Jay Presson Allen

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jay Presson Allen was born Jacqueline Presson in San Angelo, Texas on March 3, 1922, the daughter of a department store manager. Educated at Miss Hockaday's School for Young Ladies in Dallas, Presson in her own words received no education at all. At the age of 18, she decided to become an actress in New York City. The charms of the profession soon paled and she married in the early 1940s, moving to southern California. Disenchanted with acting, she saw writing as a way of becoming financially independent and enabling to leave her unhappy marriage. Her first novel "Spring Riot" was published in 1948. She moved back to New York, where she performed in cabaret and on the radio, but she was as disenchanted with performing as she had been before. She eventually divorced her husband and in 1955, she married Lewis Allen, a reader at the office of Broadway producer Bob Whitehead. Allen initially rejected a play she had sent Whitehead that later was optioned but ne