Writer/Director 1931-1952
Temperamental screenwriter and occasional director of the 1930s. Moved to Hollywood in the mid-20s, finding work as a prop boy on the Universal lot. By 1926 he was working as a gagman for Reginald Denny. He wrote several moderately successful gangster movies in the early 1930s, their "authentic feel" rumored to have been enhanced by his having been a bootlegger with mob ties during Prohibition. Career stalled after being fired, first from directing The Scarlet Pimpernel by Alexander Korda , then by David O. Selznick from A Star Is Born . Little heard of after 1940.
Studied at the University of Detroit and the Detroit School of Fine Arts.
