Edward Anhalt
Edward Anhalt was an influential American screenwriter and filmmaker, born on March 28, 1914, in New York City. He demonstrated academic prowess early on, attending an accelerated program at George Washington High School before pursuing journalism at Columbia University and later studying documentary filmmaking at Princeton. Anhalt's career began in the realm of documentary films, where he worked with notable figures such as Willard Van Dyke and Pare Lorentz, contributing to important cinematic projects in the 1930s.
He transitioned to screenwriting in the 1940s, achieving recognition for his work on low-budget films and later earning an Academy Award for Best Original Story for the thriller "Panic in the Streets." Anhalt was known for adapting significant literary works into screenplays, bringing a unique vision to classic stories such as "The Member of the Wedding" and "Becket." Notably, he was also an outspoken critic of the Hollywood blacklist during the 1950s.
Throughout his career, Anhalt received various accolades, including Edgar Awards and the Writers Guild Laurel Award. His later work included television adaptations, and he was involved in productions until his passing from cancer on September 3, 2000, in Pacific Palisades, California. His legacy reflects both his contributions to film and his complex personal life, shaped by five marriages and a vibrant passion for storytelling.
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Edward Anhalt
Writer
- Born: March 28, 1914
- Birthplace: New York, New York
- Died: September 3, 2000
- Place of death: Pacific Palisades, California
Biography
Edward Anhalt was born on March 28, 1914, in New York City. He attended George Washington High School, where he was in an accelerated program for students with high intelligence quotients (IQs), and he entered Columbia University, to study journalism, when he was sixteen. Anhalt left after his sophomore year, received a grant to study at Princeton University, and later received a fellowship to study documentary filmmaking with Willard Van Dyke.
Anhalt worked as a cameraman and editor on films by Van Dyke, Pare Lorentz, and Ralph Steiner. He also wrote screenplays for two documentary films: Problem Child, released in 1935, and Thunder of the Sea, released in 1936. He later became a cameraman in the earliest days of television, working at the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and contributing an article, “The Cameraman’s Part in Television Production,” to American Cinematographer magazine in 1943. During his stint at CBS, he directed a telecast of composer Aaron Copeland’s ballet, Billy the Kid.
After writing short stories for pulp magazines, Anhalt turned to screenwriting, receiving his first credits in 1946 for the low-budget films Avalanche and Strange Voyage. Edna Anhalt, the first of his five wives, was his cowriter at the beginning of his career; the couple were married from 1935 until 1956. After several B-movies, the Anhalts graduated to more prestigious projects with director Eliza Kazan’s 1950 thriller Panic in the Streets, for which they received an Academy Award for Best Original Story. The Anhalts also were nominated for an Academy Award for their screenplay for The Sniper, the first of several projects with producer Stanley Kramer. Anhalt blamed the failure of Kramer’s expensive costume epic The Pride and the Passion for the breakup of his marriage.
Anhalt became a specialist in adapting well-known novels and plays, such as Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding, John Osborne’s Luther, and Jean Anouilh’s Becket, for which he received another Academy Award. He made notable changes in his source material, altering the young German officer in Irwin Shaw’s World War II saga The Young Lions from an inflexible Nazi to a disillusioned idealist. Anhalt’s own idealism included criticizing the blacklisting of left-wing screenwriters during the 1950’s. Starting in the 1970’s, he worked in television, adapting the miniseries QB VII and Peter the Great. He also played small parts in a few television productions and films, including The Right Stuff.
Anhalt received Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America for his screenplay, The Boston Strangler, and the television script, Contract on Cherry Street, and was awarded the Writers Guild Laurel Award in 1977. Anhalt told the Los Angeles Times that he would do anything to avoid writing. Because producer Hal Wallis was notorious for roaming the Paramount Pictures’ corridors to make sure his writers were working, Anhalt would play a tape of a busy typewriter. According to his daughter, Julie Anhalt Rice, “He lived for a great martini.” Diagnosed with cancer in 1996, Anhalt died of multiple myeloma on September 3, 2000, in Pacific Palisades, California.