The Lone Wanger

1914

The College forbids Walter Wanger '15 from directing another play until his grades improve. Wanger heads for Broadway.

1917

Wanger joins President Woodrow Wilson's staff at the Paris peace talks.

1929

Wanger produces TheCoconuts, starring the Marx Brothers. Exhibitors complain that the comedians talk too fast. The picture becomes a huge hit. Patrons come back two and three times to catch all the dialogue.

1930

"Five years from now I don't believe that there will be a single school in the country that will not have the talking motion picture as the basis of education," predicts Paramount production chief Walter Wanger.

1937

Wanger persuades President Ernest Martin Hopkins to make Dartmouth the first college in America to offer a screenwriting class.

1939

Employing the alcoholic F. Scott Fitzgerald as a screen- writer, Wanger immortalizes his alma mater in the film Winter Carnival.

1951

Wanger shoots the lover of his wife, Joan Bennett, in the groin.

1952

A judge sentences Wanger to four months in prison.

1954

Wanger films Riot inCell Block 11.

1958

Wanger produces IWant to Live, a powerful cinematic argument against the death penalty. The film earns Oscars for Susan Hayward and Robert Wise.

1962

Wanger and Joan Bennett end their 22-year marriage.

1963

Wanger's production of Cleopatra becomes Hollywood's biggest flop to that point. The loss of $37 million effectively ends his career.

1989

Dartmouth Film Prof Al LaValley pens a scholarly treatise on Wanger's Invasion ofthe Body Snatchers. Three decades after its release the B-movie evolves into an academic text in part because Wanger "saw himself as Hollywood's conscience and seer."

When filmmakerWalter Wanger shota man, he killed hislast chance to get aDartmouth degree.