Peter Hess Stone (February 27, 1930 – April 26, 2003) was an American screenwriter and playwright. Stone is perhaps best remembered by the general public for the screenplays he wrote or co-wrote in the mid-1960s, Charade (1963), Father Goose (1964), and Mirage (1965).
Peter Hess Stone was born in Los Angeles to Jewish parents. His mother, Hilda (née Hess), was a film writer, and his father, John Stone (born Saul Strumwasser), was a screenwriter and film producer. Hilda was a Bavarian Jew from Bamberg, but was born in Mexico (her father dodged the draft in the 1870s) and lived there for five years with her family until all foreign nationals were kicked out during the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Stone had an older brother David, who was a World War II veteran, serving in the U.S. Navy.
When Stone was 15, his parents took him to see Mexican Hayride starring Bobby Clark at the Hazard's Pavilion. Stone saw Clark throw his hat onto a hat tree 100 feet away, and, at that moment, knew he wanted to work in theatre.
He graduated from University High School in Los Angeles, Bard College starting in 1947, and earned a master's degree from the Yale School of Drama. While at Bard, Stone wrote two plays that were both produced and performed at the school.
After Stone graduated Bard, his mother Hilda (still married) eloped to Paris with a Hungarian literary agent (also married) named George Marton. While in Paris, they both settled their divorces and married each other. Stone describes this as "a really great opportunity came to me through what should have been emotionally wrenching, but wasn't", stating that his mother hated Hollywood and was finally happy. After visiting them in the late 1940s, Stone lived in and around Paris for about thirteen years.
Stone worked for CBS while overseas, as a radio writer and newsreader. He also did television features on subjects like the Arc de Triomphe horse race, the Cannes Film Festival and Princess Grace's wedding. "I was getting a sentimental education and letting Hollywood rub off me," he said later. Soon after this, Stone married Mary Hanley.
During this time Stone sold his first script to Studio One in 1956, "A Day Before Battle".
In 1953, Stone saw a play by Jean Paul Sartre called Kean, adapted from the play by Alexandre Dumas based on the life of Edmund Kean. The Broadway singer and actor Alfred Drake was keen to make Kean into a musical, so much so that his agent (who was also Stone's agent) became the producer. Stone signed on in December 1960.
On 2 November 1961 Kean premiered on Broadway, with music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest, and Stone as playwright. He was hesitant to write for a musical, even though he loved them and saw them: "I did not see myself as doing that...and then an opportunity arose...I just wanted to be on Broadway". Stone needed some help, so he consulted Frank Loesser. Stone said of him, "terribly talented, successful and sophisticated man", when asking Loesser where songs went and other questions about musical structure, and said he was "more than helpful, he was inspiring". The show only ran for 92 performances and was considered somewhat of a flop, but it helped establish Stone on Broadway.
Stone wrote two episodes of the 1961 television series The Asphalt Jungle ("The Friendly Gesture", "The Scott Machine") and three episodes of The Defenders. One of his Defenders episodes, "The Benefactors", dealt with abortion care providers and was highly controversial, resulting in sponsors leaving the show. The New York Times called it "a remarkable demonstration of the use of theatre as an instrument of editorial protest." Stone won an Emmy for his script.
He also wrote episodes of Espionage ("Covenant with Death") and Brenner ("Laney's Boy", "The Tragic Flute").
Charade and working for Universal
Stone's first film script was Charade (1963), which he turned into a novel at the suggestion of his agent Robert Lantz. Stone said he submitted his original script "everywhere and nobody wanted it". After it was made into a novel, it was published, and portions of it were even printed before publication in Redbook.
Stone sold the script to Stanley Donen, whom he chose because "One, was he was the only person who hadn't seen it before and I felt silly selling it to the people who rejected it. Two, It got me out of New York, which at that point I wanted to, I'd been there a long time with Kean. And three, Stanley got stars, and I had written with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in mind". "I was on the set every day," Stone remembered, "and I had a marvelous time. There were very few hands involved. It was just Stanley (Donen, the director) and me and the actors, and we all worked it out together. It was an absolutely grand experience."
Universal, which made Charade, promptly signed Stone to write two more films: Mirage, based on a novel by Howard Fast, and Father Goose (1964), based on a story by Frank Tarloff, which Stone wrote at the behest of Cary Grant, who wanted to star.
When Charade came out it was a huge success. Stone signed an exclusive five-picture deal with Universal Studios. Father Goose was made before Mirage. It earned Stone his one and only Oscar for Best Screenplay; he shared it with Tarloff. According to one of his obituaries, "Some felt that the honor was, in part, a delayed tribute for the overlooked Charade script."
Stone's work in the 1960s employed Hitchcock-like narratives, even while the director was still an active film maker. Hitchcock's influence is especially evident in the Edward Dmytryk-directed Mirage, a suspense-mystery that Stone adapted from the Howard Fast novel Fallen Angel. The narrative has Peck suffering from "unconscious amnesia" while dodging bullets in downtown New York. Although shot in black-and-white, many of its themes and images are reminiscent of Vertigo. The cast included Walter Matthau and George Kennedy from Charade.
Stone was reunited with Stanley Donen on Arabesque which also starred Gregory Peck. Stone was brought on to the film to "trick up the dialogue of somebody else's script... so that nobody would notice the film didn't make sense." Stone was unhappy with his low billing and used the pseudonym 'Pierre Marton' on the credits (literally 'Peter/stone' in French, plus an homage to his stepfather George Marton).