Background
Jules Furthman was born on March 5, 1888 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. He was the son of a judge and the brother of writer Charles Furthman.
(John Muir and His Legacy is at once a biography of this r...)
John Muir and His Legacy is at once a biography of this remarkable man - the first work to make unrestricted use of all of Muir’s manuscripts and personal papers—and a history of the century-old fight to save the natural environment. Stephen Fox traces the conservation movement's diverse, colorful, and tumultuous history, from the successful campaign to establish Yosemite National Park in 1890 to the movement's present day concerns of nuclear waste and acid rain.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Conservation-Movement-John-Legacy/dp/0299106349/?tag=2022091-20
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Jules Furthman was born on March 5, 1888 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. He was the son of a judge and the brother of writer Charles Furthman.
Jules was educated at Northwestern.
During World War I Jules wrote under the pen name "Stephen Fox" as he thought Furthman sounded too German. He wrote screenplays for a number of important or popular films, including The Docks of New York (1928), Thunderbolt (1929), Merely Mary Ann (1931), Shanghai Express (1932), Bombshell (1933), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Come and Get It (1936), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946) and Nightmare Alley (1947). He wrote credited screenplays for eight films directed by Josef Von Sternberg and an equal number for Howard Hawks. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for Mutiny on the Bounty. Jules Furthman died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1966 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. His remains were brought home and interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
(John Muir and His Legacy is at once a biography of this r...)
Jules Furthman was often regarded as a sharp-tongued, nasty person - and this from friends, like Howard Hawks, who depended upon him. It was only a modest exaggeration from Pauline Kael when she opined that Furthman had his name on about half of the most entertaining films Hollywood ever produced. At the same time, he is clearly the secret sharer with both von Sternberg and Howard Hawks, and even the connection that allowed Hawks to pick up so much of Sternberg’s sophistication. The claim is clear, that going from Dietrich to Angie Dickinson, byway of Frances Farmer and Lauren Bacall, Furthman created the paper outline of the most challenging woman in American pictures.
Yet Furthman was a recluse. He lived in Culver City, did not socialize, looking after a retarded son and growing prize orchids. He did not give interviews, and he was sufficiently well off to endure scandalous unemployment at a time when his unsociability had deterred so many people. What a tragedy, when pious dullards in their self-importance have laid down miles and years of flatulent interview.
In 1920, Jules married the actress Sybil Seely. She and Furthman had a son in 1921. They remained together until his death.