Daniel Taradash, 90, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of "From Here to Eternity" who imagined the film's erotic beach scene and was a former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, died Feb. 22 at a Los Angeles hospital. He had pancreatic cancer.
Luck struck immediately. He won a playwriting contest, which led to a job for Columbia Pictures. He collaborated on the 1939 screenplay adaptation of Clifford Odets's play about ambition and boxing, "Golden Boy."
His later screenwriting credits included original works and adaptations of famous plays and novels, and his career was helped by his ability to work smoothly with some of the most demanding directors in Hollywood.
His output in the 1950s included "Rancho Notorious," a Fritz Lang western with Marlene Dietrich; "Don't Bother to Knock," a suspense story with Marilyn Monroe as a sinister babysitter -- in her first big role; "Desiree" with Marlon Brando as Napoleon Bonaparte; "Picnic" with William Holden and Kim Novak in William Inge's play about desire and envy in the Midwest; and the John Van Druten comedy "Bell, Book and Candle," with Novak as a witch who tries to charm a bewildered James Stewart.
Many consider Mr. Taradash's greatest screenplay to be the adaptation of James Jones's steamy novel "From Here to Eternity" (1953). He was credited with persuading Columbia Studios head Harry Cohn that he could be true to the story line without alarming the censors or angering the Army by showing its leaders as cruelly as the book.
Under Fred Zinnemann's direction, the film, starring Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr and Frank Sinatra, received 13 Oscar nominations. It won eight awards, including best screenplay and best picture.
"They invariably say how faithful I was to the book, and I nod very gravely and thank them," Mr. Taradash told a reporter in 1992. "But they're wrong! The novel runs 860 pages, and I was merely faithful to the flavor.
"I guess the most famous lovemaking scene in movies is the beach encounter between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, and it isn't in the book," he said. "Writer James Jones had them in a hotel suite. Too prosaic, I thought. Poor Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr had a time of it because the sand got into their swimsuits after the first take."
Mr. Taradash, the son of a prominent clothing manufacturer, was born in Louisville and grew up in Miami Beach. He was a graduate of Harvard University and its law school.
After winning the playwriting contest, he met director Rouben Mamoulian, who hired him and Lewis Meltzer to adapt "Golden Boy," which marked Holden's first big role.
Mr. Taradash was in the Army Signal Corps during World War II and wrote propaganda films. His postwar film career also included the Abbott and Costello comedy "The Noose Hangs High" (1948) and "Knock on Any Door (1949), a juvenile-delinquent courtroom drama with Humphrey Bogart and John Derek.
He had better luck on the stage, adapting a work by Jean-Paul Sartre into a play called "Red Gloves" (1948), which ran 113 performances and marked the Broadway debut of Charles Boyer.
Back in Hollywood in the early 1950s, he was given more high-profile assignments.
He directed his own co-written screenplay of "Storm Center" (1956), starring Bette Davis as a town librarian ostracized when she refuses to remove a book about Communism. The film, considered a statement about the anti-Communist blacklist of artists, flopped and ended his directing career.
He went on to write screenplays of "Moritori" (1965), an espionage story with Brando; "Hawaii" (1966) with Max von Sydow in the adaptation of the James Michener novel; "Castle Keep" (1969) a war film with Lancaster; and the television movie "Bogie" (1980) about Bogart.
He was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the early 1970s and the Writers Guild of America (West) in the late 1970s.
Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Madeleine Forbes Taradash; three children; and two grandchildren.
