Isobel Lennart

Isobel Lennart (1915-1971) was born Isobel Fredrika Hochdorf on May 8, 1915, in Brooklyn. Her father was a dentist working out of their home on Crescent Street. Her mother, Victoria Lennart Livingston, died when Isobel was five years old. Her father later married his cousin, Hattie Satz. Afflicted by polio as a girl and in leg braces, Isobel became an avid reader, especially of movie magazines. She dreamed of escaping Brooklyn and becoming a film director. After attending Smith College and NYU, she moved to Los Angeles in 1937 and worked as a script girl for MGM.

As a screenwriter, her first movie for MGM, The Affairs of Martha, opened in 1942, followed by A Stranger in Town, and her personal favorite, Lost Angel. Some twenty-five more scripts were made into popular movies over the next thirty years, among them Two for the Seesaw, the Oscar-nominated Love Me or Leave Me, and The Sundowners. She married actor John Harding in 1946 and had two children, Joshua (1948-1971) and Sarah (1951-). Despite her trials and tribulations with the House Un-American Activities Committee, she was never prevented from working.

She ventured into playwright with the stage adaptation of her screenplay Funny Girl for Ray Stark. Several plays were written for her husband’s Los Angeles theater, The Stage Society. Lennart received many awards and nominations during her career; the 1966 Laurel Award was her most treasured. She died mid-career in a car accident in January, 1971.