Adela Rogers St. Johns

Adela Nora Rogers St. Johns (May 20, 1894 – August 10, 1988) was an American journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. She wrote a number of screenplays for silent movies, but is best remembered for her groundbreaking exploits as "The World's Greatest Girl Reporter" during the 1920s and 1930s and her celebrity interviews for Photoplay magazine.

Early life St. Johns was born in Los Angeles, the only daughter of Los Angeles criminal lawyer Earl Rogers (who was a friend of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst) and his wife, Harriet Belle Greene. She attended Hollywood High School, graduating in 1910.

Career St. Johns accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Richard Nixon on April 22, 1970. She obtained her first job in 1912 working as a reporter for Hearst's San Francisco Examiner. She reported on crime, politics, society, and sports news before transferring to the Los Angeles Herald in 1913. She also wrote short stories for Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines and finished 9 of her 13 screenplays before returning to reporting for Hearst newspapers.

Writing in a distinctive, emotional style, St. Johns reported on, among other subjects, the controversial Jack Dempsey–Gene Tunney "long-count" fight in 1927, the treatment of the poor during the Great Depression, and the 1935 trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for kidnapping and murdering the son of Charles Lindbergh.

Later years St. Johns was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on April 22, 1970.

During the late 1960s and 1970s, St. Johns was a frequent guest on various talk shows, including both Jack Paar's and Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show and The Merv Griffin Show. During one Tonight Show visit, Paar noted that St. Johns had known many legends of Hollywood's Golden Age and was once rumored to have had Clark Gable's child. St. Johns quipped, "Well, who wouldn't have wanted to have Clark Gable's baby?"

In 1976, at the age of 82, she returned to reporting for the Examiner to cover the bank robbery and conspiracy trial of Patty Hearst, granddaughter of her former employer. In the late 1970s, St. Johns hosted a miniseries chronicling Gable's films, which appeared on Iowa Public Television. Around the same time, she was interviewed for the television documentary series Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film (1980).

The following year, St. Johns appeared with other early 20th-century figures as one of the "witnesses" in Warren Beatty's Reds (1981). St. Johns spent her remaining years living in Arroyo Grande, California. After her third divorce, St. Johns adopted a son as a single parent.

Death On August 10, 1988, St. Johns died at the South County Convalescent Hospital in Arroyo Grande, at the age of 94. She is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.