Vincent Sheean

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

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

[5]

Between the Thunder and the Sun (1943)--A wartime account, inter alia, of being in England during the Battle of Britian.

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. ↑ Book list from first edition of "Not Peace but a Sword"

External links