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John Lee Mahin
John Lee Mahin (August 23, 1902, Evanston, Illinois – April 18, 1984, Los Angeles) was an American screenwriter and producer of films who was active in Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s. He was known as the favorite writer of Clark Gable and Victor Fleming. In the words of one profile, he had "a flair for rousing adventure material, and at the same time he wrote some of the raciest and most sophisticated sexual comedies of that period."
Mahin was born in Winnetka, Illinois in 1902, the son of John Lee Mahin, Sr. (1869–1930), a Chicago newspaper and advertising man, and Julia Graham Snitzler.
Mahin attended Harvard University; while there, he reviewed movies and plays for the Boston American at $30 a week. Mahin worked as a journalist for two years in New York, at the Sun, the Post and the City News. He called this valuable training "because you’ve got to write something every day. Whether you like it or not, you’ve just got to write. Getting your stuff edited, you learn terseness. You realize how important editing is."
Mahin tried to make a living as an actor, starting as a chorus boy in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience at the Province Playhouse. "I knew I wasn't good. I quit because other people didn’t think I was good. But, boy, did it get me around the theatre! I learned a lot." He eventually moved into advertising in New York but wrote fiction on the side.
Mahin became friendly with Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who he would meet on the ferry while commuting to work in New York. Hecht read Mahin's stories and encouraged him to move to Hollywood.
Hecht and MacArthur were working on The Unholy Garden (1931) for Sam Goldwyn and brought in Mahin to help at $200 a week. Mahin later said "I didn't do a helluva lot of work, because to try to do Ben's work for him is silly. I don’t know why he brought me out. I'd try to work, and he'd say, "No, no," and then he’d sit down and rattle off something."
Nonetheless Heckt liked his work and when Hecht went on to the gangster movie Scarface (1932), he took Mahin with him. Mahin wrote the script in collaboration with Hecht, Seton I. Miller and the director Howard Hawks (W. R. Burnett had done an earlier draft).
It took a while for Scarface to be released but advance word was strong and MGM offered Mahin a long-term contract at $200 a week. They assigned him to a gangster film, Beast of the City (1932) which starred Jean Harlow. While working on Howard Hawks asked him to do some uncredited work on Tiger Shark (1932) at Warner Bros; Mahin did it in the evenings.
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John Lee Mahin
John Lee Mahin (August 23, 1902, Evanston, Illinois – April 18, 1984, Los Angeles) was an American screenwriter and producer of films who was active in Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s. He was known as the favorite writer of Clark Gable and Victor Fleming. In the words of one profile, he had "a flair for rousing adventure material, and at the same time he wrote some of the raciest and most sophisticated sexual comedies of that period."
Mahin was born in Winnetka, Illinois in 1902, the son of John Lee Mahin, Sr. (1869–1930), a Chicago newspaper and advertising man, and Julia Graham Snitzler.
Mahin attended Harvard University; while there, he reviewed movies and plays for the Boston American at $30 a week. Mahin worked as a journalist for two years in New York, at the Sun, the Post and the City News. He called this valuable training "because you’ve got to write something every day. Whether you like it or not, you’ve just got to write. Getting your stuff edited, you learn terseness. You realize how important editing is."
Mahin tried to make a living as an actor, starting as a chorus boy in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience at the Province Playhouse. "I knew I wasn't good. I quit because other people didn’t think I was good. But, boy, did it get me around the theatre! I learned a lot." He eventually moved into advertising in New York but wrote fiction on the side.
Mahin became friendly with Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who he would meet on the ferry while commuting to work in New York. Hecht read Mahin's stories and encouraged him to move to Hollywood.
Hecht and MacArthur were working on The Unholy Garden (1931) for Sam Goldwyn and brought in Mahin to help at $200 a week. Mahin later said "I didn't do a helluva lot of work, because to try to do Ben's work for him is silly. I don’t know why he brought me out. I'd try to work, and he'd say, "No, no," and then he’d sit down and rattle off something."
Nonetheless Heckt liked his work and when Hecht went on to the gangster movie Scarface (1932), he took Mahin with him. Mahin wrote the script in collaboration with Hecht, Seton I. Miller and the director Howard Hawks (W. R. Burnett had done an earlier draft).
It took a while for Scarface to be released but advance word was strong and MGM offered Mahin a long-term contract at $200 a week. They assigned him to a gangster film, Beast of the City (1932) which starred Jean Harlow. While working on Howard Hawks asked him to do some uncredited work on Tiger Shark (1932) at Warner Bros; Mahin did it in the evenings.