Isobel Lennart
Isobel Lennart was a prolific American screenwriter and playwright known for her impactful contributions to Hollywood from 1942 to 1968, during which she penned around twenty-five screenplays and one stage musical. She gained significant recognition for her Broadway musical "Funny Girl," which was later adapted for the screen in 1968 and starred Barbra Streisand. Lennart's work primarily focused on light comedies and musicals, often highlighting themes of optimism, hard work, and traditional American values, resonating with audiences of her time.
Her early career was marked by her involvement with the Communist Party, which she joined and left twice, reflecting her pro-working class sentiments. However, her political affiliations led to challenges, including being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, where she cooperated to avoid being blacklisted. This experience left a lasting impact on her conscience. Throughout her career, Lennart also adapted well-known works for the screen, showing versatility in her writing. Notable screenplays include "Anchors Aweigh," "Holiday Affair," and "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness," the latter two showcasing her ability to blend music with compelling narratives. Lennart's legacy continues to be celebrated for her contributions to the musical genre and her unique storytelling perspective.
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Isobel Lennart
- Born: May 18, 1915
- Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
- Died: January 25, 1971
- Place of death: Hemet, California
Biography
Isobel Lennart’s career as a screenwriter for major Hollywood studios was highly productive: she wrote some twenty- five screenplays and one stage musical in the course of twenty- six years from 1942 to 1968. Her work was brought to a close only by her untimely death as a result of a car accident in 1971. Her screenplays consist of musicals and light comedies. She is probably best known for the stage musical Funny Girl, which appeared on Broadway in 1961 and on screen in 1968.
Taken together, Lennart’s screenplays tend to portray good-hearted people who achieve their goals through struggle and hard work as well as help from friends and strangers. The characters are optimistic and upbeat. By espousing traditional American values, the screenplays often found a ready audience.
Lennart’s first screenplays were written during a time when her political convictions favored the working class. She joined the Communist party twice. The first time was in 1939, but she resigned her membership when Stalin and Hitler signed their peace pact. The second time occurred when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941; this time the end of World War II in 1945 caused her to renounce her membership again.
Lennart was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, under threat from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that she would never work again in Hollywood if she did not cooperate. Her voluntary testimony, including naming twenty-one other party members, allowed her to continue her career without being blacklisted. Reflecting on this unpleasant experience, she remarked in an interview with Robert Vaughn in 1970, “I believe with all my heart that it was wrong to cooperate with this terrible committee in any way, and I believe that I was wrong. I believe I did a minimum of damage, but I still believe it was wrong. . . . I’ve never gotten over it. I’ve always felt an inferior citizen because of this.”
Two of Lennart’s early screenplays, The Affairs of Martha and Lost Angel, reflect her early pro-working class convictions only in that each deals with a character in some way at the mercy of the establishment. In the first, the character is a servant of a wealthy couple, and in the other an institutionalized child prodigy, played by Margaret O’Brien.
The films that immediately followed were musicals or relied heavily on music and dance. The most successful of them was Anchors Aweigh, starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly as two sailors who come to the aid of a singer played by Kathryn Grayson as she tries to launch her career. This was followed the next year by the musical Holiday in Mexico starring Jane Powell as a teenager running a household in Mexico for her ambassador father, played by Walter Pidgeon.
Two other musicals followed: It Happened in Brooklyn, about breaking into show business, and The Kissing Bandit, set in the Old West. Neither was as successful as Anchors Aweigh or Holiday in Mexico.
Lennart next turned to writing screenplays about love and infidelity, all of them light comedies. They include Holiday Affair, about an engaged woman tempted by a new and charming suitor; East Side, West Side, portraying the dissolution of a marriage caused by the husband’s affair; A Life of Her Own, about a woman who breaks off her affair with a wealthy industrialist upon discovering the truth of his marriage to a crippled wife; and My Wife’s Best Friend, about a couple confessing their extramarital affairs, thinking the plane they are on is about to crash.
She returned to the musical form in the subsequent films: Skirts Ahoy, Latin Lovers, The Girl Next Door, and Meet Me in Las Vegas, all of them about searching for love or falling in love. Two films written about this same time with collaborators—Love Me or Leave Me with Daniel Fuchs and Merry Andrew with I. A. L. Diamond—were not actually musicals, but relied heavily on music.
Lennart’s screenplays of the 1960’s were for the most part adaptations. Please Don’t Eat the Daisies was based on the book and the play by Jean Kerr. Tennessee Williams’s play Period of Adjustment was the basis for Lennart’s screenplay of the same name in 1962. Finally, in 1962, Lennart adapted William Gibson’s play Two for the Seesaw, whose material she altered to soften the story and to create a more upbeat ending. Probably the most successful and most memorable of Lennart’s screenplays is Funny Girl, a musical based on her own highly successful Broadway musical of the same name. The story follows the rise to fame of Fanny Bryce as a comedienne and singer, portrayed by Barbra Streisand. The role won Streisand the Academy Award.
Two screenplays are in sharp contrast with the others. One, based on actual fact and set in China at the time of the Japanese invasion, is The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, dealing with the hardships of an Englishwomen leading children into the mountain to avoid the invaders. The other, The Sundowners, for which Lennart was nominated for an Academy Award, depicts the struggles of a poor family in the Australian Outback.