Biography
Ivan was a British screenwriter, socialite, and producer. He received an Academy Award nomination alongside Fred Guiol for adapting Edna Ferber's "Giant" and was honored by the American Film Institute for his screenplays for "Shane" and "Giant." Born in Havana, Cuba, to the renowned photographer and artist Curtis Moffatt and actress and poet Iris Tree, Ivan's grandfather was Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. His family lineage connects directly to Alec Guinness and, through marriage to Ivana Lowell, to Freud. A notorious student at Dartington Hall School and the London School of Economics, he joined the Communist Party during this time. He formed friendships with Dylan Thomas and Christopher Isherwood. In 1943, he enlisted in the United States Army as a writer for the Signal Corps, a group later known as the Hollywood Irregulars. There, he met and collaborated with George Stevens as a writer and assistant director. He supported the filming of the liberation of Paris and the discovery of the Dachau concentration camps, an experience that profoundly affected Stevens for life. After the war, Moffatt joined Stevens as an assistant producer at Liberty Films. He contributed to the writing of "I Remember Mama," "Shane," "A Place in the Sun," "Bhowani Junction," "D-Day the Sixth of June," "Giant," "The Wayward Bus," "Boy on a Dolphin," "They Came to Cordura," "Tender Is the Night," "The Great Escape," "The Greatest Story Ever Told," and "The Chase." Among his closest friends were George Stevens, Christopher Isherwood, and Billy Wilder. He had two sons, Jonathan and Patrick Moffat, a daughter Lorna Moffat, and a goddaughter, Jill Ann Davis.
