Brackett was born in
Saratoga Springs, New York, the son of Mary Emma Corliss and New York State Senator, lawyer, and banker
Edgar Truman Brackett. The family's roots traced back to the arrival of Richard Brackett in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. His mother's uncle,
George Henry Corliss, built the
Centennial Engine that powered the 1876
Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. A 1915 graduate of
Williams College, he earned his law degree from
Harvard University. He joined the
Allied Expeditionary Force during
World War I, and was awarded the French Medal of Honor. He was a frequent contributor to the
Saturday Evening Post, ''
Collier's, and Vanity Fair, and a drama critic for The New Yorker. He wrote five novels: The Counsel of the Ungodly
(1920), Week-End
(1925), That Last Infirmity
(1926), American Colony
(1929), and Entirely Surrounded'' (1934). Brackett was a president of the
Screen Writers Guild (1938–1939) and for the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (1949–1955). He either wrote and/or produced over forty films, including
To Each His Own,
Ninotchka,
The Major and the Minor,
The Mating Season (1951),
Niagara,
The King and I,
Ten North Frederick,
The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker and
Blue Denim. Beginning in August 1936, Brackett worked with Billy Wilder, writing the film classics
The Lost Weekend and
Sunset Boulevard, both of which won
Academy Awards for their respective screenplays. Brackett described their collaboration process as follows: "The thing to do was suggest an idea, have it torn apart and despised. In a few days it would be apt to turn up, slightly changed, as Wilder's idea. Once I got adjusted to that way of working, our lives were simpler." His partnership with Wilder ended in 1950 and Brackett went to work at
20th Century-Fox as a screenwriter and producer. His script for
Titanic (1953) won him another Academy Award. He received an
Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1958. Brackett died on March 9, 1969. His diaries covering his screenwriting and social life from 1932 to 1949 were edited by Anthony Slide into Slide's book ''It's the Pictures That Got Small: Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age''. == Personal life ==