John Gay is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 screenwriter.

Born in Whittier, California

Whittier, California

Whittier is a city in Los Angeles County, California about southeast of Los Angeles. The city had a population of 85,331 at the 2010 census, up from 83,680 as of the 2000 census, and encompasses 14.7 square miles . Like nearby Montebello, the city constitutes part of the Gateway Cities...

, Gay began his career writing episodes for television anthology series such as Lux Video Theatre

Lux Video Theatre

Lux Video Theatre, is a weekly television anthology series that was produced from 1950 until 1959. The series presented both comedy and drama in original teleplays, as well as abridged adaptations of films and plays....

, Kraft Television Theatre

Kraft Television Theatre

Kraft Television Theatre is an American drama/anthology television series that began May 7, 1947 on NBC, airing at 7:30pm on Wednesday evenings until December of that year. In January 1948, it moved to 9pm on Wednesdays, continuing in that timeslot until 1958. Initially produced by the J...

, and Goodyear Television Playhouse

Goodyear Television Playhouse

The Goodyear Television Playhouse produced live television dramas from 1951 to 1957 during the "Golden Age of Television".Sponsored by Goodyear, the hour-long anthology series was telecast Sundays at 9pm on NBC...

. He made his film screenwriting debut in 1956 with Run Silent Run Deep. Additional screen credits include Separate Tables

Separate Tables (film)

Separate Tables is a 1958 American drama film based on two one-act plays by Terence Rattigan that were collectively known by this name. It was directed by Delbert Mann, and adapted by Rattigan, John Gay and an uncredited John Michael Hayes. Mary Grant designed the film's costumes.The film took the...

, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (film)

The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a 1962 drama film based on a novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. It was directed by Vincente Minnelli and starred Glenn Ford, Ingrid Thulin, Charles Boyer, Lee J. Cobb, Paul Lukas, Yvette Mimieux, Karlheinz Böhm, and Paul Henreid.Released by MGM, the film lost six...

, The Courtship of Eddie's Father

The Courtship of Eddie's Father (film)

The Courtship of Eddie's Father is a 1963 romantic comedy film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Glenn Ford as a widowed father, with a young son to care for, played by Ron Howard....

, The Hallelujah Trail

The Hallelujah Trail

The Hallelujah Trail is a 1965 Western spoof directed by John Sturges and starring Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Brian Keith, Donald Pleasence, and Martin Landau, amongst others.-Plot synopsis:...

, No Way to Treat a Lady

No Way to Treat a Lady

No Way to Treat a Lady is a darkly comic thriller directed by Jack Smight, with a screenplay by John Gay adapted from William Goldman's novel of the same name. The film starred Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, George Segal and Eileen Heckart...

, Soldier Blue

Soldier Blue

Soldier Blue is a 1970 American Revisionist Western movie directed by Ralph Nelson and inspired by events of the 1864 Sand Creek massacre in the Colorado Territory....

, Sometimes a Great Notion

Sometimes a Great Notion (film)

Sometimes A Great Notion is a 1971 American drama film directed by Paul Newman. The screenplay by John Gay is based on the 1964 novel of the same title by Ken Kesey, the first of his books to be adapted for the screen...

, and A Matter of Time

A Matter of Time (1976 film)

A Matter of Time is a 1976 American/Italian musical fantasy film directed by Vincente Minnelli. The screenplay by John Gay is based on the novel Film of Memory by Maurice Druon...

.

For television, Gay has adapted numerous literary classics, including The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage is a war novel by American author Stephen Crane . Taking place during the American Civil War, the story is about a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. Overcome with shame, he longs for a wound—a "red badge of courage"—to...

, Captains Courageous

Captains Courageous

Captains Courageous is an 1897 novel, by Rudyard Kipling, that follows the adventures of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the arrogant and spoiled son of a railroad tycoon...

, Les Misérables

Les Misérables (1978 film)

Les Misérables is a TV film based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo. The film was written by John Gay and directed by Glenn Jordan.-Differences from the novel:...

, A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature....

, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982 film)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1982 British-American TV movie, based on the Victor Hugo novel. It was directed by Michael Tuchner and Alan Hume, and produced by Norman Rosemont and Malcolm J. Christopher. It starred Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi, Lesley-Anne Down and Sir John Gielgud...

, Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe (1982 film)

Ivanhoe is a 1982 television film adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's novel of the same name. The film was directed by Douglas Camfield and screenplay written by John Gay...

, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Around the World in 80 Days

Around the World in 80 Days (TV miniseries)

Around the World in 80 Days is a 1989 three-part television Eastmancolor miniseries originally broadcast on NBC. The production garnered three nominations for Emmy awards that year...

. He also wrote television biopics of Howard Hughes

Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...

, George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. Raised in Michigan and Ohio, Custer was admitted to West Point in 1858, where he graduated last in his class...

, Caryl Chessman

Caryl Chessman

Caryl Whittier Chessman was a convicted robber and rapist who gained fame as a death row inmate in California. Chessman's case attracted worldwide attention, and as a result he became a cause célèbre for the movement to ban capital punishment.-Crime and conviction:Born in St...

, and Adolf Hitler

The Bunker (1981 film)

The Bunker is a 1981 CBS television film, Time/Life production based on the book The Bunker. The movie makes significant deviations from James O'Donnell's book--published in 1978. The deviations are mainly due to an effort to clarify the events, and allowing the actors license to interpret some of...

; small screen remakes of Dial M for Murder

Dial M for Murder

Dial M for Murder is a 1954 American thriller film adapted from a successful stage play by Frederick Knott, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, and Robert Cummings. The movie was released by the Warner Bros...

, Witness for the Prosecution

Witness for the Prosecution (1982 film)

Witness for the Prosecution is a 1982 TV version of Agatha Christie's short story and play, and also a remake of the classic Billy Wilder 1957 film Witness for the Prosecution....

, Inherit the Wind

Inherit the Wind (1988 film)

Inherit the Wind is a 1988 television film adaptation of the play of the same name. The original 1955 play was written as a parable which fictionalized the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial as a means of discussing the 1950s McCarthy trials...

, and Shadow of a Doubt

Shadow of a Doubt

Shadow of a Doubt is a 1943 American thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. Written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story for Gordon McDonell...

; adaptations of the bestsellers Fatal Vision

Fatal Vision

Fatal Vision is a best-selling true crime book published in 1983 by journalist and author Joe McGinniss. The following year it was made into an NBC television miniseries under the same name. Fatal Vision is the real-life story of Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, M.D., who in 1979 was convicted of the...

and Blind Faith

Blind Faith (book)

Blind Faith is a bestselling 1989 true crime novel by Joe McGinniss, based on the 1984 case in which American businessman Robert O. Marshall was charged with the contract killing of his wife, Maria...

by Joe McGinniss

Joe McGinniss

Joe McGinniss is an American author of nonfiction and novels. He first came to prominence with the best-selling The Selling of the President, 1968 which described the marketing of then-presidential candidate Richard Nixon, and has authored 11 works since that time...

 and The Burden of Proof

The Burden of Proof (film)

The Burden of Proof or Scott Turow's The Burden of Proof is a 1992 television miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Scott Turow. The story follows the character Sandy Stern following events in the film and book Presumed Innocent....

by Scott Turow

Scott Turow

Scott F. Turow is an American author and a practicing lawyer. Turow has written eight fiction and two nonfiction books, which have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over 25 million copies...

; and the television movie

Television movie

A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...

 A Piano for Mrs. Cimino

A Piano for Mrs. Cimino

A Piano for Mrs. Cimino is a 1982 American television movie produced and directed by George Schaefer. The teleplay by John Gay is based on the novel of the same name by Robert Oliphant. It was broadcast on February 3 by CBS.-Plot:...

starring Bette Davis

Bette Davis

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...

.

Gay also wrote the one-man play Diversions and Delights, in which Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

 presents a lecture about his career to a Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

ian audience in November 1899. With Vincent Price

Vincent Price

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.-Early life and career:Price was born in St...

 portraying Wilde, the play premiered in San Francisco in July 1977 and toured more than 300 cities during the next three years.

Gay was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay

Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay

The Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay is one of the three screenwriting Writers Guild of America Awards, one that is specifically for film...

 for Separate Tables. He has been nominated once for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Limited Series or a Special

Primetime Emmy Award

The Primetime Emmy Awards are awards presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in recognition of excellence in American primetime television programming...

 and three times for the Edgar Award

Edgar Award

The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...

for Best Television Feature or Miniseries.

Gay wrote the memoir Any Way I Can: 50 Years in Show Business with his daughter Jennifer Gay Summers.

External links