Stewart Stern

Served in the 106th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army during World War II, saw action in the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, and Combat Infantry Badge.

Taught screenwriting at the University of Washington's Extension Program during the 1990's.

Stewart Stern, a frequent lecturer at USC until he moved to Seattle in 1986, taught screen-writing at the University of Washington and at The-Film-School, a nonprofit institute he co-founded in 2005 with actor Tom Skerritt. Stern stressed to his students the importance of finding a personal connection to the stories they wanted to write for the screen. He said that was key to his success with the 1955 landmark, "Rebel Without a Cause." Stern related, "I realized it was a story about me, as everything I've ever done turned out to be," Stern, in a 2011 interview for the El Paso Times, said of his best-known work. "Rebel" was a portrait of juvenile delinquents and the family dysfunction that marred their prospects for happiness. The film starred James Dean, fresh from his success in "East of Eden," as a teenager whose efforts to fit in at his new school lead to tragedy.

Among Stern's last film credits was the aptly titled "The Last Movie," a 1971 collaboration with Dennis Hopper, who'd had a very small role in "Rebel Without a Cause." The quasi-Western was a huge critical and commercial flop. By the early 1980s Stern was finished with Hollywood. He "hated the fact that I'd left my friends and walked out on my career," he told the Seattle Times in 1996. "I knew, though, that if I was ever going to write again, it would have to come out of a different place." Stern moved to Seattle when his wife, ex-ballerina Marilee Stiles Stern, was invited to teach at the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

During more than a quarter-century in Hollywood, Stewart Stern became known for the psychological depth of his screen-writing. His credits include "Rachel, Rachel," a 1968 film directed by Paul Newman and starring Newman's wife Joanne Woodward as a lonely, repressed school teacher, and "Sybil," the 1976 television mini-series starring Sally Field as a woman suffering from multiple Personality disorder. "Sybil" brought him an EMMY for best dramatic writing in 1977, and "Rachel, Rachel" earned an Oscar nomination. Newman told the Seattle Times in 1996, "Stewart's words give an actor a kind of emotional depth that you can just ride on, like a wave. He certainly stacks up as one of the best in our business." Stern also wrote the screenplay for the Vietnam War-era 1963 film "The Ugly American, which starred Marlon Brando as the American ambassador in a Southeast Asian country torn by civil war, and the critically praised 1973 film "Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams," also starring Joanne Woodward, who played a middle-aged home-maker in crisis.

He is known for his work on Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Rachel, Rachel (1968) and The Ugly American (1963). He was married to Marilee Stiles Stern.

Member of the Writers Guild of America West from 1951. Served on the guild's screen council branch between 1970 and 1972.

Stewart Stern was born on March 22, 1922 in New York City, New York, USA as Stewart Henry Stern.