WELD, John 1905-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born February 24, 1905, in Birmingham, AL; died June 14, 2003, in Dana Point, CA. Journalist, editor, publisher, and author. Weld had a colorful career that began after he attended Alabama Polytechnic Institute in the early 1920s. He made a go of working in vaudeville and even tried out for the U.S. Olympic diving team before moving west to Hollywood, where his experiences as a stuntman from 1923 to 1926 he later wrote about in Fly away Home: Memoirs of a Hollywood Stunt Man (1991). On the advice of well-known gossip columnist Louella Parsons, Weld next became a writer for the New York American and was stationed in Paris in 1927 as a reporter for the Paris Times, an adventure he wrote about in Young Man in Paris (1985). Weld also wrote for the New York World and New York Herald during the early 1930s, then briefly tried his hand at screenwriting for Columbia Pictures. He worked as a freelance writer in 1935 before moving to Laguna Beach, California, where he ran a Ford dealership and was hired as a copy writer for the Ford Motor Company. During the 1940s he was also editor of the Consolidated News for Consolidated Aircraft Corp. and became publications director for Ford from 1944 to 1949. In 1951 Weld and his wife began editing and publishing the Laguna Beach Post, which they ran until the mid-1960s. He also worked as a documentary movie producer of such films as Freightboat round the World (1963), Ireland from a Gypsy Caravan (1965), and The Basque Sheepherder (1972). When he was not occupied in one of his many commercial ventures, Weld wrote fiction and nonfiction books, including the novels Don't You Cry for Me (1940) and Mark Pfeiffer, M.D. (1943), his autobiographies, a collection of newspaper columns titled Laguna, I Love You: The Best of "Our Town" (1996), and the biography September Song: An Intimate Biography of Walter Huston (1998).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

California Newspaper Publishers Association Bulletin, July 14, 2003, p. 4.

Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2003, p. B10.