Eleanore Griffin’s Gentle Americana Style Earned the Oscar for ‘Boys Town’

Boys Town (1938) not only opened up a more dramatic career for child star Mickey Rooney, it made Spencer Tracey the first man to win 2 consecutive Best Actor Oscars and won Eleanore Griffin and her co-writer Dore Schary the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story. The film also shared the story of Father Edward J. Flanagan, his mission to change the way America cares for children and families, and his philosophy that “there's no such thing as a bad boy” to the attention of millions around the world such that Boys Town is still in operation.

Born in 1904 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Oscar-winning screenwriter Eleanore Griffin began writing as a journalist in her twenties. The skill came in handy for the many historical stories she would later write.  In 1937 Griffin joined the writing pool at Universal Studios and turned out treatments with Time Out for Romance the first to become the basis for a completed film.  Similar to screenwriter Robert Riskin’s multiple-Oscar-winning It Happened One Night (1934) Griffin told the story of a runaway bride who falls in love with the man who helps her escape. She next earned Story By credit for having her short story Class Prophecy adapted into the film When Love is Young (1937) after being published by McCall’s magazine.

1938 was the banner year for Boys Town to win both Oscars and become the second highest grossing film of the year. Later in life MGM studio head L.B. Mayer still claimed it as the favorite of all the films MGM ever produced.  Despite that, Paramount Pictures produced Griffin’s next story idea as St. Louis Blues (1939). That same year Griffin, worked with Columbia Pictures on a Cary Grant/Jean Arthur comedy Only Angels Have Wings.

With World War II imminent many studios began producing pieces supportive of the military similar to Griffin’s next effort I Wanted Wings (1941), about the lives of 3 different men joining U.S. Army Air Corps starring Ray Milland and William Holden.  Likewise, Hi, Beautiful (1944) involved an married pair of friends who accidentally win a "Happiest GI Couple" contest. The studios also offered escapist fare which aptly describes the adaptation Griffin made of the Blondie comics characters in Blondie in Society (1941). Whereas Nob Hill (1944) offered the gentle nostalgia of a San Francisco saloon singer on the Barbary Coast. More musical nostalgia came in The Harvey Girls (1946) giving Judy Garland, Angela Lansbury, and Ray Bolger the chance to sing and dance their way through stories of the women riding the rails to become hostesses at the Harvey House restaurants that lined the railroads in the West.

While Good Morning, Miss Dove (1955), the story of a teacher reminiscing about the many students she taught across her career, suited Griffin’s reputation for Americana and nostalgia, Imitation of Life (1959) starring Lana Turner and became more controversial. This was the second time the Fannie Hurst novel about passing and the color line would be adapted for the screen. Some scholars say it is the lesser of the two versions with the Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers version, adapted by William Hurlbut and Finley Peter Dunne, the more appreciated. But each suffers from casting non-African American actresses in the pivotal role.

She wrote for a couple of TV productions and her last film credit came from adapting the autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale into One Man's Way (1964) at the age of 60.  Griffin then retired and died at the age of 91 in 1995 while a resident of the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, California. The New York Times published her obituary upon her death, testament to the importance of her long and varied career.

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