Petitclerc, Denne Bart 1929–2006

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born May 15, 1929, in Montesano, WA; died of complications from lung cancer, February 3, 2006, in Los Angeles, CA. Journalist and author. A former reporter who became a screenwriter, Petitclerc was a friend of Ernest Hemingway and adapted his Islands in the Stream to film. Petitclerc's childhood was difficult, marked by his father's abandonment of the family. The young Petitclerc spent the rest of his childhood in an orphanage and foster care, dropping out of school while in the ninth grade. He worked at an oil field before starting a journalism career. It was an unpromising start when he began contributing, free of charge, sports stories to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, and angered his editor because of his poor spelling. Determined to make it as a reporter, Petitclerc taught himself to spell better, and the San Francisco Chronicle hired him as a correspondent. He covered the Korean War in the early 1950s, and then the Cuban Revolution for the Chronicle and the Miami Herald. It was while with the Herald that Petitclerc wrote a fan letter to Ernest Hemingway that so impressed the famous author that he asked to meet the young reporter. The two became fast friends, and Petitclerc saw in Hemingway the kind of father figure he had missed earlier in his life. It was Hemingway who suggested that his Islands in the Stream would make a good film, and Petitclerc followed through with that idea. The book itself was not published until after Hemingway's 1961 suicide, and Petitclerc saw the film adaptation become a reality in 1977. After leaving the Chronicle, Petitclerc became a freelancer and started writing films and television screenplays. He wrote scripts, including the pilot, for Bonanza, as well as for the series The High Chaparral and Then Came Bronson, the latter a series he originated. He also penned the feature film Red Sun (1969) and the novels Rage of Honor (1965), Le Mans 24 (1971), and Destinies (1979), the last written with Peter Bart. At the time of his death, he had just completed an autobiographically inspired screenplay, Papa, about a journalist who finds a father figure in Hemingway during the Cuban Revolution.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, February 24, 2006, p. B9.

New York Times, February 27, 2006, p. A20.