Dwight Deere Wiman was born in Moline, Illinois, on August 8, 1895. After his college education at Yale University, he pursued a business career until 1921 when he joined Frank Tuttle in forming the Film Guild (an organization that produced movies in Astoria, Long Island).
At its studios, the Film Guild made a series of pictures climaxed by Peter Stuyvesant, the first venture in what was to have been a cinematographic history of the United States, planned in cooperation with Yale University Press. Marketing difficulties arose, however, and the Film Guild was dissolved in 1924.
In 1925 Wiman produced his first Broadway show, Seed of the Brute, and remained a highly successful Broadway producer until his death at the age of 55. Perhaps his most distinctive imprint upon the American theatre was made in the field of musical comedy and revue, and his production of The Little Show, The Second Little Show, The Third Little Show, Babes in Arms, On Your Toes, I Married an Angel, Higher and Higher, By Jupiter, and the musical version of Street Scene are noteworthy examples.
Among his legitimate play successes were Robert E. Sherwood's outstanding anti-war play The Road to Rome which starred Jane Cowl in 1927, four of Paul Osborn's significant American dramas (The Vinegar Tree, On Borrowed Time, Morning's at Seven, and Oliver, Oliver), and a number of John Van Druten's early plays: After All, The Damask Cheek, The Distaff Side, Most of the Game, and Old Acquaintance. During the season of his death (1950-1951), Wiman produced the well-known success, The Country Girl, with Paul Kelly and Uta Hagen and the Olivia deHaviland Romeo and Juliet.
