Jerry Wald

Jerry Wald
Jerry Wald (facing away from camera) during rehearsals for the 1958 Academy Awards, with John Wayne, Maurice Chevalier and Anthony Quinn
Born	Jerome Irving Wald (1911-09-16)September 16, 1911 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died	July 13, 1962(1962-07-13) (aged 50) Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Screenwriter; motion picture/radio program producer
Years active	1932–1962
Spouse(s)	Constance M. Polan (1941–1962; his death; 2 children)

Jerry Wald (September 16, 1911 – July 13, 1962) was an American screenwriter and a producer of films and radio programs.

Life and career

Early Life

Born Jerome Irving Wald to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, he had a brother and sons who were active in show business. He began writing a radio column for the New York Evening Graphic, while studying at New York University. This led to him producing several Rambling 'Round Radio Row featurettes for Vitaphone, Warner Brothers' short subject division (1932–33).

Screenwriter

Krasna's first feature credit was for the Warners movie Twenty Million Sweethearts (1934); he provided the story along with Paul Finder Moss at Warners. Wald provided the story (along with Philip Epstein) for Universal's Gift of Gab (1934).

Wald then signed with Warners where would be based for over a decade. He worked on the script for Maybe It's Love (1935) and the Rudy Valee musical Sweet Music (1935).

Julius Epstein

Wald worked on a series of scripts with Julius J. Epstein: the drama Living on Velvet (1935); In Caliente (1935); Broadway Gondolier (1935) (both uncredited); Little Big Shot (1935); Stars Over Broadway (1935); I Live for Love (1935); and Sons o' Guns (1936) with Joe E. Brown.

Other writers with whom Wald regularly worked were Sid Herzig and Warren Duff who were both on Sing Me a Love Song (1937).

Richard Macaulay

Wald worked on Ready, Willing and Able (1937) based on a story by Richard Macaulay. Wald, Macaulay, Duff and Herzig worked on Varsity Show (1937).

Wald and Macaulay collaborated on scripts for Hollywood Hotel (1937); The Gay Impostors (1938) for Valee; Garden of the Moon (1938); Brother Rat (1938), based on the hit play; and Hard to Get (1938) with Dick Powell.

Wald and Herig were among the writers on Going Places (1938) with Powell. He and Macaulay worked on The Kid from Kokomo (1939), from a story by Dalton Trumbo; Naughty But Nice (1939) for Powell; and On Your Toes (1939).

Wald and Macaulay had both mostly worked on musicals but they had a big hit with the gangster film The Roaring Twenties (1939), with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, co-written with Robert Rossen.

They worked on Brother Rat and a Baby (1939) (uncredited); 3 Cheers for the Irish (1940), a comedy; Torrid Zone (1940), with Cagney and Ann Sheridan; Flight Angels (1940); Brother Orchid (1940); They Drive by Night (1940) with George Raft and Bogart; Million Dollar Baby (1941), a comedy co written with Casey Robinson; Out of the Fog (1941) with Lupino, working with Rossen; Manpower (1941) with Raft, Edward G Robinson and Marlene Dietrich.

Producer

Wald began producing with Navy Blues (1941), which he also wrote with Macaulay.

Wald was associate producer on The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941), All Through the Night (1942), Larceny, Inc. (1942) and Juke Girl (1942).

He was promoted to full producer, and soon established himself as one of the leading filmmakers on the lot: Across the Pacific (1942), George Washington Slept Here (1942) and The Hard Way (1943); he also contributed to the story of the latter, but had effectively given up writing.

Wald went on to produce Action in the North Atlantic (1943) with Bogart; Background to Danger (1943) with Raft; Destination Tokyo (1943) with Cary Grant; In Our Time (1944) with Lupino; The Very Thought of You (1944) with Denis Morgan and Eleanor Parker; Objective, Burma! (1945) with Errol Flynn; and Pride of the Marines (1945) with John Garfield.

Wald produced Joan Crawford's first film at Warners, Mildred Pierce (1945) which won her an Oscar. He did her next film,Humoresque (1946). Wald produced The Unfaithful (1947) with Ann Sheridan; Possessed (1947) with Crawford; Dark Passage (1947) with Bogart and Lauren Bacall; and To the Victor (1948) with Morgan.

He produced a series of classic films: Key Largo (1948) with Bogart, Bacall and Edward G. Robinson; Johnny Belinda (1948), which won an Oscar for star Jane Wyman; and The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) with Flynn.

Wald's credits then included One Sunday Afternoon (1949), with Morgan; John Loves Mary (1949) with Ronald Regan; Flamingo Road (1949) with Crawford; Task Force (1949) with Gary Cooper; Always Leave Them Laughing (1949) with Milton Berle; and The Inspector General (1949) with Danny Kaye.

Wald produced Young Man with a Horn (1950) with Kirk Douglas; Perfect Strangers (1950) with Morgan and Ginger Rogers; The Damned Don't Cry (1950) with Crawford; Caged (1950), with Eleanor Parker; the first adaptation of The Glass Menagerie (1950); The Breaking Point (1950), from a Hemingway novel, with Garfield; and Storm Warning (1951), an anti-Ku Klux Klan film with Rogers, Regan and Doris Day.

An old story of his "Hot Air", shot as Twenty Million Sweethearts (1934), was filmed as the Day musical My Dream Is Yours (1949).

Wald-Krasna Productions

Wald and Norman Krasna formed Wald/Krasna Productions to release films through RKO Radio Pictures, including Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), The Blue Veil (1951), Behave Yourself! (1952), The Lusty Men (1952), and Clash by Night (1953). Krasna and Wald dissolved their partnership because of interference from Howard Hughes, then head of RKO, in their productions.

20th Century Fox

Wald signed a contract with 20th Century Fox where he went on to produce Peyton Place (1957), An Affair to Remember (1957), In Love and War (1958), The Sound and the Fury (1959), Sons and Lovers (1960), Return to Peyton Place (1961), and Wild in the Country (1961).

He also produced the Academy Awards telecast twice, the ceremonies for 1957 and 1958. He received four Academy Award nominations as producer of the following nominees for Best Picture: Mildred Pierce, Johnny Belinda, Peyton Place and Sons and Lovers. Although he never won a competitive Academy Award, he was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1949.

Impact

Wald is often cited as the real-life inspiration for the character Sammy Glick in the novel What Makes Sammy Run by Budd Schulberg.

Jerry Wald, was a very close friend to Joan Crawford in the forties, offering her many parts including the title role in Mildred Pierce, which he produced. He convinced director Michael Curtiz that she would succeed in the role, which brought her the Oscar for Best Actress in 1946. Jerry Wald not only produced Mildred Pierce, but also Humoresque (1946), considered one of the best performances of Crawford's career, Across the Pacific (1942), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), Possessed(1947), Flamingo road (1949), The damned don't cry (1950)'." After her career at Warner's fizzled out slowly even though she wished to remain with Warner's, after years of reinventing herself, she bought out her contract. Afterwards, she bought the rights to a screenplay called Sudden Fear which brought her a third Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in 1953.

Jerry Wald remains as a great producer and after the movies he made with Joan Crawford, he kept going made very popular films such as the Eddy Duchin story.

Marriage

Wald married Constance Emily "Connie" Polan on December 25, 1941; the couple had two sons: Andrew and Robert.

Death

Wald died, aged 50, at his home in Beverly Hills, California from a heart attack. His widow, Connie Wald (born August 13, 1916 – died November 10, 2012), was a California socialite and hostess; she was survived by her two sons and two grandchildren.

Films as writer

3

Select Filmography as Producer

3

External links

• Jerry Wald at IMDb
• Jerry Wald at Find a Grave