Albert Hackett; Co-Wrote Screenplay of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’

Albert Hackett, who with his first wife formed one of the most prolific writing teams in Hollywood during the 1940s and ‘50s, and with her was co-author of the stage and film versions of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” has died. He was 95.

Hackett died Thursday in New York City of pneumonia, said his second wife, Gisele.

Hackett and Frances Goodrich swept the 1955 drama awards with their adaptation of “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.” Their stage version won a Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award and New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

The best-selling book was a loving but frightening remembrance of a teen-age Dutch girl’s wartime experiences hiding from the Nazis. The play made a star of Susan Strasberg in the title role and ran on Broadway for 717 performances.

The Hacketts also wrote the screenplay for the 1959 film that starred an unknown Millie Perkins as the diary’s author, who described the harrowing existence of herself, her parents and sister and several Jewish friends who occupied a garret in Amsterdam for much of World War II.

The diary, found in a rubbish pile after the group was discovered and taken to concentration camps, is considered one of the most sensitive pieces of writing to emerge from World War II.

The Hacketts wrote more than 30 screenplays and became one of the most successful writing teams in Hollywood history. Their other scripts included “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Thin Man,” “Ah, Wilderness,” “Easter Parade,” “Father of the Bride,” “Naughty Marietta,” “The Virginian” and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

Frances Goodrich died in 1984 and Hackett remarried the following year.

Hackett began his career as a child actor. He met his first wife in 1924 when they both were acting. The two were married in 1931 and turned to writing, Frances Goodrich told The Times in 1957, because of a single issue: “Poverty; it was so long between acting jobs.”

In the mid-1950s they visited Europe, where several national companies of “Anne Frank” were filling theaters.