DUNNE, JOHN GREGORY

born May 25, 1932, Hartford, Conn., U.S. American journalist, novelist, and screenwriter who is noted for his works of social satire, personal analysis, and Irish-American life. After graduating from Princeton (New Jersey) University (A.B., 1954), Dunne briefly served in the military and became a staff writer for Time magazine in New York City. He married novelist Joan Didion in 1964 and moved to California, where he contributed to numerous magazinesincluding a joint column with his wife in the Saturday Evening Post (196769)and wrote screenplays with his wife, including A Star Is Born (1976; with others) and Up Close and Personal (1996). Dunne's first book, Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike (1967; rev. ed., 1971), examines the labour and social issues surrounding the grape pickers' strike of the mid-1960s. The Studio (1969) is a telling portrait of the motion picture industry as seen through the eyes of the movie studio executives. Blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season (1974) describes the narrator's nervous breakdown in a story about three colourful inhabitants of Las Vegas, Nevada. Dunne examined Irish-American communities in a gritty trilogy of novels: True Confessions (1977; filmed 1981), Dutch Shea, Jr. (1982), and The Red White and Blue (1987). His other works include the autobiographical Harp (1988); two collections of essays, Quintana & Friends (1978) and Crooning (1990); and the novel Playland (1994).