Sidney Howard

Sidney Howard ( born June 26, 1891 in Oakland, California; † August 23, 1939 in Tyringham, Massachusetts ) was an American playwright.

Howard was one of the most popular American playwright in the 1920s and 1930s. His first play Swords in 1921 on Broadway Premiere. But already his third play They Knew What They wanted he won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize. From the late 1920s, Hollywood also discovered his pieces as a basis for movies, which meant that he was at the beginning of the sound film as a scriptwriter in the 1930s. Howard never moved to Los Angeles. He lived in retirement on his farm in Massachusetts. There he wrote his most famous writer: Gone with the Wind. Producer David O. Selznick had hired him in the belief that he was the most gifted playwright living in the U.S., to dramatize the over 1000 -page novel.

Howard not saw the premiere of the film. He died during the filming in an accident with his tractor on his farm. Posthumously the Oscar for the screenplay for him was awarded Gone with the Wind. He was the first author who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Oscar throughout his career.