A biography of Nunnally Johnson? Sure, why not? It helps that Stempel is a pleasant writer, who has done a number of illuminating book on screenwriting.
Johnson occupies a curious place in American film history - I'm not sure how well he is remembered. Possibly he was better known say 40 years ago when his films would have been more widely seen on television.
He was a journalist and short story writer who went to Hollywood, as so many of them did at that time (Charle Brackett, Ben Hecht etc). Like many of them he sometimes had a reputation of someone who sold out their talent - a trope which Stempel rightly mocks. Did we really lose so much from Johnson giving up his stories of small town life in Georgia for Hollywood screenplays?
It took him a little while to get going, but what made him thrive was working for Darryl F. Zanuck at the new Twentieth Century Pictures, which became 20th Century Fox. Johnson became one of Zanuck's gun screenwriters, along with Philip Dunne and Lamar Trotti. Like he eventually moved his way up to producing, more out of boredom than anything else. Like Dunne he became a director as well who isn't remembered particularly fondly - though I feel his reputation is slightly higher than Dunne's because he made Three Faces of Eve with Joanne Woodward.
He did leave Zanuck for a period, working for Bill Goetz at International Pictures, but didn't do particularly well and returned to Zanuck. He eventually retired in 1970.
It was an extremely good career, a lot of classics: House of Rothschild, Jesse James, The Grapes of Wrath, Roxie Hart, The Gunfighter, The Desert Fox, How to Marry a Millionaire. He kept relevant up until the end - in the 1960s his credits included popular James Stewart comedies like Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation (with Fabian), as well as The Dirty Dozen and Flaming Star. He tried Broadway a few times and it didn't work but there's no shame in that.
He seems to have been a nice man, gentlemanly, perhaps a little fond of the bottle, very dedicated to work. The book hints his third wife - the marriage that lasted - wasn't perhaps entirely happy giving up her acting career.
Stempel doesn't touch on some of the more racist aspects of Johnson's work such as the depiction of blacks in The Prisoner of Shark Island. He is very strong otherwise on analysing Johnson's scripts, particularly the man's interest in writing about marriage and having married heroes.
A very interesting book.
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