
Charles Brackett
Personal Info
Known for
Writing
Gender
Male
Birthday
1892-11-26
Day of Death
1969-03-09 (76 years old)
Place of Birth
Saratoga Springs, New York, USA
Charles Brackett
Biography
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
(2014)
And the Oscar Goes To...
as Self (archive footage)
(1950)
The Screen Writer
as Self (uncredited)
Crew
(1962)
State Fair
Producer
(1960)
High Time
Producer
(1959)
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Screenplay, Producer
(1959)
The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker
Producer
(1959)
Blue Denim
Producer
(1958)
The Gift of Love
Producer
(1957)
The Wayward Bus
Producer
(1956)
The King and I
Producer
(1956)
Teenage Rebel
Writer
(1956)
D-Day the Sixth of June
Producer
(1955)
The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing
Producer, Screenplay
(1955)
The Virgin Queen
Producer
(1954)
Garden of Evil
Producer
(1954)
Woman's World
Producer
(1953)
Titanic
Producer, Screenplay
(1953)
Niagara
Writer, Producer
(1951)
The Model and the Marriage Broker
Writer, Producer
(1951)
The Mating Season
Writer, Producer
(1950)
Sunset Boulevard
Producer, Screenplay
(1950)
Edge of Doom
Writer
(1948)
A Foreign Affair
Screenplay, Producer
(1948)
The Emperor Waltz
Writer, Producer
(1948)
Miss Tatlock's Millions
Screenplay, Producer
(1947)
The Bishop's Wife
Additional Writing
(1946)
To Each His Own
Story, Screenplay, Producer
(1945)
The Lost Weekend
Screenplay, Producer
(1944)
The Uninvited
Producer
(1944)
Skirmish on the Home Front
Director
(1943)
Five Graves to Cairo
Screenplay, Associate Producer
(1942)
The Major and the Minor
Writer
(1941)
Ball of Fire
Screenplay
(1941)
Hold Back the Dawn
Writer
(1940)
Arise, My Love
Screenplay
(1939)
Ninotchka
Screenplay
(1939)
Midnight
Screenplay
(1939)
What a Life
Screenplay
(1938)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife
Screenplay
(1938)
That Certain Age
Writer
(1937)
Live, Love and Learn
Screenplay
(1936)
Piccadilly Jim
Writer
(1936)
Rose of the Rancho
Screenplay
(1936)
Woman Trap
Story
(1935)
Without Regret
Writer
(1935)
College Scandal
Screenplay
(1935)
Enter Madame
Writer
(1935)
The Last Outpost
Adaptation
(1931)
(1929)
Pointed Heels
Short Story
(1926)
Risky Business
Story