Lifetime Achievement Award for Author/Educator Tom Stempel

The Executive Council of the international Screenwriting Research Network Dr. Tom Stempel, Professor Emeritus at Los Angeles City College for our inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award for Service to Screenwriting Research. The award culminates the career of the man often credited with beginning the study of screenwriting apart from directing. While still a student at UCLA Stempel interviewed Nunnally Johnsonn, famed screenwriter of Moulin Rouge (1934), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) for a class assignment. Recognizing the importance of the screenwriter’s history Stempel then researched and wrote the biography Screenwriter the Life and Times of Nunnally Johnsonn.

Stempel followed up with several more volumes celebrating the work of America’s storytellers including Storytellers to the Nation: A History of American Television Writing, Framework: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film, and American Audiences on Movies and Moviegoing. He pens a monthly column for Script Magazine reviewing new (and classic) films through the lens of analyzing the screenwriting over the cinematography and continues to guest lecture at various colleges in the greater Los Angeles area, including Los Angeles City College, where he taught from 1971 to 2011 and is now Professor Emeritus in Film.

You can watch the Inaugural Screenwriting Research Lecture Stempel gave at the 15th Annual Conference of the Screenwriting Research Network held in Columbia, Missouri, USA on 22nd September, 2023.