• Born: Dec 21, 1890 in Belleville, New Jersey
• Died: Jan 29, 1984 in Manhattan, New York
• Occupation: Writer
• Active: '30s-'50s
• Major Genres: Comedy, Drama
• Career Highlights: It's a Wonderful Life, The Thin Man, The Pirate
• First Major Screen Credit: Up Pops the Devil (1931)

Biography

Completing her education at Vassar, American screenwriter Frances Goodrich began her career as an actress, first appearing on Broadway in 1916. Her stage career was slightly more successful than her marital experiences; by 1929 she had been divorced twice, first from actor Robert Ames, then from historian Henrik Willem Van Loon (the author of The Story of Mankind). Thus she was not predisposed to romantic entanglements when, in the late 1920s, she met fellow actor Albert Hackett; moreover, he was to her a "fresh kid" (he was nine years her junior). As it happened, both Goodrich and Hackett shared a mutual goal: to leave acting behind in favor of playwrighting. The two were married while collaborating on their first Broadway hit, Up Pops the Devil (1929).

Their success on Broadway eventually led to the pair being signed as a writing team by MGM, where they launched the popular Thin Man series, allegedly basing the characterizations of Nick and Nora Charles on their good friends Dashiel Hammett (who wrote the novel upon which Thin Man was based) and Lillian Hellman. While there would be another Broadway production on the Goodrich/Hackett docket in the 1940s, The Great Big Doorstep, for the most part the couple devoted their time to screenwriting. They were particularly skilled at adapting the works of others to meet the restrictions and requirements of the movies; among their most famous film credits were adaptations of Owen Wister's The Virginian (1946), S. N. Behman's The Pirate (1948), Edward Streeter's Father of the Bride (1950), and the musical version of Stephen Vincent Benet's Sobbin' Women, released as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). Goodrich and Hackett were also among the many writers who toiled on Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life (1946); when apprised that Capra was passing off their scriptwork as his own "inspiration," Goodrich characterized the director as "that dreadful man!", a position which she held even after Wonderful Life was acknowledged as a screen classic. One of the Goodrich/Hackett projects at MGM was to have been an film version of The Diary of Anne Frank; when the studio nixed the project as too downbeat, the couple labored for two years on their own adaptation, which ultimately opened on Broadway in 1954 and won a Pulitzer Prize. Goodrich and Hackett retired to their lavish New York apartment after completing work on their last film, an adaptation of Peter Shaffer's play Five Finger Exercise (1962). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Father of the Bride II Buy this Movie	Father of the Bride Buy this Movie	The Diary of Anne Frank Buy this Movie	The Long, Long Trailer Buy this Movie
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers Buy this Movie	Give a Girl A Break Buy this Movie	Father's Little Dividend Buy this Movie	Father of the Bride Buy this Movie

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• Born: December 21, 1890
• Birthplace: Belleville, NJ
• Died: January 29, 1984

Best known for their Tony Award-winning play, The Diary of Anne Frank, Frances Goodrich and her husband, Albert Hackett, were among Hollywood's most influential writing teams. They first teamed up in 1930 to write the play, Up Pops the Devil; they went to Hollywood the next year to pen the screen version of the play. Prior to their writing collaboration, the two had performed together in several Broadway plays.

The writing duo achieved their first real fame with the Oscar-nominated screenplay of The Thin Man (1934), based on Dashiel Hammett's book. They wrote several follow-ups to that, including After the Thin Man (1936 – also nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay) and Another Thin Man (1939). Among the 40+ screenplays written by Goodrich and Hackett, are some of filmdom's classics: Ah, Wilderness! (1935), Rose-Marie (1936), (1944), The Virginian (1946), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Summer Holiday (1948), The Pirate (1948), Easter Parade (1948), In the Good Old Summertime (1949), Father of the Bride (1950 – another Oscar nomination), Father's Little Dividend (1951), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954 – nominated for an Oscar), Gaby (1956), and the film and TV adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank.

Goodrich and Hackett's play, The Diary of Anne Frank, besides winning the 1956 Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Writers of a Drama, also won the writing team a Critics' Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Most Famous Works

• The Thin Man (1934)
• Ah, Wilderness! (1935)
• The Virginian (1946)
• It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
• Father of the Bride (1950)
• Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
• The Diary of Anne Frank (1956)

(1891-1984)

1955

The Diary of Anne Frank. The husband-and-wife team adapts the worldwide postwar bestseller Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. This compelling drama wins the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and Tony Award for best play. The husband-and-wife playwrights were first performers and later screenwriters.