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 (1934) by
Alexander Korda, then by
David O. Selznick from
A Star Is Born (1937). Little heard of after 1940.
