Donald E. Stewart

Donald E. Stewart (24 January 1930 – 28 April 1999) was an American-born screenwriter, best known for his screenplay for Missing, which won the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay, the Writers Guild of America Award, the London Film Critics' Circle award,^[1] a Christopher Award, (www.christophers.org) and the BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay, all shared with the film's director, Costa-Gavras. The screenplay for Missing is used in film schools for instruction in structure and development.^[2] He also wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for the Tom Clancy-trilogy of Jack Ryan films The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger.^[3]

In his Oscar acceptance speech for Missing, Stewart not only thanked the film's director ("my co-writer and friend") but he also thanked Charles Horman, the American journalist whose disappearance was the centerpiece of the film.^[4] When interviewed about what impact the foreign policy issues raised by Missing had on audiences, Stewart commented: "Movies have a tendency to really heat up the emotions."^[5]

Born in Detroit, Michigan, he had an early passion for cars.^[2] He began his writing career as a journalist for The Detroit Times.^[2] In his 20's, he founded and co-published Competition Press, a weekly magazine devoted to car-racing that eventually became Autoweek; he also briefly edited Motor Life magazine. In 1960 he left reporting and moved to New York for the advertising industry, becoming copywriter and creative executive for a series of agencies such as J. Walter Thompson, Young & Rubicam and BBD & O. Not surprisingly, he specialised in advertising copy for the motor trade, an area of booming competition in the car-obsessed economy of Sixties America. He became creative director of the Fletcher-Richards Agency and an expert on all things automobile. He moved to Hollywood in his 40's to try his hand at screenwriting; his first film was Roger Corman's Jackson County Jail and his last was Dead Silence, a TV-movie starring James Garner. He died in his home in Los Angeles of cancer in 1999, at the age of 69.^[6]

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