14 Facts About Frank Nugent

Frank Stanley Nugent was an American screenwriter, journalist, and film reviewer.

Frank Nugent wrote 21 film scripts, 11 for director John Ford.

Frank Nugent wrote almost a thousand reviews for The New York Times before leaving journalism for Hollywood.

Frank Nugent was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953 and twice won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Comedy.

Frank Nugent graduated from Regis High School in 1925 and studied journalism at Columbia University, graduating in 1929, where he worked on the student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator.

Frank Nugent started his journalism career as a news reporter with The New York Times in 1929 and in 1934 moved to reviewing films for that newspaper.

Frank Nugent continued to write for the Times on a freelance basis during his first several years in Hollywood.

Frank Nugent's sharp critiques served Zanuck, but won him no screenwriting work, while his criticism of his colleagues' work, just as clever as when he was a journalist, was not designed to win collaborators.

Frank Nugent was working on a magazine article about The Fugitive, while the film was being shot, when he met the film director John Ford on the set in Mexico.

Ford hired him to work on his next film, Fort Apache, and Frank Nugent wrote screenplays for several more of Ford's westerns, including 3 Godfathers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Wagon Master and The Searchers.

Frank Nugent wrote other westerns for Stuart Heisler, for Robert Wise, for Raoul Walsh, and for Phil Karlson.

Frank Nugent served as the President of the Writers Guild of America, West from 1957 to 1958 and as its representative on the Motion Picture Industry Council from 1954 to 1959.

Frank Nugent served a three-year stint as chairman of the building fund committee that oversaw the construction of its headquarters in Beverly Hills.

Frank Nugent married his second wife, Jean Lavell, in 1953.