Nunnally Johnson was born on December 5, 1897, in Columbus, Georgia, the elder of two sons born to Johnnie Pearl (née Patrick) and James Nunnally Johnson. He and his younger brother, Cecil Patrick Johnson, were raised in Columbus. Their father was a journeyman mechanic, turned tinsmith and coppersmith, turned pipe and sheetmetal shop superintendent for the Central of Georgia Railway.[1][2] His mother founded what later became the PTA in Columbus, and was the first woman to serve on the Muscogee County Board of Education. Johnson Elementary School in Columbus was built and named for her in 1949.[3]
Johnson began his career as a journalist, writing for the Columbus Enquirer Sun, the Savannah Press, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the New York Evening Post and the New York Herald Tribune. He also wrote short stories, and a collection of these stories, titled There Ought to Be a Law, was published in 1930. His first connection with film work was the sale of screen rights to one of his stories in 1927. Johnson asked his editor if he could write film criticism in 1932. When this request was denied, he decided to move to Hollywood and work directly in the film industry.
His first marriage in 1919 at Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights,[10] was to Alice Love Mason, with whom he had one daughter, film editor Marjorie Fowler. Mason was an editor with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.[11] Mason and Johnson divorced in 1920. His second marriage was to Marion Byrnes in 1927, also a staff member of the Daily Eagle,[12] with whom he also had a daughter, Nora Johnson. Byrnes's and Johnson's marriage ended in 1938.
While filming The Grapes of Wrath, Johnson met his third wife, actress Dorris Bowdon, a Mississippi native. The two were married at the home of Charles MacArthur and Helen Hayes in Nyack-on-the-Hudson on February 4, 1940.[13] They had three children. They resided in a mansion located at 625 Mountain Drive in Beverly Hills, California.[14] It was designed by architect Paul R. Williams.[14]
Johnson, Nunnally (1981). Johnson, Dorris; Levanthal, Ellen (eds.). The Letters of Nunnally Johnson. New York: Knopf. ISBN978-0394506722.
Lloyd, Craig (April 27, 2006). "Nunnally Johnson (1897–1977)". The New Georgia Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on September 17, 2007. Retrieved March 11, 2009.
Manchel, Frank. (1990). Film Study: An Analytical Bibliography. In Chapter 5 Comparative Literature. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 1252. ISBN0-8386-3412-5. Google Book Search. Retrieved on March 11, 2009.
^The Blueprint (Georgia Institute of Technology) – Class of 1924, Atlanta, Georgia: Blueprint Yearbook, 1924, p. 205
^Vogel, Sonja O. (2007), The Patrick Family, SALOP Vogel, p. 8
^Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Convention of the Pacific Coast Gas Association, vol. 23, Pacific Coast Gas Association, 1932, p. 566
^Poor's Publishing Company, Standard and Poor's Corporation (1957), Poor's Register of Directors and Executives, United States and Canada, Part 2, Standard and Poor's Corp., p. 2410
^ abVictoria Talbot, 'Beverly Hills Cultural Heritage Commission Splits 2 To 2 on Mountain Drive Landmark Vote', The Beverly Hills Courier, October 3, 2014, Vol. XXXXVIIII, No. 39, p. 4
