
Writing
Charles Brackett
Born 1892-11-26 · Saratoga Springs, New York, USA
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.
Acting credits
Behind the camera
8.3A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
Sunset Boulevard
1950
8.3A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
Sunset Boulevard
1950
7.1Widowed Welsh mother Anna Leonowens becomes a governess and English tutor to the wives and many children of the stubborn King Mongkut of Siam. Anna and the King have a clash of personalities as she works to teach the royal family about the English language, customs and etiquette, and rushes to prepare a party for a group of European diplomats who must change their opinions about the King.
The King and I
1956
6.9An Edinburgh professor and assorted colleagues follow an explorer's trail down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the earth's center.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
1959
6.9An Edinburgh professor and assorted colleagues follow an explorer's trail down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the earth's center.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
1959
7.6Longtime alcoholic Don Birnam has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst... but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last – one way or another.
The Lost Weekend
1945
7.6Longtime alcoholic Don Birnam has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst... but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last – one way or another.
The Lost Weekend
1945
6.8Rose Loomis and her older, gloomier husband, George, are vacationing at a cabin in Niagara Falls. The couple befriend Polly and Ray Cutler, who are honeymooning in the area. Polly begins to suspect that something is amiss between Rose and George, and her suspicions grow when she sees Rose in the arms of another man. While Ray initially thinks Polly is overreacting, things between George and Rose soon take a shockingly dark turn.
Niagara
1953
6.8Rose Loomis and her older, gloomier husband, George, are vacationing at a cabin in Niagara Falls. The couple befriend Polly and Ray Cutler, who are honeymooning in the area. Polly begins to suspect that something is amiss between Rose and George, and her suspicions grow when she sees Rose in the arms of another man. While Ray initially thinks Polly is overreacting, things between George and Rose soon take a shockingly dark turn.
Niagara
1953
6.6Unhappily married, Julia Sturges decides to go to America with her two children on the Titanic. Her husband, Richard also arranges passage on the luxury liner so as to have custody of their two children. All this fades to insignificance once the ship hits an iceberg.
Titanic
1953
6.6Unhappily married, Julia Sturges decides to go to America with her two children on the Titanic. Her husband, Richard also arranges passage on the luxury liner so as to have custody of their two children. All this fades to insignificance once the ship hits an iceberg.
Titanic
1953
7.5A stern Russian woman sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.
Ninotchka
1939
6.9A pair of siblings from London purchase a surprisingly affordable, lonely cliff-top house in Cornwall, only to discover that it actually carries a ghostly price—and soon they’re caught up in a bizarre romantic triangle from beyond the grave.
The Uninvited
1944
7.4A group of academics have spent years shut up in a house working on the definitive encyclopedia. When one of them discovers that his entry on slang is hopelessly outdated, he ventures into the wide world to learn about the evolving language. Here he meets Sugarpuss O’Shea, a nightclub singer, who’s on top of all the slang—and, it just so happens, needs a place to stay.
Ball of Fire
1941
7.0Nancy Fallon gets her teenage daughter back from her ex-husband when she remarries and must win her love.
Teenage Rebel
1956
7.0Nancy Fallon gets her teenage daughter back from her ex-husband when she remarries and must win her love.
Teenage Rebel
1956
5.3En route to Normandy, an American and a British officer reminisce in flashback about their romances with the same woman.
D-Day the Sixth of June
1956
7.1In occupied Berlin, an army captain is torn between an ex-Nazi café singer and the US congresswoman investigating her.
A Foreign Affair
1948
7.1In occupied Berlin, an army captain is torn between an ex-Nazi café singer and the US congresswoman investigating her.
A Foreign Affair
1948
6.3A trio of American adventurers marooned in rural Mexico are recruited by a beautiful woman to rescue her husband from Apaches.
Garden of Evil
1954
7.0During the 1942 North African campaign, a British straggler passes as a waiter at the hotel commandeered as Erwin Rommel's headquarters. He has thoughts of assassinating Rommel but his cover may provide an even better use.
Five Graves to Cairo
1943
6.3A dashing pilot and a vivacious reporter have romantic and dramatic adventures in Europe as World War II begins.
Arise, My Love
1940
7.4An unemployed American showgirl poses as Hungarian royalty to infiltrate Parisian high society.
Midnight
1939
7.1Low on funds, working-class girl Susan Applegate disguises herself as a youngster in order to pay half fare home. But little 'Sue Sue' finds herself in a whole heap of grownup trouble when she hides out in a compartment with handsome Major Philip Kirby.
The Major and the Minor
1942