Lionel Chetwynd

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Lionel Chetwynd (born January 29, 1940) is an English-born Canadian-American screenwriter, motion picture, and television film director and producer.

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Life and career

Lionel Chetwynd was born in Hackney, London, son of Betty (née Dion) and Peter Chetwynd. When he was eight years old, his family immigrated to Canada. He left school at the age of 14 due to a man's dysfunctional family's rift.

Chetwynd returned the following year, but was promptly dismissed. He was later commissioned in the Canadian Army. Chetwynd's life was turned around after he spent time in The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada.

He stepped into Sir George Williams University, now Concordia University in Montreal, two hours later, and got a second chance to talk to Henry F. Hall, the school's principal, who had a reputation for giving students a second chance. Chetwynd was given conditional admission as a mature student following a string of tests.

Chetwynd was a gold medalist in philosophy and economics. On television youth panels and debating competitions, he also supported Sir George Williams University. Chetwynd married future Hollywood actress Gloria Carlin, whom he encountered at Sir George, just short of graduating as valedictorian.

He excelled to the point that he was given a scholarship to McGill University Law School in Montreal. He was a contributing editor for the McGill Law Journal under McGill's tenure.

Although a law student, he also found work at the start of Expo67, starting as a factory worker on the man-made islands. He was quickly transferred to the Critical Path Section and then moved to the Entertainment Branch and then into the Entertainment Branch. He had risen to a senior role within the E Branch, with responsibility for approving all media licenses to the fair, Terre des Hommes, 1967 (Director of Reproduction, Man and World).

Chetwynd completed his degree in Oxford, United Kingdom, and served in law at Trinity College, Oxford, the United Kingdom. After finishing his education, he remained in London, working with Columbia Pictures' distribution branch, where he worked his way up to assistant managing director. Since meeting Canadian film director Ted Kotcheff, Chetwynd co-wrote the script for Duddy Kravitz's film The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz with fellow Montrealer Mordecai Richler, which had written the book from which it was adapted, he was interested in writing screenplays.

Chetwynd returned to New York City, where he received the Writer's Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium, as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay. He wrote and produced Goldenrod in 1975, starring his wife Gloria Carlin and Tony LoBianco, and wrote and produced We Hardly Knew Ye, John Kennedy's first attempt for congress, based on Dave Powers and Kenny O'Donnell's book. In 1977, Thomas were recruited by Marlo Thomas to produce It's a Wonderful Life's a Television Version of It's a Wonderful Life, in which Thomas played the lead role portrayed by James Stewart in the original.

Chetwynd switched to directing his own screenplays shortly after being hired to write scripts for CBS (Love of Life) and PBS television networks, enjoying his 1978 film Two Solitudes with a resounding success. The film, which was adapted by Chetwynd from the Hugh MacLennan book and starring Jean-Pierre Aumont, Stacy Keach, and Claude Jutra, was about socioeconomic problems related to Canada's French and English speaking population as well as the 1917 Conscription Crisis. Chetwynd's career came to an end, and he'll continue to write, direct, and produce several issue or event-based American films.

Ronald Reagan's work, speeches, and endorsement of conservative ideologies made him a favorite of the political right in the United States.

Chetwynd's film collections include films such as Miracle on Ice, which chronicled the United States' dramatic win over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics, as well as the 1981 made for television film Miracle on Ice (Christopher Award). He scripted The Hot Touch, for which he received a Canadian Genie nomination, but this was unfortunately both Roger Vadim's last film directed by him and Melvin Douglas's last film to include Melvin Douglas. Chetwynd, a Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund member, wrote and directed the 1987 drama The Hanoi Hilton, which dealt with the care of American P.O.W.s during the Vietnam War in Hanoi's notorious Hoa Lo jail. During the Constitutional Bicentennial Exhibition of the United States Congress, he was commissioned to produce and write a special tribute to the United States Congress.

Chetwynd produced the four-hour miniseries For A&E Television, To Heal a Country (George Washington Medal), a biography of Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam soldier who returned home disillusioned and dissatisfied, and later founded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. In addition, he drafted and produced the gala that commemorated the United States Constitution's 200th anniversary starring Ben Vereen and was on display in Philadelphia before members of Congress and the Supreme Court. The first OPT mini-series starring Lou Gossett, which was cited by the NAACP Image Awards, was released in 1983. In Clear River, he created the Christopher Award-winning Evil.

He executive produced, wrote, and regularly directed episodes of the PBS series Reverse Angle and its successor National Desk, a public affairs series that received multiple Telly Awards and a New York Festival Gold Medal from 1992 to 1996. Heroes of Desert Storm, a 1993 book by Don Ohlmeyer, was written in 1993. Chetwynd wrote the scripts for Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy, a four-hour miniseries for CBS, and The Man Who Captured Eichmann, among his other issue-based scripts. He penned the teleplay for ABC's Net Force in 1999.

Chetwynd has produced biblical films, including Jacob (1994), Joseph (1996, Best Miniseries), and Moses (1996), which was also nominated for an Emmy, and the later two were both nominated for Emmys;

Chetwynd wrote and directed Varian's War, the tale of Varian Fry, an American who helped many scholars and artists flee Nazi-occupied France during World War II. Chetwynd's fifth Writers Guild of America "Best Screenplay" award was given, as well as a special citation from The American Society of Yad Vashem and the Jewish Image Award for best film.

President George W. Bush nominated Chetwynd to serve on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 2001. Chetwynd wrote and produced DC 9/11: Time of Crisis, a docudrama for Showtime Networks chronicling the nine days in the Bush administration between the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon, as well as the president's televised address to the nation prior to Congress.

Chetwynd wrote, produced, and directed Darkness at High Noon, a PBS documentary that retells Carl Foreman's life and work as a member of the American Communist Party. The story revolves around events during McCarthyism, which culminated in Foreman, a talented film producer and screenwriter who was blacklisted by Hollywood film studio bosses in the 1950s.

After Darkness at High Noon, he received an Emmy Award for writing and directing Ike: Countdown to D-Day starring Tom Selleck, and he co-produced the political film We Fight To Be Free.

Chetwynd continued to work in documentaries, most notable in producing and directing An Improbable Dream (2016), which followed the lives of students of Canada's National Ballet School from their 10th and 11th birthdays to their early 50s. It was a huge success, winning Gold medals for both directing and producing, as well as a People's Telly Award. During this period, he has been on several other projects, including a FX series and a mini-series dealing with the Cold War and Armenian genocide.

Chetwynd has more than 60 longform and documentary credits, as well as six writers Guild of America nominations (including an award), six Writers Guild of America nominations, two Christophers, six Tellys, two George Washington medals from the Freedom Foundation in Valley Forge, among other citations.

Chetwynd received the Caucus of Writers, Producers, and Directors Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003, and in 2011, he received their Writer of the Year award. Columbia College-Hollywood named him an honorary doctorate in 2003. He received the National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian Award in 2008.

Chetwynd was a founding member of Friends of Abe, a Hollywood conservative group.

Chetwynd appeared in Pajamas TV's (PJTV) Poliwood program, interviewing topics involving politics and Hollywood.

Chetwynd is married to actress Gloria Carlin, who has appeared in many of his films. They have two sons and reside in Beverly Hills, California.

He is a British, Canadian, and American citizen.

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