D. Taradash, 90; ‘From Here to Eternity’ Screenwriter

Daniel Taradash, who won an Oscar for his screenplay of James Jones’ best-selling novel “From Here to Eternity,” has died. He was 90.

Taradash died of cancer Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Best known for adapting sprawling novels and Broadway plays, Taradash was a writer or co-writer on screen versions of Clifford Odets’ “Golden Boy,” William Inge’s “Picnic,” John Van Druten’s “Bell, Book and Candle,” Annemarie Selinko’s “Desiree” and James Michener’s “Hawaii.”

But “From Here to Eternity,” the 1953 film version of Jones’ novel about Army life in Hawaii during the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, was the one movie for which Taradash said he received the most compliments over the years.

The critically acclaimed movie, directed by Fred Zinnemann, was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won eight, including those for best screenplay and best picture.

“They invariably say how faithful I was to the book and I nod very gravely and thank them,” Taradash told the Toronto Star in 1992. “But they’re wrong! The novel runs 860 pages and I was merely faithful to the flavor.”

Indeed, one of Taradash’s biggest challenges was to turn the famously erotic, violent and obscenity-filled novel into a screenplay that would be acceptable to industry censors.

One scene that passed Motion Picture Production Code muster became one of the most famous love scenes in screen history: the passionate embrace between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach as the surf washes over them.

The beach scene was not in the novel.

Taradash said Jones “had them in a hotel suite. Too prosaic, I thought. Poor Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr had a time of it because the sand got into their swimsuits after the first take.”

Born in Louisville, Ky., in 1913, Taradash grew up in Chicago and Miami Beach. He received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1933, graduated from Harvard Law School three years later and passed the New York state bar exam.

But Taradash harbored other ambitions. He persuaded his father to bankroll him for two years as a writer. “If at the end, I still hadn’t made it,” Taradash once said, “I promised him I’d go into law full time.”

He never gave the law another thought. After his play “The Mercy” won the 1938 Bureau of New Plays contest -- previous winners included Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams -- Taradash was signed by Columbia Studios to co-write the screenplay for “Golden Boy,” starring Barbara Stanwyck and William Holden.

In May 1941, after collaborating on “For Love or Money” and “A Little Bit of Heaven,” Taradash was drafted into the Army. He served in the Signal Corps, writing and producing training and industrial motivational films.

After the war, Taradash returned to playwriting, adapting Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Red Gloves,” which had a brief run on Broadway in 1948 and early 1949. Returning to Hollywood, he wrote or co-wrote “Knock on Any Door,” “The Noose Hangs High,” “Rancho Notorious” and “Don’t Bother to Knock” before reaching his career high point with “From Here to Eternity.”

In 1956, Taradash made his directorial debut with “Storm Center,” a less than successful drama that he co-wrote, starring Bette Davis as a small-town librarian who is accused of being a Communist when she refuses to remove a controversial book from the library’s shelves.

In 1960, he returned to Broadway as a playwright with “There Was a Little Girl,” starring Jane Fonda, which closed after 16 performances. His last two feature film scripts were “Doctors’ Wives” in 1971 and “The Other Side of Midnight” in 1977.

Taradash held various offices with the Writers Guild of America, West, including president from 1977 to 1980. He received all of the guild’s major awards, including its highest honor, the Laurel Award.

He also served three years as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the early 1970s and was on the academy’s board of governors in the early 1990s.

Taradash is survived by his wife of 58 years, Madeleine; daughters Jan, of Berkeley, and Meg, of Los Angeles; a son, Bill, of New York City; and two grandchildren. No services have been scheduled.