Emmet G. Lavery, the son of James and Katherine Gilmartin Lavery, was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, on November 8, 1902. He received his law degree from Fordham University in 1924, and was admitted to the New York State bar in 1925, While he was at Fordham University he worked as the court reporter for the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News. Between 1925 and 1935, he practised law in Poughkeepsie, and was the city editor of the Poughkeepsie Sunday Courier. From 1929 to 1933 he was the president of the board of aldermen in Poughkeepsie.
Mr. Lavery has been writing for stage and screen since 1935. Among his best known works are The First Legion (1934; United Artists, 1951), which has been translated in fourteen languages; Hitler's Children and Behind the Rising Sun (RKO, 1943); The Magnificent Yankee (1946; MGM, 1950; Hallmark Hall of Fame, 1965, 1966); The Gentleman from Athens (1947); the opera Tarquin (1950), in collaboration with Ernst Krenek; Bright Road (MGM, 1953); The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell (Warner Brothers, 1955), in collaboration with Milton Sperling; Fenelon (1956); and Hail to the Chief (1958), also titled The Indispensable Man.
In 1940, Mr. Lavery received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to head the Vassar drama department's research staff for Hallie Flanagan's history of the Federal Theatre. He was the resident playwright at Smith College on another grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1942, when he did the research for his play The Magnificent Yankee, based on the life of Chief Justice Holmes.
Mr. Lavery was the founder of the National Catholic Theatre Conference (1937); the director of the National Service Bureau of the Federal Theatre (1937 to 1939); the chairman of the Hollywood Writers Mobilization (1944 to 1945); vice-president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences (1946); and the president of the Screen Writers Guild (1945 to 1947), in which capacity he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. In 1951, he won an important lawsuit against Mrs. Lela Rogers. A full account of the trial is given in Mr, Lavery's pamphlet Trial by Jury, 1951.
Mr. Lavery received the Christopher Award in 1953 for Bright Road; an Academy Award nomination in 1955 for The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell; and the Gavel Award from the American Bar Association in 1965 for The Magnificent Yankee.
Mr. Lavery was married to Genevieve Drislane Lavery and lived in Los Angeles; he died in 1986.
