Samuel Hoffenstein
Samuel Goodman Hoffenstein ( born October 9, 1890 Russian Empire; † October 6, 1947 in Los Angeles ) was an American poet and writer of Lithuanian origin.
Life
In the Russian Empire born into a Lithuanian family, Samuel Hoffenstein emigrated in 1894 with his parents to the United States. Later he attended Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1911. He began his career as a newspaper reporter and was from 1914 to 1915 the theater critic of the New York Evening Sun. From 1916 to 1927 he worked as a press agent of the theater producer Al Woods. Besides, he wrote articles and humorous poems for Vanity Fair and the New York Tribune. His poems were later published in the anthologies Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing ( 1928) and Pencil in the Air ( 1947).
In 1931, he moved to Los Angeles, where he was taken at Paramount Pictures under contract and for Josef von Sternberg's An American Tragedy ( An American Tragedy, 1931) wrote his first screenplay. In 1932 he received along with Percy Heath his first Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Rouben Mamoulians Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ( Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ). In 1934, he was loaned out to RKO Pictures in order to adapt the Cole Porter musical Gay Divorce (1932 ), on whose libretto he had worked for the big screen musical. It was the Astaire and Rogers movie dance with me! ( The Gay Divorcee ). In the 1940s Hoffenstein at 20th Century Fox was permanent. Several times he worked with director Julien Duvivier together, including for The Great Waltz ( The Great Waltz, 1938) and the two star-studded episode movies six destinies ( Tales of Manhattan, 1942) and The Good Son ( Flesh and Fantasy, 1943). In 1945 he was nominated for Otto Preminger's film noir Laura Best in category Original screenplay with Jay Dratler and Elizabeth Reinhardt once again for an Oscar.
Hope Stone, who had married in 1927 Edith Morgan, died in 1947, three days before his 57th birthday, of a heart attack. The last film for which he wrote the screenplay, Give My Regards to Broadway, was published posthumously.