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Born Isobel Fredricka Hochdorf on May 8, 1915 in Brooklyn, New York, Isobel Lennart took her professional name from her mother, Victoria Lennart Livingston who died when Isobel was five years old, her dentist father later marrying his cousin. Afflicted as a girl with polio, and in leg braces, Isobel became an avid reader especially of movie magazines. She dreamed of leaving Brooklyn and becoming a Hollywood film director.

After attending Smith College and NYU, Lennart moved to Hollywood and got a job as a script girl with MGM. Graduating to writing, her first screenplay credit was for 1942โ€™s The Affairs of Martha, followed by 1943โ€™s A Stranger in Town and Lost Angel, her personal favorite among her early screenplays. Her first important film was 1945โ€™s Anchors Aweigh. She married actor John Harding in 1946 with whom she had two children, Joshua (1948-1971) and Sarah (1951- ). Her films during this period included Holiday Affair and A Life of Her Own.

In 1951, Lennart who had been a member of the Young Communists from 1939-1944, was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Because she named names, something she later regretted, she was never blacklisted and never stopped working. Her screenplay for 1955โ€™s Love Me or Leave Me earned her the first of her two Oscar nominations and the first of six Writers Guild nominations. She subsequently wrote the late 1950s screenplays for Meet Me in Las Vegas (her second Writers Guild nod), This Could Be the Night, Merry Andrew and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. Two other screenplays, those she wrote for Please Donโ€™t Eat the Daisies and The Sundowners were made into films in 1960, earning her the third and fourth of her six Writers Guild nods), the latter earning her the second of her two Oscar nominations.

Lennart wrote the screenplays for early 1960s successes, By Love Possessed, Period of Adjustment and Two for the Seesaw. Period of Adjustment would earn her the fifth of her six Writers Guild nods.

In 1964, Lennart received the greatest kudos of her career for her book for the Fanny Brice musical, Funny Girl which made a star of Barbra Stresiand and earned Lennart a Tony nomination. She returned to film writing for 1967โ€™s Fitzwilly.

The 1968 film version of Funny Girl earned Lennart the last of her six Writers Guild nominations. It would be her last film as a writer. She never did realize her childhood dream of becoming a director. She died in a car crash on January 25, 1971 at 55.

Lennertโ€™s son Joshua Harding would die later that year at the age of 23. Her husband John Hardingโ€™s last acting credit was in 1978. Daughter Sarah Harding is a qualified lama and teacher in the Shangpa Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. She has been an instructor in the Religious Studies Department of Naropa University since 1991 and lives in Boulder, Colorado with her two children.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

ANCHORS AWEIGH, directed by George Sidney (1945)

This Gene Kelly-Frank Sinatra precursor to the superior On the Town is best remembered for Kelly dancing with Jerry Mouse, Sinatra singing โ€œI Fall in Love Too Easilyโ€, Kathryn Graysonโ€™s lilting soprano and Dean Stockwell in only his second film as Graysonโ€™s brother, not Lennartโ€™s screenplay, sweet and charming though it may be, but this is the film that put her on the Hollywood map. She herself thought her earlier screenplay for Lost Angel in which Margaret Oโ€™Brienโ€™s Alpha is being raised along scientific principles was the best of her early work.

LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, directed by Charles Vidor(1943)

Doris Day is terrific as singer Ruth Etting in this musical bio of the 1920s singer who had a brief career before the cameras in the 1930s. Even better is James Cagney who was Oscar nominated while Day was surprisingly overlooked, for his portrayal of her gangster boyfriend/husband, Marty the Gimp. It was Cagneyโ€™s third and final Oscar nomination in a career that should have had at least three more. Lennert co-wrote the screenplay with Daniel Fuchs based on his story, which earned her the first of her two Oscar nominations as well as the first of six Writers Guild nominations.

THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS, directed by Mark Robson (1944)

Lennartโ€™s screenplay was based on Alan Burgessโ€™ novel, The Small Woman, a fictionalized account of the life of the very short, very English missionary Gladys Aylward, played by the very tall, very Swedish Ingrid Bergman in a Golden Globe nominated performance. Robert Donat was also nominated posthumously for his portrayal of a Chinese mandarin. Aylward herself (1902-1970) was mortified by the many liberties the film took with her life including the introduction of a Chinese colonel as Eurasian and the manufactured romance between him and Aylaward, who claimed had never kissed a man in her life.

THE SUNDOWNERS, directed by Fred Zinnemann (1960)

Lennartโ€™s screenplay was based on Jon Clearyโ€™s warmhearted novel about a nomadic family in the Australian Outback of the early 1900s. It was nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Director, Actress (Deborah Kerr), Supporting Actress (Glynis Johns) and Screenplay. Kerr, Robert Mitchum as her husband and Michael Anderson, Jr. as their son are all quite wonderful as are Johns and Peter Ustinov as an unlikely romantic couple. For Kerr, it would be the sixth time she would be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress and lose, this time to Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8.

FUNNY GIRL, directed by William Wyler (1968)

Lennart had her finest hour as the book writer of the Jule Styne-Bob Merrill musical about the life of Fanny Brice, which skyrocketed Barbra Streisand to everlasting fame. She shared the showโ€™s Tony nomination for Best Musical, which it lost to Hello, Dolly!. Her screenplay for the highly anticipated film version earned Streisand an Oscar and Lennart the last of her six Writers Guild nominations. Adapted Screenplay, however, wasnโ€™t among the filmโ€™s 8 Oscar nominations which included a nod for Best Picture, a prize it lost to another stage to screen musical, Lionel Bartโ€™s Oliver! .

ISOBEL LENNART AND OSCAR

  • Love Me or Leave Me (1955) โ€“ nominated – Best Screenplay
  • The Sundowners (1960) โ€“ nominated – Best Adapted Screenplay

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