Daniel Taradash
Daniel Taradash was a prominent American screenwriter and director, best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplay adaptation of James Jones's novel, *From Here to Eternity*. Born in 1913 in Louisville, Kentucky, he demonstrated early talent in writing and earned a degree from Harvard University, followed by a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1936. Despite initially pursuing a legal career, he shifted focus to screenwriting after winning a competition that led to a contract with Columbia Pictures. His early work included the screenplay for *Golden Boy*, and he served in the Army during World War II, contributing to training films.
Taradash's ability to adapt complex literary works into engaging films became his signature, as seen in *From Here to Eternity*, which he successfully condensed into a two-hour adaptation while preserving its essence. Beyond his Oscar-winning work, he wrote screenplays for notable films like *Hawaii*, *Picnic*, and *Bell, Book, and Candle*, and directed *Storm Center*. Throughout his career, he took on leadership roles in various industry organizations, including serving as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Writers Guild of America—West. Taradash passed away in 2003, leaving a lasting impact on the film industry.
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Subject Terms
Daniel Taradash
Playwright
- Born: January 29, 1913
- Birthplace: Louisville, Kentucky
- Died: February 22, 2003
- Place of death: Los Angeles, California
Biography
Daniel Taradash’s greatest triumph was his film adaptation of James Jones’s novel, From Here to Eternity, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Taradash’s career as a screenwriter began in 1939, when director Rouben Mamoulian, having committed himself to write the screen adaptation of Clifford Odets’s play, Golden Boy, soured on the job. Mamoulian turned to Taradash and Lewis Meltzer to write the screenplay, which he had barely started and was about to abandon. Taradash came to Mamoulian’s attention when his play, Thy Mercy, written immediately after his graduation from law school, took first prize in a Bureau of New Plays competition.
Born in 1913 in Louisville, Kentucky, Taradash was the son of William Taradash, a successful manufacturer, and Elizabeth Bornstein Taradash. He entered Harvard University when he was seventeen and earned a bachelor’s degree by the time he was twenty. He attended Harvard Law School, where he earned a law degree in 1936.
Taradash, however, considered a legal career a safe port if he could not succeed as a writer. He promised his father to join a law firm if, after a year of trying, his efforts to write proved futile. Winning the Bureau of New Plays competition during that year resulted in Taradash’s being offered a contract to write for Columbia Pictures.
After collaborating on the screenplay for Golden Boy, Taradash collaborated on scripts of For Love or Money in 1939 and A Little Bit of Heaven in 1940. With World War II looming, he entered military service and worked on training films for the Army Signal Corps, serving in the armed forces until the war ended.
His next project was writing a play, Red Gloves, based on a play by Jean Paul Sartre, which Taradash brought to Broadway in 1948. His only other Broadway venture was a relatively unsuccessful play, There Was a Little Girl, a stage adaptation of Christopher Davis’s novel. Taradash freely admitted that his greatest talent lay in adapting other people’s work for the stage or screen.
In the early 1950’s, Taradash returned to Hollywood and wrote a screenplay based on Jones’s novel, From Here to Eternity. The novel was dauntingly long, so Taradash was faced not only with the task of condensing it into a film of slightly more than two hours without doing irreparable damage to the best-selling novel but also of converting it from prose to dramatic dialogue. The film was a rousing success. Taradash did not have an agent to negotiate his contract but, using his legal skills, he negotiated it himself. He became the first writer who was not the author of an original script to receive a percentage of the film’s profits. This stipulation became a treasure trove for Taradash, who went on to write the screenplays for such successful productions as Hawaii, Picnic, and Bell, Book, and Candle. He also directed several films, including Storm Center, for which he also wrote the screenplay.
Taradash, a leader in many film industry organizations, served as president of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Writers Guild of American—West. He died of cancer in 2003.