A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Birthplace:
Benicia, California, USA
Born:
May 19, 1876
Died:
April 3, 1933
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Wilson Mizner (May 19, 1876 – April 3, 1933) was an American playwright, raconteur, and entrepreneur. His best-known plays are The Deep Purple, produced in 1910, and The Greyhound, produced in 1912. He was manager and co-owner of The Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles, California, and was part of the failed project of his older brother, Addison, to create a new resort in Boca Raton, Florida. Taking considerable liberties with their lives, he and Addison are the protagonists of Stephen Sondheim's musical Road Show (alternately known as Wise Guys, Gold!, and Bounce). Wilson's playwriting career was undermined by his laziness and an opium addiction that started when he was prescribed painkillers after an assault. He was convicted in 1919 for running a gambling den on Long Island, and received a suspended sentence. After he was nearly beaten to death — the details are unknown — at Addison's invitation he followed him to Palm Beach, Florida, where Addison and other investors were announcing a new resort, Boca Raton, Florida. Wilson was secretary and treasurer of the Mizner Development Corporation created in 1925, in effect working for his brother. Unfortunately Addison's plans were financially unsound and the Corporation was forced into receivership within a year, and bankruptcy soon after. When Wilson returned to California he obtained backing from Jack L. Warner and Gloria Swanson and bought into and managed the Brown Derby, and wrote screenplays for some of the early talkies. His best known film work is the screenplay for the Michael Curtiz film 20,000 Years in Sing Sing. Wilson called his Hollywood years "a trip through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat." Several of the brothers' friends from New York, including Marie Dressler and Ben Hecht, helped him in his later escapades.
Adaptation:
1932 Winner Take All
Screenplay:
1932 20,000 Years in Sing Sing
1932 One Way Passage
1932 Winner Take All
1933 Frisco Jenny
1933 Hard to Handle
1933 Heroes for Sale
1933 The Little Giant
1933 The Mind Reader
Story:
1917 The Law of Compensation
1929 The Cock-Eyed World
1932 20,000 Years in Sing Sing
1932 One Way Passage
1932 Winner Take All
1933 Frisco Jenny
1933 Hard to Handle
1933 Heroes for Sale
1933 Strictly Personal
1933 The Little Giant
1933 The Mind Reader
Theatre Play:
1917 The Law of Compensation
1920 The Deep Purple
1929 The Cock-Eyed World
1932 20,000 Years in Sing Sing
1932 One Way Passage
1932 Winner Take All
1933 Frisco Jenny
1933 Hard to Handle
1933 Heroes for Sale
1933 Strictly Personal
1933 The Little Giant
1933 The Mind Reader
Writer:
1917 The Law of Compensation
1920 The Deep Purple
1929 The Cock-Eyed World
1932 20,000 Years in Sing Sing
1932 One Way Passage
1932 The Dark Horse
1932 Winner Take All
1933 Frisco Jenny
1933 Hard to Handle
1933 Heroes for Sale
1933 Strictly Personal
1933 The Little Giant
1933 The Mind Reader
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.