Charles Brackett

Charles William Brackett (November 26, 1892 – March 9, 1969) was an American novelist, screenwriter, and film producer. He collaborated with Billy Wilder on sixteen films.

Brackett was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, the son of Mary Emma Corliss and New York State Senator, lawyer, and banker Edgar Truman Brackett. The family's roots traced back to the arrival of Richard Brackett in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, near present-day Springfield, Massachusetts. His mother's uncle, George Henry Corliss, built the Centennial Engine that powered the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. A 1915 graduate of Williams College, he earned his law degree from Harvard University. He joined the Allied Expeditionary Force during World War I. He was awarded the French Medal of Honor. He was a frequent contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, and Vanity Fair, and a drama critic for The New Yorker. He wrote five novels: The Counsel of the Ungodly (1920), Week-End (1925), That Last Infirmity (1926), and American Colony (1929). and Entirely Surrounded (1934).

Brackett was a president of the Screen Writers Guild (1938–1939) and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (1949–1955). He either wrote and/or produced over forty films, including To Each His Own, Ninotchka, The Major and the Minor, The Mating Season (1951), Niagara, The King and I, Ten North Frederick, The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker, and Blue Denim.

Beginning in August 1936, Brackett worked with Billy Wilder, writing the film classics The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard, both of which won Academy Awards for their respective screenplays. Brackett described their collaboration process as follows: "The thing to do was suggest an idea, have it torn apart and despised. In a few days, it would be apt to turn up, slightly changed, as Wilder's idea. Once I got adjusted to that way of working, our lives were simpler."

His partnership with Wilder ended in 1950 and Brackett went to work at 20th Century-Fox as a screenwriter and producer. His script for Titanic (1953) won him another Academy Award.

He received an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1958.

Charles Brackett died on March 9, 1969. His diaries covering his screenwriting and social life from 1932 to 1949 were edited by Anthony Slide into Slide's book It's the Pictures That Got Small: Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age.

Known For
Writing
Born
November 26, 1892
Place of Birth
Saratoga Springs, New York, USA
Died
March 9, 1969 age 76
  • imdb
1950

The Screen Writer

2014

And the Oscar Goes To...

2023

The Oscars

1950

Sunset Boulevard

1950

Sunset Boulevard

1939

Ninotchka

1959

Journey to the Center of the Earth

1959

Journey to the Center of the Earth

1938

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

1939

Midnight

1945

The Lost Weekend

1945

The Lost Weekend

1954

Garden of Evil

1950

Edge of Doom

1941

Ball of Fire

1943

Five Graves to Cairo

1948

A Foreign Affair

1944

The Uninvited

1956

The King and I

1953

Titanic

1953

Titanic

1942

The Major and the Minor

1955

The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing

1955

The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing

1941

Hold Back the Dawn

1953

Niagara

1953

Niagara

1956

Teenage Rebel

1951

The Model and the Marriage Broker

1936

Piccadilly Jim

1938

That Certain Age

1940

Arise, My Love

1935

Without Regret

1948

The Emperor Waltz

1951

The Model and the Marriage Broker

1948

The Emperor Waltz

1944

Skirmish on the Home Front

1937

Live, Love and Learn

1946

To Each His Own

1946

To Each His Own

1948

Miss Tatlock's Millions

1948

Miss Tatlock's Millions

1936

Rose of the Rancho

1931

Secrets of a Secretary

1936

Woman Trap

1943

Five Graves to Cairo

1939

What a Life

1935

College Scandal

1960

High Time

1955

The Virgin Queen

1951

The Mating Season

1951

The Mating Season

1959

The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker

1948

A Foreign Affair

1959

Blue Denim

1956

D-Day the Sixth of June

1935

Enter Madame

1947

The Bishop's Wife

1962

State Fair

1958

The Gift of Love

1946

To Each His Own

1935

The Last Outpost

1957

The Wayward Bus

1926

Risky Business

1954

Woman's World

1929

Pointed Heels

1958

Ten North Frederick

1945

Masquerade in Mexico

1948

A Song Is Born

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