Lamar Trotti

Biography: Lamar Trotti

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lamar Jefferson Trotti (October 18, 1900 – August 28, 1952) was an American screenwriter, producer, and motion picture executive.

In the silent film era, he was a reporter for the daily Atlanta Georgian, where he interviewed many show business people, such as Viola Dana. Later, Trotti became an executive at Fox Film Corporation in 1933 and after its 1935 merger with Twentieth Century Pictures to become 20th Century Fox, he remained with the company until his death. He wrote about fifty films for the studio, producing many of them. He only wrote one screenplay for another studio, You Can't Buy Everything (1934) for MGM.

He won an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay in 1944 for Wilson and was nominated for Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and There's No Business Like Show Business (1952). He received the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement, the lifetime achievement award of the WGA, in 1983.

Trotti was in ill heath towards the end of his life and had taken six months leave from Fox when he died of a heart attack at hospital near his summer home in St Malo. He was survived by a widow, a son and a daughter. His eldest son had died in a car crash in 1950. Henry Koster later wrote that he thought Trotti died of "a broken heart" because of his son's death.

He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.