Talbot Jennings

{{Infobox person

| name = Talbot Jennings

| birth_name = Talbot Lanham Jennings

| birth_date = {{birth date|1894|08|25}}

| birth_place = Shoshone, Idaho, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|1985|5|30|1894|08|25}}

| death_place = East Glacier Park, Montana, U.S.

| education = University of Idaho
Harvard University
Yale School of Drama

| occupation = Playwright
Screenwriter

| years_active = 1931–1965

}}

Talbot Lanham Jennings (August 25, 1894 – May 30, 1985) was an American playwright and screenwriter. He received two Academy Award nominations for co-writing the screenplays for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Anna and the King of Siam (1946).

Biography

He was born in 1894 in Shoshone, Idaho, his father was an Episcopal archdeacon for Idaho and Wyoming. He attended Nampa High School before World War I in which he saw active service as an artilleryman in the U.S. Army, where he fought in five major battles.[https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Manuscripts/mg186.htm TALBOT JENNINGS, 1894-1985] University of Idaho Library. Retrieved November 13, 2023.

After to war he went to University of Idaho and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1924. He was president of the Associated Students and wrote Light on the Mountains, a state history set to music. He also edited the yearbook, Gem of the Mountains, and the Blue Bucket, the English Department literary publication.

Jennings did a master's degree at Harvard University,{{cite web|title=Talbot Jennings. Scripts, 1926–1960|url=https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Manuscripts/mg186.htm|website=Library Archives|publisher=University of Idaho|accessdate=21 January 2018}} then attended Yale Drama School.{{cite news|title=Talbot Jennings, 90; Ex-Screenwriter|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-06-09-me-9931-story.html|access-date=21 January 2018|newspaper=LA Times|date=June 9, 1985}}

Talbot wrote and co-wrote 17 screenplays including Mutiny on the Bounty, Romeo and Juliet, Anna and the King of Siam, Knights of the Round Table, The Good Earth and Northwest Passage. He wrote many screenplays for television also. A story he wrote became The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), and was his last film.

In the 1940 B-movie The Devil's Pipeline, Richard Arlen and Andy Devine play characters named Talbot and Jennings, apparently an inside joke by one of its writers.

He died at East Glacier Park, Montana.

Plays

No More Frontier (1931)
This Side of Idolatry (1933){{Cite news|title=This Shakespeare Business|date=Nov 20, 1933|work=The Christian Science Monitor|page=8}}