Some of the wittiest and most affecting scripts in Hollywood history were written or co-written by I.A.L. Diamond (1920-1988), who was famous for his collaborations on a dozen movies with the celebrated writer-producer-director Billy Wilder. Diamond had credits as the creator of stories and/or screenplays for many other films, but after a certain point in the late 1950s he worked almost exclusively with Wilder. In essence, he was a replacement for Wilder's previous collaborator, Charles Brackett.

As a writing team, Diamond and Wilder shared Oscar® nominations for Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Fortune Cookie (1966), and won the award itself for The Apartment (1960).

Diamond was born Itek Dommnici in Romania (present day Moldova) and emigrated with his family to the U.S. at the age of nine. He grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he showed impressive ability in mathematics. He would later claim that the initials "I.A.L." became part of his professional name because he had won a prize from the "Interscholastic Algebra League" when he was in high school.

Diamond attended Columbia University, where he studied journalism. He began writing for films in 1941, moving from Paramount Pictures to Universal and then to Warner Bros., where he first achieved real success and recognition in the mid-1940s. He switched to 20th Century-Fox in the early '50s and then became an independent agent. His partnership with Wilder began in 1957. Below are the films in TCM's tribute.

Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946) was from Diamond's Warner Bros. period, and he collaborated on this original screenplay with Charles Hoffman. The comedy was a vehicle for crooner Dennis Morgan and comic actor Jack Carson, who were the studio's answer to the Paramount Pictures duo Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

Love Nest (1951), from the Fox period, had a screenplay by Diamond adapted from a novel by Scott Corbett. June Haver and William Lundigan star as a couple who own a dilapidated apartment complex and have to cope with the various characters who live there. The colorful supporting cast includes Frank Fay, Jack Paar and a young Marilyn Monroe--later to play a central role in that Wilder/Diamond delight Some Like It Hot.

Love in the Afternoon (1957) was the first of the Wilder/Diamond collaborations. They co-wrote the screenplay, based on a novel by Claude Anet, and Wilder produced and directed. Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper share a May-December romance in this bittersweet comedy, with a twinkling Maurice Chevalier as Hepburn's father.

Cactus Flower (1969) had a screenplay adapted by Diamond from the Broadway play by Abe Burrows, who in turn had adapted a French play. It was the only movie of the 1960s in which Diamond worked independently of Wilder. This bedroom farce stars Walter Matthau as a dishonest dentist, a delightful Ingrid Bergman as the lovelorn nurse who poses as his wife and Oscar® winner Goldie Hawn as the younger woman he tries to fool into thinking he's a married man.

by Roger Fristoe