Background
Nugent, Elliott was born on September 20, 1899 in Dover, Ohio, United States. Son of J. C. and Grace (Fertig) Nugent.
Nugent, Elliott was born on September 20, 1899 in Dover, Ohio, United States. Son of J. C. and Grace (Fertig) Nugent.
Like his father, the actor J. C. Nugent, Elliott Nugent was first and last a man ol the theatre, equally polished as writer, actor, and director.
A Broadway actor in the early 1920s, he wrote plays with his father and made his movie acting debut in Headlines (25, Edward H. Griffith). The emphasis on words that came with sound made Nngent exactly the sort of stage talent required in Hollywood. In 1929. he went west, as an actor, a writer, and eventually, a director, he played the lead in So This Is College (29, Sam Wood); For the Love о Lit (30, James Tinling); Not So Dumb (30, King Vidor); and Romance (30, Clarence Brown), he acted in and wrote dialogue for Wise Girls (29, E. Mason Hopper); Sins of the Children (30, Wood); and The Unholy Three (30, jack Conway).
When he graduated to directing, from 1934 onward he worked for Paramount, specializing in romantic comedy—thus Three-Cornered Moon, starring Claudette Colbert and Mary Boland, a clever gilding of a Depression subject. His style seemed more sophisticated than low-down, but after Professor Beware—one of Harold Lloyd’s last films—Nugent played an important part in Bob Hope’s career. He worked five times with Hope: in Give Me a Sailor Never Say Die, Nothing But the Truth, My Favorite Brnnette, and best of all, The Cat and the Canary, a comedy horror that is always a little too frightening for comfort and very good-looking. He directed Danny Kave in Up in Arms, but still retained a feeling for writ in The Male Animal, an adaptation of a stage play he had written with fames Thurber, and starring Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland. He went back to the stage in 1952 after two less successful but more ambitious excursions—My Girl Tisa and The Great Gatsby—and the domestic comedy, Mr. Belvedere Goes to College.
Served in United States Navy Reserve, 1918. Member Phi Kappa Psi. Club: The Players, Lambs.
Married Norma Lee, 1921 (deceased. Children: Lee, Barbara (deceased), Nancy.