Daniel Taradash, who won the Oscar for his screenplay of From Here to Eternity, and was a former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, died of pancreatic cancer on February 22 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 90.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1913 to the son of a prominent clothing manufacturer, Taradash grew up in Chicago and Miami Beach. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1936 and although he passed the New York state bar exam the same year, he never practiced law, deciding instead to become a writer. His success was nearly immediate. After his play The Mercy won the 1938 Bureau of New Plays contest (previous winners included Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams), Taradash was signed by Columbia Studios to write the screenplay adaptation for Clifford Odets' play about ambition and boxing Golden Boy (1939), starring Barbara Stanwyck and William Holden.

He worked on a few low-budget comedies before being drafted into the Army in 1941. He served in the Signal Corps, writing and producing motivational training films. After the war, Taradash returned to playwriting, adapting Jean-Paul Sartre's Red Gloves which had a brief run on Broadway in 1948 with Charles Boyer. He soon returned to Hollywood and wrote The Noose Hangs High (1948) for Abbott and Costello and Knock on Any Door (1949), a juvenile-delinquent courtroom drama with Humphrey Bogart and John Derek. His film work in the '50s included Rancho Notorious with Marlene Dietrich; Don't Bother to Knock, a suspense story with Marilyn Monroe as a psychotic babysitter before hitting on his biggest hit, From Here to Eternity (1953).

The film version of James Jones' best-selling novel about Army life in Hawaii during the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor was a considerable challenge for Taradash, who had to turn the famously erotic, violent and obscenity-filled, 860-page novel into a screenplay that would be acceptable to industry censors. Taradash is responsible for the passionate embrace between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach as the surf washes over them. In the novel, Jones had their love scene in a hotel room - too prosaic Taradash thought - and he promptly rewrote the scene that is now regarded as one of the most famous embraces in screen history. 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 for Taradash, and best picture.

More "A" list films were written by Taradash throughout the decade: Desiree with Marlon Brando as Napoleon Bonaparte; Picnic, an adaptation of William Inge's Broadway play about desire and jealousy with William Holden and Kim Novak. He directed his own 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 daring statement about the anti-Communist blacklist of artists, flopped and ended his directing career. He returned to writing with the charming comedy Bell, Book and Candle with Novak as a witch who tries to seduce a bewildered James Stewart and promptly scored another hit.

In 1960, he returned to Broadway as a playwright with There Was a Little Girl starring Jane Fonda, which closed after 16 performances. He wrote a few more screenplays: Hawaii (1966) with Max von Sydow in the screen adaptation of the James Michener novel; Castle Keep (1969), an anti-war allegory with Burt Lancaster; Doctors' Wives (1971) starring Richard Crenna and Dyan Cannon; and The Other Side of Midnight (1977), one of Susan Sarandon's first starring vehicles based on the Sidney Sheldon novel.

Although Taradash wrote very little in the last 20 years, he remained active in the motion picture industry. He served as president from 1977 to 1980 of the Writers Guild of America and was also a key member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, serving as a vice president from 1968 to 1970 before being elected to a three-year term as president in June 1970. He also served on the academy's board of governors from 1990 to 1993. Taradash is survived by his wife of 58 years, Madeleine; daughters Jan, of Berkeley, Meg, of Los Angeles; son, Bill of New York City; and two grandchildren.

by Michael T. Toole