Charles Brackett biography
Date of birth : 1892-11-26
Date of death : 1969-03-09
Birthplace : Saratoga Springs, NY
Nationality : American
Category : Famous Figures
Last modified : 2011-06-10
Credited as : Screenwriter, Billy Wilder's collaborator, drama critic
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Charles Brackett practiced law for several years before being hired as drama critic at The New Yorker, on the strength of his short stories for The Saturday Evening Post and his second novel, Week-End. He left New York to work as a Hollywood screenwriter, and had his greatest success in a long-running collaboration with Billy Wilder, including Ninotchka, The Lost Weekend and Sunset Blvd.. The general assessment was that Wilder provided their films' coarse, cynical elements, while Brackett supplied sentiment and sincerity. Without Wilder, Brackett's best-known screenplays include the melodramatic Titanic with Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Wagner, the effective women's weepy To Each His Own with Olivia de Havilland, and the epic but paper-thin Journey to the Center of the Earth with Pat Boone. Brackett was also a film producer, with credits including The King and I with Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr, State Fair with Bobby Darin and Ann-Margret, and The Lost Weekend and Sunset Blvd.. He won two Oscars with Wilder, another without him, and a fourth honorary Oscar for his long service as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Author of books:
Counsel of the Ungodly (1920)
Week-End (1925)
That Last Infirmity (1926)
American Colony (1929)
Entirely Surrounded (1934)
Wrote plays:
Jocelyn (1915)
