Biography for
Valentine Davies More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

25 August 1905, New York City, New York, USA

Date of Death

23 July 1961, Malibu, California, USA (heart attack)

Nickname

Val

Trivia

1949-50: President of the Screen Writers Guild.

Davies met director George Seaton in the 1920s, while the former was a student at the University of Michigan and the latter was an actor in Detroit. They became longtime friends and colleagues.

Davies' family had a successful real estate business, but he wanted to be a writer. He attended Yale graduate school to study drama.

He enjoyed jazz music and sailing.

He wrote the outline for Miracle on 34th Street (1947) while in the Coast Guard in 1944. He was disillusioned with the commercialization of Christmas and thought about what would happen if a real Santa Claus walked into a department store in December.

1960-61: President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

His father emigrated from the Netherlands and changed his name from "Davries" to "Davies".

In the early 1900s, actress Reine Davies, nee Douras, drove past the Davies Real Estate office in Brooklyn, liked the name on the sign and took the name "Davies" for her stage name. All of her sisters did the same, with sister Marion Davies becoming the most successful and famous.

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