1984, Вудленд-Хиллз, Лос-Анджелес, Калифорния, США) — американский сценарист, драматург и писательница . Номинантка на премию «Оскар» (1939) в номинации «Лучший адаптированный сценарий» за фильм «Четыре дочери  (англ.) (рус.» (1938).

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