Peter Stone: Wikis

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Top rankings for Peter Stone

9th	Top Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 2008

Categories: 1930 births > 2003 deaths > Alumni of University High School (Los Angeles, California) > American screenwriters > Bard College alumni > Edgar Award winners > Yale University alumni > Guggenheim Fellows

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Updated live from Wikipedia, last check: June 04, 2012 22:24 UTC (47 seconds ago)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the American writer. For the actor on Degrassi High, see Peter Stone (Degrassi). For the Australian footballer born 1954, see Peter Stone (footballer). For the Australian footballer at the 1956 Olympics, see Pete Stone. For the Catholic priest and martyr, see Peter Snow (priest).

Peter Stone
Born	February 27, 1930(1930-02-27) Los Angeles, California
Died	April 26, 2003 (aged 73) New York City, New York

Peter Hess Stone^[1] (February 27, 1930 – April 26, 2003) was an American writer for theater, television and movies.

1 Life and career
2 Television
3 Film
4 Theater
5 References
6 External links

Life and career

Stone was born in Los Angeles. His mother, Hilda (née Hess), was a film writer, and his father, John Stone (born Saul Strumwasser) was the writer and producer of many silent films, including Shirley Temple and Charlie Chan movies.^[1]^[2] He graduated from University High School, attended Bard College starting in 1947, and received a Master's degree from Yale University in 1953. In 1964, Stone won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his screenplay for Charade.^[3]

Stone is among that rarefied group of writers who have conquered stage, screen, and television by winning an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy. In 1965, he won an Oscar for his work as a screenwriter on Father Goose. He won Tony Awards for his books for the Broadway musicals Titanic, Woman of the Year and 1776.^[4] He won an Emmy for a 1962 episode of The Defenders.^[5]

Shortly after Stone's death, in a memorial ceremony held June 30, 2003, at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, it was observed that the two most famous ships of all time were Noah's Ark and the Titanic, and that Stone had written Broadway musicals about both of them (Noah's Ark being the topic of Two by Two).

Stone is perhaps best remembered by the general public for the screenplays he wrote or co-wrote in the mid 1960s, Charade (1963), Father Goose (1964), Mirage (1965), and Arabesque (1966). He won the Oscar for best screenplay in 1965 for his work on Father Goose. Father Goose is a fairly conventional comedy, but the remaining three films all share a common theme and a style of screenwriting. Primarily, they attempt a blend of comedy, suspense, and romance. A decade before Brian DePalma earned a reputation exploiting Hitchcockian motifs, Stone's work in the 1960s employed Hitchcock-like narratives (even while the great director was still an active film maker) without seeming self-consciously derivative. Hitchcock's influence is especially evident in Edward Dmytryk's Mirage, a suspense-mystery that Stone adapted from the Howard Fast novel Fallen Angel. The narrative has Gregory Peck suffering from "unconscious amnesia" while dodging bullets in downtown New York. Although shot in black-and-white, many of its themes and images are reminiscent of Vertigo.