Biography

Stephen Longstreet (April 18, 1907 – February 20, 2002) was an American writer and artist. Born Chauncey (later Henri) Weiner (sometimes Wiener), he was known as Stephen Longstreet from 1939. He wrote as Paul Haggard, David Ormsbee and Thomas Burton, and Longstreet, as well as his birth name.

The 1948 Broadway musical High Button Shoes was based on Longstreet's semi-autobiographical 1946 novel, The Sisters Liked Them Handsome.

Under contract at Warner Bros. in the 1940s, Longstreet co-wrote The Jolson Story and Stallion Road, based on his novel of the same name and starring Ronald Reagan. He later collaborated on the script of The Helen Morgan Story, and as a television writer in the 1950s and 1960s he wrote for Playhouse 90.

Longstreet's book, Nell Kimball: Her Life as an American Madam, by herself, is a hoax biography that was partly plagiarized from the works of Herbert Asbury, as was his novel The Wilder Shore from Asbury's The Barbary Coast.Longstreet's nonfiction works include San Francisco, '49 to '06 and Chicago: 1860 to 1920, as well as A Century on Wheels, The Story of Studebaker and a Jewish cookbook, The Joys of Jewish Cooking, that he wrote with his wife and occasional collaborator, Ethel.

The world of jazz was a constant theme throughout Longstreet's life. A number of his books dealt with jazz, Including Jazz From A to Z: A Graphic Dictionary, his 100th book, published in 1989.

He died on February 20, 2002.