Leo Brady (January 23, 1917 â€" November 18, 1984) was a
multidimensional American writer and theater artist who also achieved
great success as a teacher of young playwrights.After writing some
well-received plays as an undergrad at Catholic University of America
in Washington, D.C., Brady published a play version of Richard
Connell’s short story Brother Orchid, which became a staple of the
Samuel French catalog and inspired Hollywood to adapt the story for a
film starring Edward G. Robinson. (Brady received no credit.) In
collaboration with Walter Kerr, he wrote Yankee Doodle Boy, a musical
about the life of Broadway showman George M. Cohan, which debuted to
great success in Washington and received national media exposure along
with the endorsement of Cohan himself. Again, Hollywood lifted this
idea whole cloth without giving the authors credit, and subsequently
released the film version, Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring James Cagney.
Brady received his first major New York credit as the coauthor (again
with Kerr) of a 1942 Broadway musical revue called Count Me In. After
serving in World War II, where he continued creating as a writer and
radio producer for the Army Recruitment Service, Brady returned to
civilian life as a drama teacher at his alma mater. For a brief time
he wrote film criticism for the Washington Post, while teaching, doing
some acting and also beginning his career as a stage director.In 1949,
Brady published his first novel, Edge of Doom, which Samuel Goldwyn
produced as a feature film in 1950. Directed by Mark Robson and with a
screenplay by Philip Yordan, with post-primary scenes added by writers
Ben Hecht and Charles Brackett and directed by Charles Vidor, the film
was a rather notorious box office failure. The Hecht-Brackett
rewrites, spurred on after the initial screening by the producer's
fear that the movie was too bleak, attempted to turn a dark tale of a
pathetic murder into some kind of hopeful Hollywood inspirational
story. These changesâ€"including a narration by a priest character and
prologue and epilogueâ€"were designed to gain the film wider audience
appeal. The film still turns up now and then as an acknowledged
curiosity piece in the film noir genre.Brady, a Roman Catholic with a
social conscience, followed up Edge of Doom with Signs and Wonders in
1953, yet another novel that criticized the church, in particular what
he saw as the phony piety and narrowmindedness of so-called
“professional†Catholics of the Knights of Columbus variety. Signs
and Wonders received better reviews than his first book but failed to
garner the same sales or public attention. Brady didn’t write
another novel for 20 years, then published The Quiet Gun, a literary
western, and The Love Tap, a mystery, in the 1970s.
multidimensional American writer and theater artist who also achieved
great success as a teacher of young playwrights.After writing some
well-received plays as an undergrad at Catholic University of America
in Washington, D.C., Brady published a play version of Richard
Connell’s short story Brother Orchid, which became a staple of the
Samuel French catalog and inspired Hollywood to adapt the story for a
film starring Edward G. Robinson. (Brady received no credit.) In
collaboration with Walter Kerr, he wrote Yankee Doodle Boy, a musical
about the life of Broadway showman George M. Cohan, which debuted to
great success in Washington and received national media exposure along
with the endorsement of Cohan himself. Again, Hollywood lifted this
idea whole cloth without giving the authors credit, and subsequently
released the film version, Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring James Cagney.
Brady received his first major New York credit as the coauthor (again
with Kerr) of a 1942 Broadway musical revue called Count Me In. After
serving in World War II, where he continued creating as a writer and
radio producer for the Army Recruitment Service, Brady returned to
civilian life as a drama teacher at his alma mater. For a brief time
he wrote film criticism for the Washington Post, while teaching, doing
some acting and also beginning his career as a stage director.In 1949,
Brady published his first novel, Edge of Doom, which Samuel Goldwyn
produced as a feature film in 1950. Directed by Mark Robson and with a
screenplay by Philip Yordan, with post-primary scenes added by writers
Ben Hecht and Charles Brackett and directed by Charles Vidor, the film
was a rather notorious box office failure. The Hecht-Brackett
rewrites, spurred on after the initial screening by the producer's
fear that the movie was too bleak, attempted to turn a dark tale of a
pathetic murder into some kind of hopeful Hollywood inspirational
story. These changesâ€"including a narration by a priest character and
prologue and epilogueâ€"were designed to gain the film wider audience
appeal. The film still turns up now and then as an acknowledged
curiosity piece in the film noir genre.Brady, a Roman Catholic with a
social conscience, followed up Edge of Doom with Signs and Wonders in
1953, yet another novel that criticized the church, in particular what
he saw as the phony piety and narrowmindedness of so-called
“professional†Catholics of the Knights of Columbus variety. Signs
and Wonders received better reviews than his first book but failed to
garner the same sales or public attention. Brady didn’t write
another novel for 20 years, then published The Quiet Gun, a literary
western, and The Love Tap, a mystery, in the 1970s.
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