Vincent Sheean

James Vincent Sheean (December 5, 1899, Pana, Illinois – March 16, 1975,[1] Arolo, Frz. of Leggiuno, Italy) was an American journalist and novelist.

His most famous work was Personal History (New York: Doubleday, 1935). It won one of the inaugural National Book Awards: the Most Distinguished Biography of 1935.[2][3][lower-alpha 1] Film producer Walter Wanger acquired the political memoir and made it the basis for his 1940 film production Foreign Correspondent, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Sheean served as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune during the Spanish Civil War.[4]

Sheean wrote the narration for the feature-length documentary Crisis (1939) directed by Alexander Hammid and Herbert Kline. He translated Ève Curie's biography of her mother, Madame Curie (1939), into English. Sheean wrote Oscar Hammerstein I: Life and Exploits of an Impresario (1955) as well as a controversial biography of Dorothy Thompson and Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy and Red (1963).

He studied at the University of Chicago, becoming part of a literary circle which included Glenway Wescott, Yvor Winters, Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Janet Lewis while he was there.[5]

Vincent and Diana Forbes-Robertson Sheean were friends of Edna St. Vincent Millay and her husband, Eugen; they spent time together on Ragged Island off the coast of Maine during the summer of 1945.

Books

Partial list

Notes

  1. Biography was separately recognized in 1935 and 1936, then subsumed in general Nonfiction.

References

  1. Vincent Sheean Dies; Author, Traveler (The Washington Post pay per view)
  2. "Books and Authors", The New York Times, 1936-04-12, page BR12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2007).
  3. "Lewis is Scornful of Radio Culture: ...", The New York Times, 1936-05-12, page 25. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2007).
  4. Cecil Eby, Between the Bullet and the Lie: American Volunteers and the Spanish Civil War (New York: Holt, Rineheart and Winston, 1969), p. 237
  5. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1934/10/my-friend-the-jew/306260/
  6. Book list from first edition of "Not Peace but a Sword"

External links

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