Lili (1953)

Born in New York City. Award-winning screenwriter of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, primarily with MGM. A prolific writer who never learned to type but dictated her stories into a Dictaphone, Deutsch also wrote more than 20 short stories for magazines and hundreds of newspaper articles as well as several plays and teleplays. She began her career in the theater, first managing the Provincetown Players and working as a publicist, later covering the theater beat for the New York Herald-Tribune and the New York Times as well as working for the Theater Guild. Deutsch entered films in 1944, collaborating on the adaptation of Enid Bagnold's novel National Velvet which became an instant children's classic and catapulted the young Elizabeth Taylor to stardom. In the same year she scripted THE SEVENTH CROSS, which starred Spencer Tracy as a refugee from a Nazi death camp. Deutsch's work ranged from espionage fluff (GOLDEN EARRINGS, 1947) to epic adventures (KING SOLOMON'S MINES, 1950 and KIM, 1950), psychological melodrama (I'LL CRY TOMORROW, 1955) and musicals (THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN, 1964). Her best-loved film is LILI (1953), the charming classic about a childlike waif (Leslie Caron) smitten with a womanizing magician (Jean-Pierre Aumont) and loved by a crippled puppeteer (Mel Ferrer). Deutsch not only wrote the lyrics for the movie's hit song "Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo" but later wrote the libretto for Carnival, the 1961 Robert Merrill Broadway musical based on the film.  Nominated for Writing (Screenplay) 1953: LILI 1 nomination