Philip H. Reisman Jr. was born on November 12, 1916, in St. Paul, Minnesota and grew up in New Rochelle, New York. He attended Brown University, after which he worked at RKO-Pathe News as a writer for newsreels and documentaries. He then served in the Marines during World War II as a photographer before returning to RKO-Pathe. He left the company in 1952 to work independently. He died in New Rochelle in 1999. He was 82.

Reisman won five academy awards for his documentary work including This is America. He also wrote for television and film. His most well-known work was All the Way Home (1963), an adaptation of Tad Mosel’s play that was based on James Agee’s A Death in the Family.

James Rufus Agee was born to Hugh James and Laura Whitman (Tyler) Agee in Knoxville, Tennessee on November 27, 1909. Hugh Agee was killed in an automobile accident in 1916, leaving a deep impression on his young son. In 1918, Laura Agee moved James and his younger sister, Emma Farrand, to Sewanee, Tennessee where James attended the St. Andrews School. It was here that he met Father James Harold Flye, who had a profound influence on him. The Agees returned to Knoxville in 1924, and James Agee attended Knoxville High School during the 1924-25 school year. He continued on to Phillips Exeter Academy followed by Harvard University. A parody written for The Harvard Advocate contributed to Agee's employment at Fortune Magazine. His first book (written with photographer Walker Evans), Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, (1940) grew out of an article for Fortune. Agee then wrote book and film reviews for Time before becoming a scriptwriter for television and movies, where he produced such famous works as The African Queen (1951) and The Night of the Hunter (1955). Agee died of heart trouble (exacerbated by his lifelong heavy smoking and drinking) on May 16, 1955 in New York City. At the time of his death, he had been working sporadically on a novel about his father's death for approximately 20 years. His good friend David McDowell completed the work, which was published as A Death in the Family in 1957. The book won Agee a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1958.

Agee's personal life included many lovers and three wives, Olivia Saunders (m. 1933), Alma Mailman (m. 1939), and Mia Fritsch (m. 1945). Alma bore his first son Joel (b. 1940), and Mia gave him Theresa (b. 1946), Deedee (b. 1950), and John (b. 1954).