-- Alistair Cooke
-- David Brown, Film Producer and President of the Manhattan Project
-- Tom Stempel in Screenwriter: The Life and Times of Nunnally Johnson (San Diego: A.S. Barnes, 1980)
| "Like many another Southerner, he maintained a
surface courtesy and tact behind which glowed an owl-like skepticism about
human motives, whether in Columbus, Georgia or Beverly Hills, California.
. . . He had the luck of his inheritance and his gifts: a wry,
uninhibited humor from his father, and a prose style of great clarity he
developed on his own. . . . [He adopted] a pose not very different from
that with which two other small-town boys, Mark Twain and James Thurber,
were able to cope with rich and complicated people and also to earn their
applause. Nunnally rendered himself no threat to anybody by adopting, as
a second nature, the air of a bewildered mouse in a world of tigers and
jaguars. . . .[He was] a remarkable American humorist." -- Alistair Cooke |
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| |
In 1959 the Screen Writers' Guild awarded The Laurel Award for
Achievement to him as a writer who "has advanced the literature of the
motion picture through the years and who has made outstanding
contributions to the profession of the Screen Writer"
Wit, wisdom and a brilliant sense of the absurd characterized Nunnally
among so many other endearing traits. -- David Brown, Film Producer and President of the Manhattan Project |
| Johnson wrote some of the best, most interesting,
and most successful films of his time...His work, because it was seldom
changed or added to by other writers, shows a continuum of themes, skills,
and methods that represent his own contribution to his films. He spent
the largest part of his career at Twentieth Century-Fox, when the
major-studio system was at its height. His career reveals how movies were
made within that system and how the screenwriter fitted into it: how he
worked with producers, directors, actors, and the other contributors to
his films...
Richard Corliss, looking over Johnson's career as a screen-writer,
accurately pronounces it "long and distinguished." If Johnson's
craftsmanship is what makes his career distinguished, his longevity,
indicating that his films connected with their audiences, is what makes
it significant... -- Tom Stempel in Screenwriter: The Life and Times of Nunnally Johnson (San Diego: A.S. Barnes, 1980) |
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