Dudley Nichols papers

Dudley Nichols, a screenwriter and director, was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio to Grant Byron Nichols and Mary Means. Nichols developed a fascination with electricity and worked on a crew that repaired high-tension power lines and as a ship's radio operator on the Great Lakes. In 1915 he entered the University of Michigan, where he studied electrical engineering and was employed as a student assistant in charge of the radio laboratory. At the outbreak of World War I, Nichols enlisted in the Navy and set up a school for radio operators. Later, he was part of the North Sea Mine Laying Force.

After the armistice Nichols volunteered for minesweeping duty and invented a method of electrical protection for minesweepers for which he received the Distinguished Service Medal in 1920. Following the war Nichols worked as a reporter for ten years for the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, then the New York Evening Post, and finally the New York World. During this period he also studied at New York University and sailed again as a radio operator.

In 1929 Nichols was persuaded by Winfield Sheehan, head of Fox Studios, to become a screenwriter. His first film, Men Without Women (1930), directed by John Ford, led to a collaboration with Ford that lasted until 1947 and resulted in fourteen films, including The Lost Patrol (1934), The Informer (1935), Stagecoach (1939), The Long Voyage Home (1940), and The Fugitive (1947). During the 1940's Nichols also worked with Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, René Clair, and Elia Kazan. He wrote the final script of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and produced and directed two films based on his own scripts, Sister Kenny (1946) and an adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (1947).

Biographical information taken from "Dudley Nichols." Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1980. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 13 Dec. 2012.