Lamar Trotti
Lamar Trotti was an influential American screenwriter and producer born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1900. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 1921 and began his career as a city editor for the Atlanta Georgian before moving to the film industry. Trotti worked as a publicist for the Motion Picture Association of America and later joined Twentieth Century Fox, where he spent over two decades producing more than fifty screenplays. His notable works include the biographical film "Wilson," for which he won an Academy Award in 1944, and he received a posthumous nomination for "There's No Business Like Show Business." Trotti was recognized for his interest in historically based films, frequently collaborating with figures such as Dudley Nichols and involving himself in projects featuring prominent actors like Will Rogers and Jane Withers. His contributions also extended to musicals, with successful titles like "Alexander's Ragtime Band." Trotti's adaptations of various literary works garnered him considerable acclaim, marking him as a significant figure in the Hollywood film industry during his time.
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Lamar Trotti
Playwright
- Born: October 18, 1898
- Birthplace: Atlanta, Georgia
- Died: August 28, 1952
Biography
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Lamar Jefferson Trotti received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia in 1921. Between 1922 and 1925, he worked as city editor of the Atlanta Georgian. In 1924, he met Jason Joy, who worked in the Hayes Office in New York. Joy offered to place Trotti in a position as publicist in the New York office of the organization that eventually evolved into the Motion Picture Association of America. Trotti assumed that post in 1925 and held it for six years, during which he edited and published a magazine designed to promote new Hollywood film releases.
In 1931, when Joy was transferred to Hollywood, he urged Trotti to accompany him, which Trotti did. The following year, when Joy became head of the story department of Twentieth Century Fox, Trotti moved to that studio with him and remained there for the next twenty years. In the course of that time, he produced more than fifty screenplays, many of them collaborations. Trotti won an Academy Award for his biographical film, Wilson, in 1944. He was working on There’s No Business Like Show Business when he succumbed to a heart attack in 1952 and, upon this film’s release in 1954, received a posthumous Academy Award nomination for best story.
Trotti’s chief interest lay in writing historically based films. Twentieth Century Fox, which produced all but one of his films, generally encouraged him to choose his own subjects, a luxury that most screenwriters of his day did not enjoy. In 1934, Trotti collaborated with Dudley Nichols, his frequent writing partner, on Judge Priest, adapted from Irving Cobb’s novel. Will Rogers starred in this film and began an association with Trotti and Nichols that ended only with Rogers’s death in 1936, when the Trotti-Nichols collaborations also ceased.
Having produced five films with Rogers in the leading role, Trotti wrote five screenplays for child actress Jane Withers in 1935 and 1936. In 1936, Twentieth Century Fox planned to film Trotti’s screenplay for Ramona as the first feature film photographed in Technicolor’s three-color process, but another studio beat Fox with its release of Becky Sharp late in 1935.
Trotti’s first real commercial and critical success was the film In Old Chicago, based on the Chicago fire of 1871, which was nominated for an Academy Award as best picture. Trotti moved into writing musicals with the production of Alexander’s Ragtime Band, a collaboration with Katherine Scola, which spent two years in production and was then most expensive movie ever made. The film was successful and received an Academy Award nomination as best picture in 1938.
Trotti wrote several other musicals, including When My Baby Smiles at Me, You’re My Everything, and My Blue Heaven, in which he incorporated the musical numbers that the medium demanded with a historically based story line. He also continued to produce such historical scripts as Young Mr. Lincoln, The Ox-Bow Incident, and Guadalcanal Diary.
Trotti’s adaptations of John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano, W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, Samuel Shellabarger’s Captain from Castille, Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s The Ox-Bow Incident, and Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth’s Cheaper by the Dozen brought Trotti considerable recognition.