Jo Swerling
Encyclopedia
Jo Swerling was an American
theatre
writer
and lyricist
and a screenwriter
.
Born in Berdichev
, Russian Empire
, Swerling was a refugee
of the Czarist regime who grew up on New York City
's lower East Side
, where he sold newspapers to help support his family. He worked as a newspaper and magazine writer in the early 1920s, then launched a playwriting career, including Street Cinderella, an early comedy for the Marx Brothers
. He also wrote their first movie, the unreleased silent comedy short film Humor Risk
(1921). He scored a major success with the book and lyrics for the musical
revue
The New Yorkers (1927) and the play The Kibitzer (1929), the latter co-written with actor Edward G. Robinson
.
Swerling was brought to Hollywood by Columbia Pictures
chief Harry Cohn
to work on the screenplay
for Frank Capra
's Ladies of Leisure
(1930), the first of several collaborations with the director. His dozens of screenplays in the 1930s and 40s include Platinum Blonde
, Behind the Mask, Once to Every Woman
, The Pride of the Yankees
(for which he received an Academy Award nomination), Lifeboat
, Leave Her to Heaven
, and It's a Wonderful Life
. He also provided some uncredited writing for the Gone with the Wind
screenplay.
Swerling returned to Broadway in 1950 to co-write the book for Guys and Dolls with Abe Burrows
, winning Tony
and New York Drama Critics' Circle
Awards for his effort.
Swerling was the father of Peter Swerling
, the world's leading radar theoretician of the second half of the 20th century, and Jo Swerling, Jr., producer of such television series as Alias Smith and Jones
, The Rockford Files
, Baretta
, The Greatest American Hero
, The A-Team
, and Profit
.
Other
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and lyricist
Lyricist
A lyricist is a songwriter who specializes in lyrics. A singer who writes the lyrics to songs is a singer-lyricist. This differentiates from a singer-composer, who composes the song's melody.-Collaboration:...
and a screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
.
Born in Berdichev
Berdychiv
Berdychiv is a historic city in the Zhytomyr Oblast of northern Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Berdychiv Raion , the city itself is of direct oblast subordinance, and is located south of the oblast capital, Zhytomyr, at around .The current estimated population is around...
, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, Swerling was a refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
of the Czarist regime who grew up on New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's lower East Side
Lower East Side, Manhattan
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
, where he sold newspapers to help support his family. He worked as a newspaper and magazine writer in the early 1920s, then launched a playwriting career, including Street Cinderella, an early comedy for the Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950...
. He also wrote their first movie, the unreleased silent comedy short film Humor Risk
Humor Risk
Humor Risk was the first Marx Brothers film. The short film was never released and is now considered a lost film. The print may have been accidentally thrown away when left in the screening box overnight...
(1921). He scored a major success with the book and lyrics for the musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
The New Yorkers (1927) and the play The Kibitzer (1929), the latter co-written with actor Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson was a Romanian-born American actor. A popular star during Hollywood's Golden Age, he is best remembered for his roles as gangsters, such as Rico in his star-making film Little Caesar and as Rocco in Key Largo...
.
Swerling was brought to Hollywood by Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
chief Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn was the American president and production director of Columbia Pictures.-Career:Cohn was born to a working-class German-Jewish family in New York City. In later years, he appears to have disparaged his heritage...
to work on the screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
for Frank Capra
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
's Ladies of Leisure
Ladies of Leisure
Ladies of Leisure is an American romantic drama film directed by Frank Capra, and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Ralph Graves. The screenplay by Jo Swerling is based on the 1924 play Ladies of the Evening by Milton Herbert Gropper.-Plot:...
(1930), the first of several collaborations with the director. His dozens of screenplays in the 1930s and 40s include Platinum Blonde
Platinum Blonde (film)
Plantinum Blonde is a 1931 romantic comedy motion picture starring Jean Harlow, Robert Williams, and Loretta Young . The film was written by Jo Swerling and directed by Frank Capra....
, Behind the Mask, Once to Every Woman
Once to Every Woman
Once to Every Woman is a 1934 film adaptation of A. J. Cronin's short story, Kaleidoscope in "K". The film was made by Columbia Pictures and stars Ralph Bellamy and Fay Wray.- Cast :*Ralph Bellamy as Dr. Jim Barclay*Fay Wray as Mary Fanshawe...
, The Pride of the Yankees
The Pride of the Yankees
The Pride of the Yankees is a 1942 American film directed by Sam Wood and starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, and Walter Brennan. The film is a tribute to the legendary New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig, who died only one year before the film's release, at age 37, from amyotrophic lateral...
(for which he received an Academy Award nomination), Lifeboat
Lifeboat (film)
Lifeboat is an American war film directed by Alfred Hitchcock from a story written by John Steinbeck. The film stars Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn and Canada Lee, and is set entirely on a lifeboat.The film is...
, Leave Her to Heaven
Leave Her to Heaven
Leave Her to Heaven is a 1945 American 20th Century Fox Technicolor film noir motion picture starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, with Vincent Price, Darryl Hickman, and Chill Wills...
, and It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
. He also provided some uncredited writing for the Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
screenplay.
Swerling returned to Broadway in 1950 to co-write the book for Guys and Dolls with Abe Burrows
Abe Burrows
Abe Burrows was a Tony and Pulitzer-winning American humorist, author, and director for radio and the stage.-Early years:...
, winning Tony
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
and New York Drama Critics' Circle
New York Drama Critics' Circle
The New York Drama Critics' Circle is made up of 24 drama critics from daily newspapers, magazines and wire services based in the New York City metropolitan area. The organization was founded in 1935 at the Algonquin Hotel by a group that included Brooks Atkinson, Walter Winchell, and Robert Benchley...
Awards for his effort.
Swerling was the father of Peter Swerling
Peter Swerling
Peter Swerling was one of the most influential radar theoreticians in the second half of the 20th century. He is best known for the class of statistically "fluctuating target" scattering models he developed at the RAND Corporation in the early 1950s to characterize the performance of pulsed radar...
, the world's leading radar theoretician of the second half of the 20th century, and Jo Swerling, Jr., producer of such television series as Alias Smith and Jones
Alias Smith and Jones
Alias Smith and Jones is an American Western series that originally aired on ABC from 1971 to 1973. It stars Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes and Ben Murphy as Jedediah "Kid" Curry, a pair of Western cousin outlaws trying to reform...
, The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files is an American television drama series which aired on the NBC network between September 13, 1974 and January 10, 1980. It has remained in regular syndication to the present day. The show stars James Garner as Los Angeles-based private investigator Jim Rockford and features Noah...
, Baretta
Baretta
Baretta is an American detective television series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978. The show was a milder version of a successful 1973–74 ABC series, Toma, starring Tony Musante as chameleon-like, real-life New Jersey police officer David Toma...
, The Greatest American Hero
The Greatest American Hero
The Greatest American Hero is an American comedy-drama television series that aired for three seasons from 1981 to 1983 on ABC. Created by producer Stephen J. Cannell, it premiered as a two-hour movie pilot on March 18, 1981...
, The A-Team
The A-Team
The A-Team is an American action adventure television series about a fictional group of ex-United States Army Special Forces personnel who work as soldiers of fortune, while on the run from the Army after being branded as war criminals for a "crime they didn't commit". The A-Team was created by...
, and Profit
Profit (TV series)
Profit is an American television series that originally aired on the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1996. The series was created by David Greenwalt and John McNamara, and starred Adrian Pasdar as the titular character, Jim Profit. In February 2008, episodes began airing on Chiller in the USA...
.
Partial filmography
As screenwriter- Humor RiskHumor RiskHumor Risk was the first Marx Brothers film. The short film was never released and is now considered a lost film. The print may have been accidentally thrown away when left in the screening box overnight...
(1921) - Ladies of LeisureLadies of LeisureLadies of Leisure is an American romantic drama film directed by Frank Capra, and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Ralph Graves. The screenplay by Jo Swerling is based on the 1924 play Ladies of the Evening by Milton Herbert Gropper.-Plot:...
(1930) - Madonna of the StreetsMadonna of the Streets (film)Madonna of the Streets is a 1930 American drama film directed by John S. Robertson and starring Evelyn Brent.- Cast :* Evelyn Brent as May* Robert Ames as Morton* Ivan Linow as Slumguillion* Josephine Dunn as Marion* Edwards Davis as Clark...
(1930) - DirigibleDirigible (film)Dirigible is Frank Capra's 1931 adventure film about the competition between American naval fixed-wing and airship pilots to reach the South Pole by air....
(1931) - The Miracle WomanThe Miracle WomanThe Miracle Woman is a film released by Columbia Pictures about a woman preacher and the blind man who loves her . Directed by Frank Capra, it was the second of his five film collaborations with Stanwyck...
(1931) - Platinum BlondePlatinum Blonde (film)Plantinum Blonde is a 1931 romantic comedy motion picture starring Jean Harlow, Robert Williams, and Loretta Young . The film was written by Jo Swerling and directed by Frank Capra....
(1931) - ForbiddenForbidden (1932 film)Forbidden is a 1932 American melodrama film directed by Frank Capra and starring Barbara Stanwyck as a librarian who falls in love with a married man played by Adolphe Menjou, with tragic consequences.-Cast :*Barbara Stanwyck as Lulu...
(1932) - Behind the Mask (1932)
- Love AffairLove Affair (1932 film)Love Affair is a 1932 romantic drama film starring Dorothy Mackaill as an adventurous socialite and Humphrey Bogart as the airplane designer she falls for. It is based on the short story of the same name by Ursula Parrott.-Plot:...
(1932) - Attorney for the DefenseAttorney for the DefenseAttorney for the Defense is a 1932 American drama film directed by Irving Cummings and starring Evelyn Brent.- Cast :* Edmund Lowe as William J. Burton* Evelyn Brent as Val Lorraine* Constance Cummings as Ruth Barry* Don Dillaway as Paul Wallace...
(1932) - Once to Every WomanOnce to Every WomanOnce to Every Woman is a 1934 film adaptation of A. J. Cronin's short story, Kaleidoscope in "K". The film was made by Columbia Pictures and stars Ralph Bellamy and Fay Wray.- Cast :*Ralph Bellamy as Dr. Jim Barclay*Fay Wray as Mary Fanshawe...
(1934) - Love Me ForeverLove Me ForeverLove Me Forever is a 1935 American drama film directed by Victor Schertzinger. The film was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Sound Recording .-Cast:* Grace Moore as Margaret Howard* Leo Carrillo as Steve Corelli...
(1935) - The Whole Town's TalkingThe Whole Town's TalkingThe Whole Town's Talking is a 1935 comedy film starring Edward G. Robinson as a law-abiding man who bears a striking resemblance to a killer, with Jean Arthur as his love interest. It was directed by John Ford from a screenplay by Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin based on a story by W.R...
(1935) - Pennies from HeavenPennies from Heaven (1936 film)Pennies from Heaven is a 1936 musical comedy film starring Bing Crosby and featuring Louis Armstrong in a supporting role. The movie was directed by Norman Z. McLeod and the screenplay was written by Jo Swerling from a story by William Rankin based on the novel The Peacock Feather by Katherine...
(1936) - Double WeddingDouble WeddingDouble Wedding is a 1937 romantic comedy film. A bohemian free spirit helps meek Waldo win back his fiancée and falls in love with her over-controlling sister in the process....
(1937) - Made for Each OtherMade for Each Other (1939 film)Made for Each Other is a 1939 drama film directed by John Cromwell and produced by David O. Selznick. It stars Carole Lombard and James Stewart as a couple who get married after only knowing each other very briefly.-Plot:...
(1939) - The Real GloryThe Real GloryThe Real Glory is a 1939 Samuel Goldwyn Company action film starring Gary Cooper, David Niven, and Broderick Crawford released by United Artists in the weeks immediately following Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. Based on a 1937 novel of the same name by Charles L...
(1939) - Gone with the WindGone with the Wind (film)Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
(1939) - The Westerner (1940)
- Blood and SandBlood and Sand (1941 film)Blood and Sand is a Technicolor film produced by 20th Century Fox, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Rita Hayworth, and Alla Nazimova...
(1941) - Confirm or DenyConfirm or DenyConfirm or Deny is a 1941 film made by 20th Century Fox, directed by Archie Mayo, and starring by Don Ameche and Joan Bennett. The screenplay was written by Jo Swerling, based on a story by Samuel Fuller and Henry Wales.-Main cast:...
(1941) - The Pride of the YankeesThe Pride of the YankeesThe Pride of the Yankees is a 1942 American film directed by Sam Wood and starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, and Walter Brennan. The film is a tribute to the legendary New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig, who died only one year before the film's release, at age 37, from amyotrophic lateral...
(1942) - Crash DiveCrash DiveCrash Dive is a World War II film in Technicolor released in 1943. It was directed by Archie Mayo, written by Jo Swerling and W.R. Burnett, and starred Tyrone Power, Dana Andrews and Anne Baxter...
(1943) - LifeboatLifeboat (film)Lifeboat is an American war film directed by Alfred Hitchcock from a story written by John Steinbeck. The film stars Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn and Canada Lee, and is set entirely on a lifeboat.The film is...
(1944) - Leave Her to HeavenLeave Her to HeavenLeave Her to Heaven is a 1945 American 20th Century Fox Technicolor film noir motion picture starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, with Vincent Price, Darryl Hickman, and Chill Wills...
(1945) - It's a Wonderful LifeIt's a Wonderful LifeIt's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
(1946) - Thunder in the EastThunder in the East (film)Thunder in the East is a 1952 war drama film released by Paramount Pictures, and directed by Charles Vidor, based on novel Rage of the Vulture by Alan Moorehead.-Cast:*Alan Ladd as Steve Gibbs*Deborah Kerr as Joan Willoughby...
(1952) - Guys and DollsGuys and Dolls (film)Guys and Dolls is a 1955 musical film starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine. The film was made by the Samuel Goldwyn Company and distributed by MGM. It was produced by Samuel Goldwyn, and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who also wrote the screenplay...
(1955)
Other
- Melody LaneMelody Lane (1929 film)Memory Lane is a 1929 black and white American musical film. It is an adaption to the play The Understander, written by Jo Swerling.-Cast:*Eddie Leonard - Des Dupree*Josephine Dunn - Dolores Dupree*Rose Coe - Constance Dupree*George E...
(1929) (play) - New York TownNew York TownNew York Town is a 1941 romantic comedy film directed by Charles Vidor and starring Fred MacMurray, Mary Martin, Akim Tamiroff and Robert Preston...
(1941) (story)