Isobel Lennart

A screenwriter and playwright born in Brooklyn, Lennart was signed by MGM in the early 1940s, at first working on such modest films as "The Affairs of Martha" (1942) and "Lost Angel" (1943). The majority of her over two dozen credits during her 25-year career in films would be for MGM, and half of those were in collaboration with producer Joe Pasternak, a purveyor of agreeable if not usually innovative musicals and comedies. Lennart's first major film hit came with Pasternak's "Anchors Aweigh" (1945), the oft-told tale of two sailors on leave, distinguished more for its first teaming of Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra and its musical numbers than for its serviceable screenplay. Most of Lennart's subsequent credits would be equally lighthearted, ranging from the charming "Period of Adjustment" (1962), based on Tennessee Williams material, to the derivative but harmless "Holiday Affair" (1949) to the occasional stinker ("The Kissing Bandit" 1948; "Latin Lovers" 1953).