John Ford Noonan ’63

John Ford Noonan ’63, of Englewood, N.J., formerly of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Dec. 16, of heart failure. For two years he taught Latin and English and was a basketball coach at Buckley Country Day School in Roslyn, L.I., during which time he began writing plays. His first play, The Year Boston Won the Pennant, was staged in 1969 at Lincoln Center. Productions that followed included Older People (1972) and Getting Through the Night (1976), but it was A Coupla White Chicks, produced in 1980 and starring Eileen Brennan and Susan Sarandon, that became his biggest hit. The play ran for four years, giving opportunity to other actresses, including JoBeth Williams ’70. Later, in Some Men Need Help, he addressed chemical addiction and subsequently adapted it for PBS American Playhouse in 1985. He occasionally wrote for television and in 1984 shared an Emmy Award with Tom Fontana and John Masius for outstanding writing in a drama series for an episode of St. Elsewhere called “The Women.” He continued to be staged regularly into the 1990s and in Talking Things Over With Chekhov (1990), he played one of the roles himself opposite Diane Salinger in an Actor’s Playhouse production in New York. In addition to writing numerous plays and screenplays, he would periodically be seen on screen in such films as Adventures in Babysitting, Flirting With Disaster, and My Divorce. He was a two-time Obie Award winner and received the New York Drama Desk Award and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. He is survived by a daughter, a son, five grandchildren, a sister, and a brother.