Robert Nathan

Robert Nathan was an American novelist and poet, born in New York City in 1894 and educated at Harvard, where he began publishing in The Harvard Monthly before leaving without a degree. Over a career spanning six decades he wrote novels, poetry, plays, screenplays, and children's books, becoming best known for Portrait of Jennie (1940), a fantasy about a Depression-era artist and a mysterious muse who exists outside ordinary time, adapted into a 1948 film, and The Bishop's Wife (1928), later filmed in 1947 with Cary Grant, David Niven, and Loretta Young. He also worked as a Hollywood screenwriter, contributing to MGM films including The White Cliffs of Dover and The Clock. Nathan came from a distinguished family that included Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo and poet Emma Lazarus; his seventh wife was actress Anna Lee. He died in 1985.