A native New Yorker, John Wexley, the playwright and screenplay writer, was born September 14, 1907. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School, and attended Cornell University and New York University. Following in the footsteps of his uncle Maurice Schwartz, the Yiddish actor, he appeared in The Dybbuk at the Neighborhood Playhouse and with the Civic Repertory Theater during its first season at 14th Street, New York City.
Mr. Wexley is best known for his stage and screen plays. His first produced plays, a group of three one-act plays, “Machine Gun,” “What Is Your Desire?” and “Rules,” were performed by the Washington Square Players. His first full-length play, The Last Mile, was produced by Herman Shumlin on February 13, 1930. Like most of Wexley's works, its writing was prompted by a real situation of social significance. Suggested by a sketch printed in the American Mercury, depicting a day of execution in a death house, the play is an expose of prison conditions. With a cast featuring Spencer Tracy, it won critical acclaim and was chosen as one of the best plays of the 1929-1930 season by Burns Mantle. Wexley's next play was Steel, produced in 1931. It was revived in 1937 by Labor Stage and given a production featuring a cast of I.L.G.W.U. Players. They Shall Not Die (1934), a play based on the Scottsboro case, was produced by the Theatre Guild. Wexley's subsequent plays were Running Dogs and Comes the Dreamer.
In the 1930's, Wexley became a screenwriter for Warner Brothers. Working alone and in collaboration with others, he wrote a series of films that featured Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Ann Sheridan and other stars. The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938), Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), City for Conquest (1940) and The Long Night (1947) were all directed by Anatole Litvak. Hangmen Also Die (1943), directed by Fritz Lang, was based upon an original story by Lang and Berthold Brecht. Among his other scripts were Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and Cornered (1945).
Mr. Wexley's name was included among others cited in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and 1953, and he was subsequently blacklisted by the motion picture industry. He did some writing under a pseudonym.
In the 1950's, Wexley set out to write a play about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Reading the court transcript and interviewing people across the country, he became so fascinated by his material that he turned it into a book, The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; the book was published in 1955.
Mr. Wexley and his wife currently reside in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
