Fred Saidy

Fred Saidy (February 11, 1907 – May 14, 1982) was an American playwright and screenwriter.

Early life and education Fareed "Fred" Milhelm Saidy was born in Los Angeles, California on February 11, 1907. In 1927 Saidy quit the school paper in protest after the paper refused to publish an editorial he wrote that criticized NYU's faculty over the dismissal of Estelle Hertz who was forced out of her position as president of NYU's League of Women. His decision to quit was the subject on an article in The New York Times.

Career Saidy initially worked as a journalist before transitioning into a career as a playwright; initially breaking into the news business as a writer of poetry for Franklin P. Adams's column. and Oakland Tribune. By 1937 he was working as a scriptwriter on staff at Republic Pictures.

In 1942 Saidy co-authored the sketches to the musical revue Rally ’ Round the Flag with Arthur A. Ross; a work staged at the Assistance League Theatre in Los Angeles which was directed by Carlos Romero and included songs by Paul Francis Webster, Walter Jurmann, Billy Rose, and Earl Carroll among others. He penned sketches used in the film Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), He followed this by writing the script for the Lucille Ball-Dick Powell feature film Meet the People (1944). the latter having a major success on Broadway where it ran for 653 performances It was the first of several collaborations with Harburg, which included Finian's Rainbow (1947), Flahooley (1951), Jamaica (1957), and The Happiest Girl in the World (1961). Flahooley and The Happiest Girl in the World were both failures, and a London production in 2014. During his lifetime it had three major Broadway revivals (1955, 1960, and 1967), and was also made into a film starring Fred Astaire and Petula Clark, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, in 1968. This film was Saidy's last project, and he was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Musical. He had earlier collaborated with Neil Simon and Will Glickman, among others, on Satins and Spurs, an original television musical for Betty Hutton, which was broadcast by NBC in September 1954.

Saidy died after a long illness on May 14, 1982. He was the father of the international chess master Anthony Saidy.