Isobel Lennart

Isobel Lennart (May 18, 1915 – January 25, 1971) was an American screenwriter and playwright whose career spanned Hollywood film, Broadway, and experimental theatre. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Lennart moved to Los Angeles in 1937 and began working at MGM, eventually rising from script girl to contract screenwriter. Over the course of her career, she wrote or contributed to more than two dozen films, including The Affairs of Martha (1942),_ Anchors Aweigh_ (1945), It Happened in Brooklyn (1947), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), Merry Andrew (1958), The Sundowners (1960), Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960), and Two for the Seesaw (1962). Her work brought her three Academy Award nominations, including one for Love Me or Leave Me, as well as the Writers Guild of America's Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement in 1966. Her writing encompassed musicals, comedies, dramas, and adaptations, and she worked with many of Hollywood's leading performers and filmmakers.

Although Lennart was best known in Hollywood, the stage became an important part of her later career. Her most celebrated theatrical work was Funny Girl, for which she wrote the book and created the original story based on the life of comedian and performer Fanny Brice. The musical, with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Bob Merrill, opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on March 26, 1964, starring Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice, and ran for 1,348 performances. Lennart had originally conceived the project as a screenplay, but it was transformed into a stage musical, making her Broadway playwrighting debut; she remained closely involved throughout its development. She also wrote plays for her husband John Harding's Los Angeles theatre, the Stage Society, and was involved in By and For Dylan Thomas, a 1967 experimental-stage production for which she selected and arranged the material. Lennart subsequently wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film Funny Girl, earning a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay. Her sudden death in an automobile accident in 1971, at the age of 55, brought a remarkably varied career to an early end.