Harry Brown (writer)

Harry Peter McNab Brown, Jr. (April 30 1917 – November 2 1986) was an American poet, novelist and screenwriter.

Born in Portland, Maine, he was educated at Harvard University, where he was friends with American poet, Robert Lowell. Brown dropped out of Harvard after his sophomore year to write poetry, work at Time magazine, and contributed to and became a sub editor of "The New Yorker". Harry first "served notice" of his poetic gifts as the winner of several poetry prizes: "The Young Poets Prize "(1936), awarded by "Poetry" magazine; Harvard's "Lloyd McKim Garrison Award" (1937); and the "Shelley Award" (1939).

Charles Scribner's Sons, of New York, published, in 1941, Brown's sustained unified poem, "The Poem of Bunker Hill". The 158 page poetic epic won praise for it's author's literary gifts as a poet and for the timely presentation of a vital topic - young men and war. Louise Bogan, from the New Yorker, was quoted, "Brown...possesses one of the most unmistakable poetic gifts which have recently appeared. Such a talent is not only basically good from the beginning but exhibits, also from the first, all the signs of virtuosity." Also published, early in that year, was Brown's first full-length book, "The End of a Decade".

From the American Revolutionary warfare of "The Poem of Bunker Hill", Harry Brown went directly to modern military operataions. Brown enlisted in July of 1941 in the US Army Corps of Engineers where he served at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. In 1942 he joined the staff of Yank magazine.

Brown wrote a column for the magazine under the nom de plume of "PFC Artie Greengroin" with a book published in 1945 of the columns under that title. Brown also wrote a play "A Sound of Hunting" that was produced on Broadway in 1946 starring Burt Lancaster and Frank Lovejoy. It was later filmed by Stanley Kramer under the title "Eight Iron Men" with a different cast of Bonar Colleano, Lee Marvin, and Arthur Franz in 1952, then was directed by Seymour Robbie in a 1961 television production with Peter Falk, Robert Lansing, and Sal Mineo.

Brown wrote the novel "A Walk in the Sun" in 1944, which was made into a film in 1945. Director Lewis Milestone asked Brown to come to Hollywood as a screenwriter were he worked on films including "Sands of Iwo Jima" (1949), "A Place in the Sun" (1951) (winning an Oscar), and "Ocean's Eleven" (1960). Brown also was credited for his work on the first "Ocean's Eleven" when it was remade in 2001.

Brown died from emphysema in 1986