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David Ogden Stewart was born in Columbus, Ohio, on 30th November, 1894. He worked for Vanity Fair before writing the popular novel, The Crazy Fool. After adapting the book as a film, Brown of Harvard (1926), he moved to Hollywood in 1930. Over the next fifteen years he worked on twenty-five films including Laughter (1930), Rebound (1931), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), The Night of Nights (1939) and the Academy Award winning The Philadelphia Story (1940).

Stewart was converted to socialism by The Coming Struggle for Power by John Strachey. With Dorothy Parker he helped form the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. He was also a member of the Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee and the Motion Picture Artists Committee to Aid Republican Spain. In 1947 he wrote the script for the anti-fascist film, Keeper of the Flame.

After the Second World War the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)investigating the entertainment industry. The HUAC managed to get a large number of people, including Stewart blacklisted. He moved to England where he wrote film scripts and an autobiography, By a Stroke of Luck (1975). David Ogden Stewart died in 1980.

 

 

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(1) In his autobiography, By a Stroke of Luck, David Ogden Stewart explained how he became a socialist by reading The Coming Struggle for Power by John Strachey.

It suddenly came over me that I was on the wrong side. If there was this "class war" as they claimed, I had somehow got into the enemy's army. I felt a tremendous sense of relief and exultation. I felt I had the answer I had been so long searching for. I now had a cause to which I could devote all my gifts for the rest of my life. I was once more beside grandfather Ogden who had helped to free the slaves. I felt clean and happy and exalted. I had won all the money and status that America had to offer - and it just hadn't been good enough. The next step was Socialism.

 

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