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Curated category

20th-century American screenwriters

  • Alfred HitchcockOn the 13th of August 1899, a boy named Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in the flat above his parents' greengrocer shop at 517 High Road in Leytonstone.
  • Martin ScorseseMartin Scorsese was born on the 17th of November 1942 in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens. He grew up in the Little Italy section of Manhattan where his…
  • Woody AllenAllan Stewart Konigsberg was born on the 30th of November 1935 at Mount Eden Hospital in Bronx, New York City. He grew up in Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood…
  • Ernest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. He grew up as the second of six children to Clarence Edmonds Hemingway and…
  • Orson WellesGeorge Orson Welles was born the 6th of May 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His father Richard Head Welles made a fortune inventing a bicycle lamp before…
  • Steven SpielbergSteven Allan Spielberg was born on the 18th of December 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His mother Leah Adler ran a kosher dairy restaurant and played concert…
  • Tennessee WilliamsThomas Lanier Williams III arrived in Columbus, Mississippi on the 26th of March 1911. He was the second child born to Edwina Dakin and Cornelius Coffin…
  • Quentin TarantinoQuentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on the 27th of March 1963. His father Tony Tarantino left the family before his son's birth.
  • David LynchDavid Keith Lynch was born at St. Patrick's Hospital in Missoula, Montana, on the 20th of January 1946. His father worked as a USDA research scientist and…
  • Stanley KubrickStanley Kubrick was born on the 26th of July 1928 in New York City's Manhattan borough. He grew up in the Bronx with his parents, Jack and Sadie Kubrick, who…
  • Wes AndersonWesley Wales Anderson was born on the 1st of May 1969, in Houston, Texas. His father worked in advertising and public relations while his mother was a…
  • George LucasGeorge Walton Lucas Jr. was born on the 14th of May 1944 in Modesto, California. He grew up as the son of Dorothy Ellinore Lucas and George Walton Lucas Sr.
  • William FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was born on the 25th of September 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi. He grew up in Oxford, a town where his family lived for most of…
  • Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis on the 11th of November 1922. He descended from a long line of German Americans whose family fortune rested on the…
  • Andy WarholAndrew Warhola Jr. arrived in the world on the 6th of August 1928 within a working-class home at 55 Beelen Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
  • Dr. SeussTheodor Seuss Geisel arrived in Springfield, Massachusetts on the 2nd of March 1904. His father managed a family brewery that closed during Prohibition…
  • Stephen ColbertOn the 11th of September 1974, a ten-year-old boy named Stephen Colbert stood in the living room of his family home on James Island.
  • Raymond ChandlerRaymond Thornton Chandler arrived in Chicago on the 23rd of July 1888. His mother Florence Dart was originally from Ireland, and his father Maurice Benjamin…
  • Elia KazanElias Kazantzoglou entered the world on the 7th of September 1909 in the Kadıköy district of Constantinople. His parents were Cappadocian Greeks originally…
  • Bruce Leethe 27th of November 1940 marked the arrival of Lee Jun-fan in San Francisco. His parents traveled to California for an international opera tour when he was…
  • Irving ThalbergIrving Thalberg was born with a heart condition so severe that doctors predicted he would die before turning thirty, yet he went on to become the most…
  • William WylerWilli Wyler was born on the 1st of July, 1902, in Mulhouse, Alsace-Lorraine. His father Leopold ran a thriving haberdashery business there.
  • Ralph BakshiRalph Bakshi was born on the 29th of October 1938, in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine. His family moved to the United States in 1939 and settled in the…
  • Terrence MalickTerrence Malick was born on the 30th of November 1943 in Ottawa, Illinois. His father Emil worked as a geologist and his mother Irene came from an Irish…
  • Francis Ford CoppolaFrancis Ford Coppola was born on the 7th of April 1939 in Detroit, Michigan. His father Carmine worked as a flautist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra…
  • Arthur MillerArthur Asher Miller was born on the 17th of October 1915 in Harlem, Manhattan. He grew up as the second child of Augusta and Isidore Miller.
  • Buster KeatonJoseph Frank Keaton arrived in Piqua, Kansas on the 4th of October 1895. His father Joe ran a traveling medicine show called the Mohawk Indian Medicine…
  • Walt DisneyWalter Elias Disney was born on the 5th of December 1901 at 1249 Tripp Avenue in Chicago's Hermosa neighborhood. He moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri…
  • John LasseterJohn Alan Lasseter was born on the 12th of January 1957 in Hollywood, California. His mother Jewell Mae Risley taught art at Bell Gardens High School while…
  • Conan O'BrienConan Christopher O'Brien was born on the 18th of April 1963, in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father Thomas Francis O'Brien worked as a physician and…
  • Ron HowardRonald William Howard entered the world on the 1st of March 1954, in Duncan, Oklahoma. His father Rance Howard served three years in the United States Air…
  • J. J. AbramsOn a day in 1982, Jeffrey Jacob Abrams composed the music for a horror movie called Nightbeast. He was only sixteen years old when he wrote that score.
  • Dean DevlinDon Devlin, a Jewish actor turned writer-producer who discovered Steven Spielberg, and Pilar Seurat, a Filipino actress, raised Dean Devlin in the…
  • John SingletonJohn Daniel Singleton was born on the 6th of January 1968, in Los Angeles. His mother Shelia Ward-Johnson worked as a pharmaceutical company sales executive.
  • Tony GilroyAnthony Joseph Gilroy entered the world on the 11th of September 1956, inside a Manhattan hospital. His father Frank D. Gilroy worked as an award-winning…
  • George R. R. MartinGeorge Raymond Martin was born on the 20th of September 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey. His father worked as a longshoreman while his mother's family had once…
  • Charlie KaufmanCharles Stuart Kaufman was born on the 19th of November 1958 in New York City to a Jewish family. His parents were Helen and Myron Kaufman.
  • Michael CrichtonJohn Michael Crichton was born on the 23rd of October 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in Roslyn, New York, where he walked to school and rode his bike…
  • Lorne MichaelsLorne David Lipowitz entered the world on the 17th of November 1944 in Toronto, Ontario. His parents were Florence and Abraham Lipowitz, a man who worked as…
  • David X. CohenDavid Samuel Cohen was born on the 13th of July 1966 in New York City. Both of his parents were biologists, and he grew up planning to be a scientist himself.
  • Leigh BrackettLeigh Douglass Brackett was born on the 7th of December 1915 in Los Angeles, California. Her father died when she was very young and her mother did not…
  • Penelope GilliattPenelope Gilliatt was born on the 25th of March 1932 in London. Her parents were Cyril Conner and Marie Stephanie Douglass, both hailing from Newcastle upon…