Longstreet, Stephen, 1907-2002

Stephen Longstreet was an artist, novelist, and screenwriter who lived and worked primarily in New York and Los Angeles.

American author.

American novelist.

Stephen Longstreet was born in New York in 1907, and moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey with his family during his youth. Longstreet studied in Paris and at Rutgers and Harvard Universities; graduating from the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (Parsons) in 1929. On his return to the United States, his artistic style was considered "too modern" to sell, and he thus pursued a career as a magazine artist and cartoonist. His work was published in the New Yorker, Life, Colliers, and the Saturday Evening Post. In 1933 Longstreet began writing radio shows for John Barrymore, Bob Hope, and Rudy Valle. Longstreet made his living as an author, eventually publishing over a hundred books. Longstreet has served as professor of visual and performing art at the University of Southern California.

American author (Pseudonym: W. W. Windstaff).

Stephen Longstreet (1907-2002) was born in New York, grew up in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He studied at Rutgers and Harvard and graduated from the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts (Parsons) in 1929. During his career, he moved between many professions working as a novelist, playwright, painter, art-critic and collector, lecturer, journalist, news magazine editor and jazz historian. His Broadway musical "High Button Shoes" documented the story of the Longstreet Family in 1913 and was awarded the Billboard-Donaldson Gold Medal for best play in 1948. Longstreet authored several novels under various pen names but is most noted for his screenplay for "The Jolson Story" (1948) which was awarded the Photoplay Gold Medal, followed by his screenplay for "The Greatest Show on Earth" which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1952. He also wrote and illustrated "Encyclopedie du Jazz" and "Sportin' House: A History of the New Orleans Sinners and the Birth of Jazz".

American artist.

American author and artist.

Stephen Longstreet is an American artist, novelist, and jazz historian.

Longstreet was born on Apr. 18, 1907 in New York City; attended Rutgers Univ. (1926) and Harvard Univ. (1927), and graduated from the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (1929); also studied in Paris with Matisse and Bonnard, as well as in Rome, London and Berlin; became painter, writer, art critic, and lecturer on art; literary critic for Reader's syndicate (1952-80) and for the Los Angeles daily news; designed stage sets for RexRoth poetry jazz, 1952; president, Los Angeles Art Assn. (1972-75); professor of modern writing, Univ. of Southern California (1975-80); wrote radio plays, screenplays, and dozens of books ranging from novels to biography to travel, including: Decade, 1929-1939 (1940), The Pedlocks : a family (1951), Gettysburg (1961), The world revisited (1953), and The real jazz, old and new (1956).

Biography

Longstreet was born on April 18, 1907 in New York City; attended Rutgers University (1926) and Harvard University (1927), and graduated from the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (1929); also studied in Paris with Matisse and Bonnard, as well as in Rome, London and Berlin; became painter, writer, art critic, and lecturer on art; literary critic for Reader's Syndicate (1952-80) and for the Los Angeles Daily News ; designed stage sets for RexRoth poetry jazz, 1952; president, Los Angeles Art Association. (1972-75); professor of modern writing, University of Southern California (1975-80); wrote radio plays, screenplays, and dozens of books ranging from novels to biography to travel, including: Decade, 1929-1939 (1940), The Pedlocks :A Family (1951), Gettysburg (1961), The World Revisited (1953), and The Real Jazz, Old and New (1956).

Biographical/Historical Note

American artist.

Stephen Longstreet was born in New York in 1907, and moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey with his family during his youth. Longstreet studied in Paris and at Rutgers and Harvard Universities; graduating from the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (Parsons) in 1929.

On his return to the United States, his artistic style was considered “too modern” to sell, and he thus pursued a career as a magazine artist and cartoonist. His work was published in the New Yorker, Life, Colliers, and the Saturday Evening Post. In 1933 Longstreet began writing radio shows for John Barrymore, Bob Hope, and Rudy Valle. Longstreet made his living as an author, eventually publishing over a hundred books, which include the novels, Decade 1929-1939 (1940), The Pedlocks (1951), The Promoters (1957), Man of Monmartre (1958), The Crime (1959), and The Flesh Peddlers (1962).

His television scripts include a 1959 Civil War series, “The Blue and Gray,” “All or Nothing” (1983), and “His Father’s House” (1985). As a screenwriter, his first script was an adaptation of his novel The Gay Sisters (1941); he was awarded the Photoplay Gold Medal for the most popular film of 1948, The Jolson Story, received a California Golden Star (1949); and an Academy Award nomination (1952) for his screenplay for “Gauguin: The Greatest Show on Earth.” Longstreet has served as professor of visual and performing art at the University of Southern California, and currently holds a chair in modern writing at the same institution.

The artist, novelist, and screenwriter Stephen Longstreet was born in New York City on April 18, 1907, and raised in New Brunswick, NJ. His birth name was Chauncey Weiner, a surname shortened from the family name Weiner-Longstrasse; as a youth he changed his first name to Henry and in the early 1940s became known as Stephen Longstreet. He began his career as a graphic artist in New York by publishing cartoons and vignettes in periodicals such as the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Saturday Evening Post, and Colliers, then went on to write radio, television, and film scripts. Longstreet wrote, ghostwrote, compiled, and edited nearly 140 books between 1936 and 1999, which were published under the name Stephen Longstreet, as well as his pseudonyms Thomas Burton, Paul Haggard, David Ormsbee, Henri Weiner, Stephen Weiner-Longstreet, and Philip Wiener. Many of his early drawings appeared with the signature "Henri." Longstreet married Ethel Godoff (1909-1999) in Brooklyn in 1935; they had two children. He died in Los Angeles on February 20, 2002.

Longstreet wrote both novels and non-fiction works. Most of the latter were not reviewed kindly, with reviewers questioning his accuracy of content and reliability of sources. Perhaps his most notable hoax was Nell Kimball: Her Life as an American Madam, by herself, edited and with an introduction by Stephen Longstreet (1970). He claimed to have received a manuscript memoir from Kimball (1854-1934), a well-traveled prostitute and New Orleans madam, tried in vain to find a publisher for it in the 1930s, and then held on to her manuscript when she died. After citing it as primary source material for his own books Sportin' House: a History of New Orleans Sinners and the Birth of Jazz (1965) and The Wilder Shore: a Gala Social History of San Francisco's Sinners and Spenders, 1849-1906 (1968), Longstreet sold the manuscript to Macmillan Publishing. Kimball's autobiography received positive notices in newspapers and mass-market periodicals, but academics found too many close parallels in narrative and language to the works of Herbert Asbury (1889-1963), and shortly, both the text and the madam were found to be Longstreet's fabrications. The Wilder Shore itself was then revealed to have been paraphrased from Asbury's book The Barbary Coast (1933).