Peg Fenwick

Margaret "Peg" McCray, also known as Peggy Thompson, Peggy or Peg Fenwick and Peg Padover (November 9, 1907 – November 5, 1987), was an American screenwriter and playwright who worked in the U.S. and French film industries, best known for writing the scripts for Whirlpool of Desire and All That Heaven Allows.

Early life and education McCray was born in New York City in 1907, daughter of Edward McCray, a lawyer, and his wife Anna Royce Carr. When McCray was six years old, her mother died, and her father died in 1914 when she was seven. and added the surname Thompson to their names. She spent a year in France as a child, attending a school at St Germain, Paris, She moved to Paris, France, in about 1931. She also wrote the story on which the film (1935) was based. and she sold it for $5,000. A contemporary review also credits Peggy Thompson for "cutting" (ie editing) the film, along with E. T. Gréville and Curt Alexander. The film had made about $2,000,000 by the end of 1939, and McCray expressed regret that she had not sold it for a percentage of its earnings. after American film censors had banned it over several years. By that time, McCray had worked on two films in the US, including King of the Newsboys (1938), and a French film about Alpine life and sports, During World War II, she worked for the United States Office of War Information Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP) as a script reviewer. Among the films she reviewed were In Old Oklahoma, A Song to Remember, Gung Ho!, Bataan, and So Proudly We Hail!. in which Fenwick showed "considerable understanding of present-day international problems ... in the parallel she drew with the founding of the United States." She also adapted the novel All That Heaven Allows by Edna Lee and Harry Lee into the screenplay for a film of the same name. The film starred Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson and Agnes Moorehead. The Evening Sun of Baltimore described Fenwick's script for All That Heaven Allows (1955) as "shrewdly and urbanely intelligent."

Personal life She married Saul K. Padover, a professor and author, in 1957. She was a member of the League of Women Voters,

Her brother, Edward "Ted" McCray Thompson, was a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and St. Louis Star-Times and the author of a book called Leg Man. He died in 1957.

Selected works Screen:

Midshipman Easy (1935) Remous (1935) King of the Newsboys (1938) All That Heaven Allows (1955)

Stage:

Meet the World (1950) The Rebellious Franklins (1958)