John Gregory Dunne facts for kids

John Gregory Dunne (born May 25, 1932 – died December 30, 2003) was an American writer. He started his career as a journalist for Time magazine. Later, he wrote many different things, like reviews, essays, novels, and movie scripts. He often worked with his wife, Joan Didion.

Growing Up

John Gregory Dunne was born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was the younger brother of another famous writer, Dominick Dunne. John was the fifth of six children in his family. His father was a heart surgeon.

When John was a child, he had a bad stutter, which made it hard for him to speak smoothly. Because of this, he started writing to share his thoughts and feelings. He learned to manage his stutter by watching how other people spoke. He went to the Portsmouth Abbey School and then graduated from Princeton University in 1954.

Writing Career

John Dunne began his writing career as a journalist in New York City for Time magazine. He learned a lot from a political writer named Noel Parmentel, who was a mentor to him.

In the late 1950s, he met Joan Didion in New York City. She was an editor at Vogue magazine. Joan later said that they found each other funny and that she thought John was very smart. He knew a lot about politics and history, which she hadn't learned much about in school. In 1963, he invited her to visit his large Irish Catholic family in Connecticut. Joan liked his family and enjoyed being there with him.

After they got married in 1964, John and Joan moved to a quiet house on the California coast. Joan worked on her next novel, and John wrote a book about the grape pickers' strike in California. For many years, they wrote a column together for the Saturday Evening Post magazine.

Over time, John and Joan started getting more writing jobs from book publishers and magazines. They often traveled together for journalism assignments. They developed a way of working where they constantly advised, consulted, and edited each other's work. This teamwork helped them both write many popular and well-received books. For example, John wrote The Studio, which was a non-fiction book about the movie studio 20th Century Fox.

They also worked together on several movie scripts. These included The Panic in Needle Park (1971), A Star Is Born (1976), and True Confessions (1981). The movie True Confessions was based on a novel John had written. John also wrote a non-fiction book about Hollywood called Monster: Living Off the Big Screen.

John Gregory Dunne was also a literary critic and essay writer. He often wrote for The New York Review of Books. His essays were put together into two books: Quintana & Friends (1980) and Crooning (1990). He wrote several novels, including True Confessions, which was inspired by a real-life mystery. He also wrote Dutch Shea, Jr. In 1990, he was the writer and narrator for a PBS documentary called L.A. is It with John Gregory Dunne. In this show, he showed viewers the cultural side of Los Angeles.

Later in their lives, John and Joan moved to Manhattan. John passed away there from a heart attack on December 30, 2003. His last novel, Nothing Lost, was being prepared for printing when he died, and it was published in 2004.

Family Life

John Dunne married Joan Didion on January 30, 1964, at Mission San Juan Bautista in California. He was 31 years old, and she was 29. In 1966, since they could not have children, they adopted a baby girl right after she was born. They named her Quintana Roo, after a Mexican state. Sadly, Quintana passed away in 2005 after being sick for some time.

John Dunne was the uncle of actors Griffin Dunne and Dominique Dunne. Griffin Dunne was in the movie An American Werewolf in London, and Dominique Dunne was in Poltergeist.

After John's death, Joan Didion wrote a book called The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). This book was about the year after he died, during which their daughter was also very ill. The book was highly praised and won the National Book Award.

Books Written by John Gregory Dunne

Fiction Books

• True Confessions (1977) ISBN: 978-1560258155
• Dutch Shea, Jr. (1982) ISBN: 978-0722131053
• The Red White and Blue (1987) ISBN: 978-0312909659
• Playland (1994) ISBN: 978-0679424277
• Nothing Lost (2004) ISBN: 978-1400041435

Non-fiction Books

• Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike (1967) ISBN: 978-0520254336
• The Studio (1969) ISBN: 978-0375700088
• Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season (1974) ISBN: 978-0704330542
• Quintana and Friends (1978) ISBN: 978-0671832414
• Harp (1989) ISBN: 978-0671725143
• Crooning: A Collection (1990) ISBN: 978-0671740313
• Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (1997) ISBN: 978-0375750243
• Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne (2005) ISBN: 978-1560258162

Movie Scripts

• The Panic in Needle Park (1971)
• Play It as It Lays (1972)
• A Star Is Born (1976)
• True Confessions (1981)
• Up Close & Personal (1996)

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