Philip Yordan (April 1, 1914 – March 24, 2003) was an American screenwriter, film producer, novelist and playwright. He was a three-time Academy Award nominee, winning Best Story for Broken Lance (1954).

During the 1950s and 1960s, Yordan acted as a front for blacklisted writers

A common anecdote in Hollywood was that he hired someone else to go through law school for him using his name to get the degree without having to do any of the work,

Yordan's first play, Any Day Now, a comedy about a family of Polish Americans was staged at a small off-Broadway theatre in 1941. Critic Axel Storm called it "a very bad play very well written and the author will probably get something telling off his chest sooner or later. He's worth watching." Director William Dieterle saw the play and invited Yordan to Hollywood to work on a project Dieterle was making about the history of jazz. By the time Any Day Now was produced Yordan had also written the plays Get off the Earth, Anna Lucasta and Joe Macbeth.

In Los Angeles Yordan did some uncredited writing on The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), directed by Dieterle, and then was credited as co writer on the jazz project, Syncopation (1942), directed by Dieterle at RKO.

Yordan served for a few months in the army, worked briefly at Columbia Pictures as a staff writer and a play of his The Honest Gambler was given a short run at a theatre in 1943.

In 1937 Yordan had written a play based on Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie, adapted to be about a Polish American family and titled Anna Lucasta. Later he found out that Abram Hill had rewritten the same play for the American Negro Theater in New York. The lighter, more comedic production had received critical accolades. and leading to two film adaptations. Yordan had hired several writers to rewrite Anna Lucasta before the play premiered on Broadway. In 1947, Lee Richardson, Antoinette Perry and Brock Pemberton sued Yordan for not paying them. When Anna Lucasta went to Broadway, the new production retained only a few of the ANT actors.

Yordan returned to theatre to work on a musical version of The Honest Gambler called Windy City. It toured out of town but shut in Chicago before it reached New York. He wrote a play Road to the Noonday Sun which was not producer.

The Kings liked his work and hired Yordan to write Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1944) and When Strangers Marry (1944), although Dennis Cooper wrote the first draft which Yordan then rewrote. They all did well enough for Yordan to be able to make Dillinger (1945). Reportedly, he wrote the script with William Castle and Robert Tasker, neither of whom received any credit. He did uncredited work on Why Girls Leave Home (1945). The King Brothers used him again for Suspense (1946), a big budget vehicle for Monogram. He wrote The Chase (1946) for Nebenzal/Nero. In 1946 it was estimated he earned a million dollars. It did not reach the scren until 1955.

Yordan wrote several subsequent movies for the Kings including Bad Men of Tombstone (1949), Drums in the Deep South (1951), and Mutiny (1952).

According to Patrick McGilligan, Yordan thrived in Hollywood.

<blockquote>It was the perfect jungle for expression of his genius at supplying the demand. In short order, he became known among producers as a bravura "spitballer," that is, one who can talk a good script (and one has only to meet Yordan to appreciate how spellbinding is his vernacular). He became a much-sought-after script doctor and coarse dialogue specialist, often arriving at the 11th hour to contribute the famed lightning-quick "Yordan touch." A lot of his work went uncredited.</blockquote>

Producer

Yordan was producer on Whistle Stop (1946) which he wrote.

In 1947 Yordan and Mike Frankovich announced they had formed their own company, originally called Yordan Enterprises. The first film adaption in 1949 was produced by Yordan with a Polish American family as in his original version. The other, made in 1958 had an all-black cast as the American Negro Theater production, and starred Eartha Kitt, Sammy Davis Jr., and Henry Scott. Only Yordan retained a writing credit for both films.

In 1949, Yordan announced he would write and produce The Big Blonde based on a story by Dorothy Parker. Irving Lerner was going to direct. It was not made – the rights to the story went to Mark Robson's company.

Yordan Enterprises was eventually renamed Security Pictures. Security Pictures made The Big Combo (1955), a co-production with the company of star Cornel Wilde; Yordan wrote the script and produced with Sidney Harmon.

Yordan was a writer-producer for The Harder They Fall (1956) directed by Mark Robson.

For Security Pictures he produced The Wild Party (1956) and wrote Four Boys and a Gun (1957). He and Harmon bought Man on Spikes but it was not made. In 1956 he was reportedly working on a script for Mario Lanza and Anthony Mann that was not made. He provided the story for Street of Sinners (1957) for Security as well as Man in War (1957) and God's Little Acre (1958). Yordan adapted Little Man Big World by W. R. Burnett for Robert Ryan to star for Security, but the film was not made. In 1957 Security and Milton Sperling purchased the King Studios. He wrote and produced Day of the Outlaw (1959) at Security

In 1959 Yordan and Harmon announced they would make four films for Columbia. They were going to start with a World War II story, Kingdom of Man. The films were not made. Yordan produced the TV series Assignment: Underwater (1960–61). He also made some uncredited contributions to the script of The Time Machine (1960).

Major studios

Yordan's first credit for a major studio was House of Strangers (1949) which he adapted from a Jerome Weidman novel for Fox. Yordan had been fired by producer Sol C. Siegel after an incomplete first draft which Siegel felt wasn't working. He did Detective Story (1951) for William Wyler at Paramount and provided the story (along with Sidney Harmon) for Mara Maru (1952) at Warners. Detective Story earned Yordan an Oscar nomination.

Yordan adapted Houdini (1953) for Paramount and Blowing Wild (1953) for Warner Bros. In 1953 he sold The Men from Earth to Milton Sperling.

Yordan wrote The Man from Laramie (1955) for James Stewart and director Anthony Mann, the last film Stewart and Mann made together. Yordan wrote Conquest of Space (1955) for Haskin and did another for Mann, The Last Frontier (1955).

In 1955, he won an Academy Award for Broken Lance. It was a remake of 1949's House of Strangers, and he did not write single word. He won his Oscar for Best Original Story for material in the story files that had formed the basis for House of Strangers, salvaged, provided a Western context, and refurbished by producer-writer Michael Blankfort. The film would not be made until over a decade later. In January 1957 he sold a story Diamond in the Rough to Jerry Wald.

At Fox Yordan wrote No Down Payment (1957), The Bravados (1958) and The Fiend Who Walked the West (1958) (a remake of Kiss of Death). He wrote The Bramble Bush (1960) for Warners.

Front for blacklistees

Yordan struck a deal with screenwriter Ben Maddow who was having difficulty getting work because of the left-wing associations. They were to split the money down the middle, with Yordan assuming sole credit. and possibly God's Little Acre (1958) as well as Yordan's only novel, Man of the West on which the 1957 film Gun Glory (1957) was based. (Yordan disputed the screenwriter' contribution to God's Little Acre.

Although he also spoke well of Yordan,

In the late 1950s, Yordan got two scripts mixed up and delivered a Fox script to producer Milton Sperling at Warner Bros., dropping the Warners script off to Darryl F. Zanuck at Fox. As the writer was under contract to Fox, Zanuck threatened to blackball Yordan at all the major studios.

Yordan stayed with Bronston to write El Cid (1961) for Mann, although it is more likely the actual scripting was done by blacklistees Ben Barzman and Bernard Gordon.

Yordan was credited on The Day of the Triffids (1963) but he was a "front" for Bernard Gordon. He continued to work regularly for Bronston: 55 Days at Peking (1963), directed by Ray and Guy Green, with Yordan producing, contributing ideas and being a script front for Gordon (based on a story Yordan had developed for Jerry Wald); The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), directed by Mann; and Circus World (1964), directed by Henry Hathaway (mostly written by Gordon).

Both 55 Days at Peking and The Fall of the Roman Empire were box-offices failures Many of these were not made. For Security Pictures, Yordan produced The Thin Red Line (1964) and Crack in the World (1965).

Security combined with Cinerama to make Battle of the Bulge (1965), which he produced; Custer of the West (1967) and Krakatoa: East of Java (1968) which he produced. Gordon recalled collaborating on the first draft of the Bulge script with Yordan, a first during their lengthy association He wrote and produced Captain Apache (1971) with Sperling, and wrote Bad Man's River (1971).

Final films

Yordan returned to the US in the 1970s. His later credits include Brigham (1977) (which he co-produced), Cataclysm (1980), The Dark Side to Love (1984), Night Train to Terror (1985), Cry Wilderness (1987) (also co produced), Bloody Wednesday (1987) (which he co produced), and The Unholy (1988). His final scripts included Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars (1992), and Dead Girls Don't Tango (1992).

Accolades

  • Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay for Detective Story (1951), and for Best Writing, Original Screenplay for Dillinger (1945).
  • Won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story for Broken Lance (1954), a remake, reset in the West, of the House of Strangers, which was credited solely to Yordan but written in large part by the film's director Joseph L. Mankiewicz who refused to share a co-writing credit.

Appraisal

Producer Milton Sperling later said "Don’t let anyone tell you he couldn’t write. He could write exceedingly well. . . . He had a kind of Jungian memory of film, a kind of collective unconscious, a memory bank that would work for him in any given situation. He could have been one of the best writers. He had ability, no question about it. But his greed overcame his creative talent."

Eddie Muller wrote "What made Yordan's scripts distinctive was his sometimes subtle, sometimes subversive, way of twisting genre conventions to keep things lively and unpredictable. His screenplays for 'The Chase,' 'Johnny Guitar' and 'The Big Combo' are quirky to the point of outrageousness. If the premise was slight, you could trust Yordan to goose it with plenty of 'business'."

References

  • Philip Yordan Papers, MSS 1789, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University