Dwight Taylor (writer)

Dwight Taylor was the son of playwright Charles A. Taylor and actress Laurette Taylor, and attended Lawrenceville School in Lawrence Township, New Jersey where he began drawing and painting and wrote a book of poetry.

After refusing an opportunity to work as a cub reporter for The New York World, he began his career as a journalist for The New Yorker magazine, serving as one of the first editors for their "Talk of the Town". He began screenwriting for Hollywood films in 1930 and for television in 1953. His first produced play was Don't Tell George (1928). Other plays included such as Lipstick and Gay Divorce. Taylor's first screenplay was Jailbreak. First National Pictures bought the project in 1929 while it was still in manuscript form and had Alfred A. Cohn and Henry McCarty adapt it to become the 1930 film Numbered Men starring Conrad Nagel and Bernice Claire. Gay Divorce was adapted into a Broadway musical by Cole Porter. In 1934 RKO Studios, which renamed it The Gay Divorcee to appease the censors, filmed it with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. He was a founding member, and had served one term as president, of the Writers Guild of America, West.

On December 31, 1986, one day before his 84th birthday, Dwight Taylor died of a heart attack at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California where he had resided since 1981, after suffering a heart attack. He had been widowed three months earlier by his second wife, former Hollywood costume designer Natalie Visart (born Natalie Visart Schenkelberg; 1910–1986), with whom he had a daughter, Laurel. His first wife was Marigold Lockhart Taylor (née Langworthy; born July 22, 1901 – died 1951?), whom he married on May 25, 1929, and by whom he had three children (Andrew, Audrey, and Jeffrey). Taylor was survived by his four children and his sister, Mrs. Marguerite Courtney.

Filmography

Film

Television

Theatre

Bibliography