Daniel Taradash was born to a Jewish family[1] in Kentucky and raised in Chicago and Miami Beach. He attended Harvard University, where he met his future producing partner Jules Blaustein. He graduated with a law degree and passed the New York State bar. But when his play The Mercy won the 1938 Bureau of New Plays contest (the two previous winners were Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams), a career in theater was launched. He moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a scripter. His first assignment was as one of four credited writers on the screen version of Clifford Odets' Golden Boy (1939).
His theater career was interrupted when, during World War II, Taradash served in the U.S. Army. He eventually underwent training in the Signal CorpsOfficer Candidate program. He was assigned to the Signal Corps Photo Center, where he worked as a writer and producer on training films.[2]
In the mid-1950s, Taradash and Jules Blaustein formed Phoenix Corporation. He also tried his hand at directing with Storm Center (1956), starring Bette Davis as a librarian fighting censorship and book banning. Taradash and Zinnemann had planned to make two films from James Michener's massive novel Hawaii but were unable to raise the financing. When George Roy Hill did make the film in 1965, he utilized Taradash's script with emendations by Dalton Trumbo. By the 1970s, Taradash's efforts produced his final two scripts for the soap operas Doctors' Wives (1971) and The Other Side of Midnight (1977).
Taradash won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Drama for From Here to Eternity, and he received a WGA nomination for Picnic.
1938 - Won the Bureau of New Plays nationwide playwrighting contest previously won by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams
1939 - First feature credit as one of four credited screenwriters on the film adaptation of Golden Boy
1941 - Served in the US Army
1948 - Debut as a Broadway playwright, Red Gloves, adapted from the work by Jean-Paul Sartre
1949 - Breakthrough screen credit as co-writer of Knock on Any Door
1953 - Earned Academy Award for his screenplay for From Here to Eternity, adapted from the James Jones novel
1956 - Adapted William Inge's Picnic
1956 - Directorial debut, Storm Center (also wrote)
1958 - Wrote the screenplay adaptation of Bell, Book and Candle
1959 - Made one-shot return to Broadway as playwright of There Was a Little Girl, starring Jane Fonda
1966 - Received co-writer credit on Hawaii; originally he and director Fred Zinnemann had hoped to make two films based on the James Michener novel but financing could not be raised
1971 - Scripted Doctors Wives
1977 - Final screenplay credit, The Other Side of Midnight[3]
