Writer I.A.L. Diamond was born Itec Domnici in Rumania in 1920. When he was nine years old, he and his mother and sister immigrated to Brooklyn, New York to join his father and grandfather. The grandfather had already changed the family name from Domnici to Diamond. On Itec's first day at school, his given name was changed to Isidore.
At Boys High School in Brooklyn, he was known for his outstanding mathematical ability. Both in 1936 and 1937 he won the championship of the Interscholastic Algebra League (I.A.L.). In 1937 he entered Columbia University and majored in mathematics and physics in preparation for an engineering career. However, he also wrote books and lyrics for school musicals and was editor of the student newspaper, Spectator. At the prompting of colleagues on the Spectator staff, he adopted the pseudonym I.A.L. Diamond, humorously alluding to his mathematical prowess. He was the first person in the history of the university to write four varsity shows. After reading a 1941 New York Times article about Diamond's authorship of these shows, a Paramount representative signed him on as a contract writer for the studio.
Diamond was under contract to Paramount from 1941 to 1942, to Warner Brothers from 1945 to 1948, and to Twentieth Century Fox from 1950 to 1955. He has since described the plight of a contract writer as “everybody rewriting everybody else, and three times as many scripts being prepared as were ever produced.” While not under contract, he freelanced as a script writer.
His first produced movie was Murder in the Blue Room (Univ, 1944). Some of his other scripts which were produced include Two Guys From Milwaukee (WB, 1946), Always Together (WB, 1947), Two Guys From Texas (WB, 1948), The Girl from Jones Beach (WB, 1949), Let's Make It Legal (Fox, 1951), Monkey Business (Fox, 1952), Something for the Birds (Fox, 1952), and That Certain Feeling (Par, 1956).
In 1957 Diamond began his important collaboration with Billy Wilder with the film Love In the Afternoon (AA, 1957), for which Diamond won the Writers Guild award for best comedy. Their subsequent collaborative efforts have included the following films: Some Like It Hot (UA, 1959), The Apartment (UA, 1960), One, Two, Three (UA, 1961), Irma La Douce (UA, 1963), Kiss Me, Stupid (UA, 1964) The Fortune Cookie (UA, 1966), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (UA, 1970), and Avanti (UA, 1972). They have won considerable recognition and numerous awards for these films. Diamond received an Academy Award for The Apartment and Academy nominations for Some Like It Hot and The Fortune Cookie.
Not all of Diamond's recent work has been done with Wilder, however; for instance, he worked alone on Cactus Flower (Col, 1969). He is at this writing working with Wilder for Universal on The Front Page, the third film version of the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur 1928 Broadway hit of the same title. This film will star Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.
Diamond is married to Barbara Bentley, and they have two children - Ann and Paul. The family resides in Beverly Hills, California.
