Albert Hackett

Manhattan-born Albert Hacketts mother was stage star Florence Hackett, and his brother was matinee idol Raymond Hackett. Albert made his own stage bow at age six, studying his trade at New York's Professional Children's School. Though a moderately successful actor, Hackett longed to break into playwrighting, but would not realize this dream until meeting and marrying another performer with writing ambitions, Frances Goodrich. Hackett and his wife collaborated on the 1929 play Up Pops the Devil. The show was a success, and Hackett was invited to Hollywood to work as dialogue director of the film version. But Hackett refused to leave his wife behind in New York; nor did he want Goodrich to be regarded as merely a "writer's wife." When Hackett finally did come to Hollywood, it was as his wife's writing partner, a collaboration that lasted professionally until the team's 1962 retirement--and personally until Goodrich's death in 1984. The projects on which this exceptional duo worked include their adaptation of Eugene O'Neil's only comedy Ah! Wilderness (1935), Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), and Stanley Donen's Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). Once he'd dedicated himself to writing, Hackett halted his acting career; he returned to the stage just once in the 1940 Broadway play Mr. and Mrs. North -- and then only as a favor to an old friend, playwright Owen Davis Jr.