Jay Presson Allen
Jay Presson Allen was an accomplished American playwright and screenwriter, born Jacqueline Presson in 1922 in San Angelo, Texas. She began her writing career with a novel titled *Spring Riot* in 1948 and faced a hiatus in the 1950s following the birth of her child. Allen gained prominence in the 1960s with her first major success, the stage play *The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie*, adapted from Muriel Spark's novel, which premiered in England in 1966. Her versatility as a writer allowed her to transition seamlessly between stage and screen, producing notable works such as the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s *Marnie* and the film adaptation of *The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie*.
Allen became the highest-paid female screenwriter in Hollywood, known for her ability to produce quality scripts quickly. Her works spanned various genres, from musicals like *Cabaret* to intense dramas such as *Prince of the City*, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. In addition to her film work, she also wrote for television, creating teleplays for various series and eventually embracing the medium. Allen continued her writing career until the 1980s and 1990s, often working as an uncredited script doctor. She passed away in 2006 at the age of 84, leaving behind a legacy of influential works in theater, film, and television.
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Jay Presson Allen
- Born: March 3, 1922
- Birthplace: San Angelo, Texas
- Died: May 1, 2006
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
Jacqueline Presson,who chose to write under the name Jay Presson Allen after she married her second husband, Lewis Maitland Allen, in 1955, was born in 1922 in San Angelo, Texas. Her parents were affluent; her father, Albert Jeffrey Presson, owned a department store in San Angelo, and her mother, Wilhilmina Miller Presson, was a buyer for the store. Allen had written a novel, Spring Riot in 1948, and she took a hiatus from writing in the 1950’s after her child was born.
Allen’s first screenplay, Marnie, was released by Universal Studios in 1964, but her first smash hit was her play, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, based on Muriel Sparks’s novel, a heart-warming story of a heterodox English school marm. When Allen read Sparks’s novel, realizing the story’s dramatic potential, she determined to turn it into a play, but for a full year she experienced a case of writer’s block that she could not shake. She finally resorted to hypnosis in an effort to deal with the problem. Once the hypnosis took hold, she was able to complete the screenplay in three days of intense writing. In 1966, the stage play based on Sparks’s story premiered in England, and three years later, Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer released the film version for which Allen wrote the screenplay.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was a huge success both on the stage and in Hollywood, where Allen had gone in 1963 to write the screenplay for director Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Marnie. Hitchcock, who read her script for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie before it was produced, urged Allen to come to Hollywood to write the screenplay for Marnie. Although this film initially was not very well received, later critics reconsidered it and viewed it as a quite polished work.
Allen subsequently wrote many other screenplays, gaining a reputation for producing scripts quickly and for writing straightforward and fast-moving adaptations. She was extremely versatile, moving quite deftly from writing screenplays for a musical like Cabaret to producing a script for the harsh tale of a New York City narcotics officer involved in underhanded mob dealings as depicted in her screenplay Prince of the City, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. She was much in demand as a writer and became the highest paid female screenwriter in Hollywood. Producers appreciated the fact that Allen wrote rapidly without sacrificing quality and that she was not temperamental but approached her writing as a consummate professional/
Still writing for both the stage and the screen, Allen soon began to write for television. In 1973, she produced teleplays for a series, The Borrowers, that was aired by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Between 1975 and 1980, she wrote teleplays for the Family series produced by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). She also produced teleplays for such shows as the Philco Playhouse and the Hallmark Hall of Fame. When she began to write for television, Allen deplored the medium because of the remoteness of audiences: they were faceless hordes with whom Allen considered it impossible to establish a relationship. In time, however, after serving as writer and executive producer for the miniseries Hothouse, she warmed to writing for the medium.
During the 1980’s and 1990’s, Allen continued to do some writing, which was mostly as an uncredited script doctor. Allen died as a result of a stroke in New York City in 2006, at the age of eighty-four. She was survived by her daughter.