Famous Screenwriter Who Stuttered Wrote the Screenplay for A Star Is Born

By Jane Fraser
Oct. 5, 2018

This weekend will mark the highly anticipated release of A Star Is Born, starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. The film is based on the famous 1937 movie of the same name.

In 1976, another remake of A Star Is Born, also based on the 1937 classic, was a box-office smash starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. The screenplay of this 1976 version was written by John Gregory Dunne and his wife Joan Didion.

John Gregory Dunne rose from a stuttering childhood in West Hartford, Connecticut, to be a distinguished novelist, screenwriter and journalist. He spoke publicly about his struggles with stuttering long before it was commonplace for people who stutter in the entertainment industry.

His public statements about stuttering were always from the heart and given in a way to inspire other people who stutter.John Gregory and his famous brother Dominick Dunne were featured in a past Celebrity Corner article in a Stuttering Foundation newsletter titled "Famous Brothers Didn't Let Stuttering Stop Them."

Photo Credit: Everett Collection

CELEBRITY FOCUS

Winston Churchill

Seeking to "remove Winston Churchill's stutter by second guessing the diagnosis" indicates neither a truthful retelling of history nor an informed opinion about a complex speech disorder, say experts in the field of speech-language pathology.

Recent news reports that quote Dr. John Mather, a Washington physician, as saying that Churchill's stutter "is a lie" brought adamant critical response from specialists in the field of stuttering and fluency disorders.

Emily Blunt

Actress Emily Blunt struggled with stuttering early in her life. A teacher encouraged her to act in a school play at age 12 despite her stuttering.

Blunt’s name is prominently featured on the Stuttering Foundation's list of Famous People Who Stutter.

King George

In November 2010, worldwide movie audiences were presented with a most interesting and unusual movie release with The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth as King George VI and Helena Bonham Carter as his wife Elizabeth.

Unfortunately, history may have forgotten the courageous and inspiring story of Prince Albert who stuttered badly and never dreamed that he would ever be king when his older brother, King Edward VIII, abruptly abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee.

John Melendez

He is a talented musician, actor, and comedian. Listen to a podcast.

Lewis Carroll

The recent Disney version of Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice in Wonderland, garnered a great deal of media hype. Even though the mainstream media has not made mention that Carroll was a person who stuttered, his family history gives credence to the discovery of the genetic link to stuttering. Carroll was born to parents who were first cousins; almost all of their eleven children, three girls and seven boys, struggled with stuttering past childhood.