Frank Stanley Nugent (May 27, 1908 – December 29, 1965) was an American screenwriter, journalist, and film reviewer, who wrote 21 film scripts, 11 for director John Ford. He wrote almost a thousand reviews for The New York Times before leaving journalism for Hollywood. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953 and twice won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Comedy. The Writers Guild of America, West ranks his screenplay for The Searchers (1956) among the top 101 screenplays of all time. Early life and film criticism Nugent was born in New York City on May 27, 1908, the son of Frank H. and Rebecca Roggenburg Nugent. He graduated from Regis High School in 1925 and studied journalism at Columbia University, graduating in 1929, where he worked on the student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator. He started his journalism career as a news reporter with The New York Times in 1929 and in 1934 moved to reviewing films for that newspaper. At the end of 1936 Nugent succeeded Andre Sennwald as its motion picture editor and critic, and held the post until 1940. In that position he wrote very favorable reviews of Show Boat (1936), and of The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind (1939). One account of his output at the Times says that "He was known for his acerbic wit and poison-tipped pen, and even his news articles had verve and voice; his features were chatty, clever, and intimate, if occasionally smug." Nugent praised director John Ford without reservation, writing of Stagecoach in 1939: Of Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, released the following year, he wrote: His critiques were sometimes sharp-tongued. He called Mannequin with Joan Crawford and Spencer Tracy a "glib, implausible and smart-gowned little drama, as typical Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as Leo himself". Of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), he wrote: "The film is almost unrelievedly brutal and without the saving grace of unreality which makes Frankenstein's horrors a little comic." He aimed his barbs at individuals as well, like "the screen's latest leading man, John Trent, former transport pilot. Mr. Trent is square-jawed, rangy and solidly masculine. Eventually he may deteriorate and become an actor as well." He particularly disliked the work of Tyrone Power for 20th Century Fox, and began his review of The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939) by saying: "If only because it has omitted