Nunnally Johnson
Writing
Biography
Nunnally Hunter Johnson (December 5, 1897 – March 25, 1977) was an American filmmaker who wrote, produced, and directed motion pictures. Johnson was born in Columbus, Georgia. He began his career as a journalist, writing for the Columbus Enquirer Sun, the Savannah Press, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the New York Herald Tribune. He also wrote short stories and a collection of these, There Ought To Be a Law, was published in 1930. Johnson's first connection with film work was the sale of screen rights to one of his stories in 1927. Johnson asked his editor if he could write film criticism articles in 1932. When this request was denied, he decided to relocate to Hollywood and work directly in the film industry. Quickly finding work as a scriptwriter, Johnson was hired fulltime as a writer by 20th Century-Fox in 1935. He soon began producing films as well and co-founded International Pictures in 1943 with William Goetz. Johnson also directed several films in the 1950s, including two starring Gregory Peck. Johnson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Screenplay in 1940 for The Grapes of Wrath and the Directors Guild of America Best Directors Award in 1956 for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Johnson died of pneumonia in Hollywood in 1977 and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Known For
12 American military prisoners in World War II are ordered to infiltrate a well-guarded enemy château and kill the Nazi officers vacationing there. The soldiers, most of whom are facing death sentences for a variety of violent crimes, agree to the mission and the possible commuting of their sentences.
The Dirty Dozen
Tom Joad returns to his home after a jail sentence to find his family kicked out of their farm due to foreclosure. He catches up with them on his Uncle’s farm, and joins them the next day as they head for California and a new life... Hopefully.
The Grapes of Wrath
The life and career of Erwin Rommel and his involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler.
The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel
Three women set out to find eligible millionaires to marry, but find true love in the process.
How to Marry a Millionaire
After railroad agents forcibly evict the James family from their family farm, Jesse and Frank turn to banditry for revenge.
Jesse James
A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.
The Woman in the Window
A renegade team of World War II soldiers. This time, one of the 12 is a woman and, with a Nazi spy within their midst, they're up against German wartime geniuses out to establish a Fourth Reich.
The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission
A doctor treats a woman suffering from multiple personality disorder.
The Three Faces of Eve
Shiftless Jeeter Lester and his family of sharecroppers live in rural Georgia where their ancestors were once wealthy planters. Their slapstick existence is threatened by a bank's plans to take over the land for more profitable farming.
Tobacco Road
The fastest gun in the West tries to escape his reputation.
The Gunfighter
Tom Rath is a suburban father and husband haunted by his memories of World War II, including a wartime romance with Italian village girl Maria, which resulted in an illegitimate son he's never seen. Pressed by his unhappy wife to get a higher-paying job, Rath goes to work as a public relations man for television network president Ralph Hopkins. Drawn into poisonous office politics, Tom finds he must choose his career or his family.
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
A young priest, Father Chisholm is sent to China to establish a Catholic parish among the non-Christian Chinese. While his boyhood friend, also a priest, flourishes in his calling as a priest in a more Christian area of the world, Father Chisholm struggles. He encounters hostility, isolation, disease, poverty and a variety of set backs which humble him, but make him more determined than ever to succeed.
The Keys of the Kingdom
After healing the leg of the murderer John Wilkes Booth, responsible for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, perpetrated on April 14, 1865, during a performance at Ford's Theatre in Washington; Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, considered part of the atrocious conspiracy, is sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to the sinister Shark Island Prison.
The Prisoner of Shark Island
Banker Roger Hobbs wants to spend his vacation alone with his wife, Peggy, but she insists on a family vacation at a California beach house that turns out to be ugly and broken down. Daughter Katey, embarrassed by her braces, refuses to go to the beach, as does TV-addicted son Danny. When the family is joined by Hobbs' two unhappily married daughters and their husbands, he must help everyone with their problems to get some peace.
Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation
A sister and her disturbed twin are implicated in a murder and a police detective must figure out which one's the killer.
The Dark Mirror
Sam Tucker, a cotton picker, in search of a better future for his family, decides to grow his own cotton crop. In the first year, the Tuckers battle disease, a flood, and a jealous neighbor. Can they make it as farmers?
The Southerner
Sam Burton's second wife is a Kiowa, and their son is therefore born mixed-race. When a struggle starts between the whites and the native Kiowas, the Burton family is split between loyalties.
Flaming Star
Having fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War, Jesse James and his brother Frank dream of a farm life in Missouri. Harassed by Union sympathizers, they assemble a gang of outlaws, robbing trains and becoming folk heroes in the process. Jesse marries his sweetheart, Zee, and maintains an aura of domesticity, but after a group of lawmen launch an attack on his mother's house, Jesse plans one more great raid -- on a Minnesota bank.
The True Story of Jesse James
Action-filled drama about a ship captain, ashamed of his background in the slave trade, forced against his will to again transport human cargo.
Slave Ship
Four strangers board a plane and become fast friends, but a catastrophic crash leaves only one survivor. He then sets off on a journey to discover who these people were, but ultimately discovers the devastating truth about himself.