John Meehan

Biography

John Meehan, the Oscar-nominated Cando-American screenwriter and playwright best known for co-writing the classic Boys Town (1938), was born on May 8, 1884 in Lindsay, Ontario. His first dream was to be a chef, but after studying the culinary arts in Austria, he went to New York to seek fame and fortune in the theater. Meehan made his Broadway debut in 1902 as an actor in a play inspired by a story by Richard Harding Davis, "Soliders of Fortune". From 1903 to 1908 he appeared three more times as an actor on Broadway. The next time his name was associated with The Great White Way, it was as a playwright, when his play "The Very Minute" was produced in 1917, starring Cathleen Nesbitt. The show closed after 32 performances. He acted again on Broadway in John Drinkwater's 1919 hit play "Abraham Lincoln". Five of his original plays, all comedies, were staged during the Roaring Twenties. He also sporadically acted during the days of the Jazz Age, but more frequently, he produced and directed other dramatists's works. When moving pictures began to talk, he heeded Horace Greeley's admonition "Go West, Young Man" and hightailed it to Hollywood. He returned once again to the Broadway theater for his swansong, as an actor, in 1935's "A Journey By Night". (His son, John Meehan, Jr. wrote the books for the operettas "Rosalinda" and "Helen Goes to Troy".) Meehan was hired as a contract writer by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at the time that Paramount was adapting his play The Lady Lies (1929) for the Big Screen, with a cast that featured Walter Huston and a young Claudette Colbert as the leads. The play had not been a success in 1928, closing after just 24 performances, but Hollywood needed writers who could write dialogue. ("The Lady Lies" was remade into four other films in four different languages, as was the custom in the early talkie period, before dubbing was perfected.) Meehan's 1927 play "Bless You, Sister" (which also lasted but 24 performances on Broadway), was adapted by Jo Swerling as The Miracle Woman (1931) for Frank Capra at Columbia, providing a choice role for Barbara Stanwyck, playing an Aimee Semple McPherson-like woman preacher. Meehan won his first Oscar nomination soon after coming to Hollywood, in 1930, for The Divorcee (1930). He won his second Oscar nod along with co-writer Dore Schary in 1939 for "Boy's Town". M.G.M. superstars Norma Shearer in "The Divorcee" and Spencer Tracy in "Boy's Town" won Oscars for their work in Meehan screenplays. John Meehan died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles on November 12, 1954. He was 70 years old.