Keene Thompson | |
---|---|
Born | Robert Keene Thompson November 15, 1885 |
Died | July 11, 1937 | (aged 51)
Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, CA |
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) |
Story writer Scenario writer Screenwriter |
Years active | 1920–1937 |
Children | 3 (deceased) |
Keene Thompson (November 15, 1885, in Minneapolis, Minnesota – July 11, 1937, in Hollywood, California) was a story, scenario and screenwriter who worked in the film industry from 1920 to 1937. [1] [2]
Thompson had a small acting role in the 1917 Douglas Fairbanks Sr. film Reaching for the Moon, [3] [4] but his first writing work was a screenplay for Fairbanks. [5] His last was scripting the Jack Benny musical Artists and Models. [6]
Some of his early silent film work was for the Christie Film Company, [7] but his later screenwriting was associated primarily with Paramount Pictures where he became a general story advisor. [5] At Paramount he was known for his work with Adolphe Menjou, [8] [9] and had written scripts and special materials for such stars as Raymond Griffith, Gary Cooper and Clara Bow, [10] such as Clarence G. Badger's Paths to Paradise, Victor Fleming's The Virginian, and Frank Tuttle's True to the Navy. [10]
Fighting Caravans (1931), a story of the caravans of wagon trains that supplied freight to the pre- Civil War Old West before the completion of the transcontinental railways, was his adaption of a Zane Grey novel of the same name. [11] His work Man Against Woman for Irving Cummings was called a "forceful drama" and an "entertaining film". [12] During the later part of his career Thompson specialized in comedies. The more notable of these included Leo McCarey's Six of a Kind (1934) which used the top Paramount actors of the time, including Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, George Burns, W.C. Fields, Gracie Allen, Alison Skipworth. [10] The 1945 Frank R. Strayer comedy film Mama Loves Papa was based upon his screenplay for the 1933 Norman Z. McLeod film of the same name. [13] [14]
Keene became ill in June 1937, just after completing the script for the Jack Benny musical comedy Artists and Models. [6] On July 11, 1937, he died of lobar pneumonia. [5] His body is interred in the Great Mausoleum, Columbarium of the Graces at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, CA.
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