An American television actor, director, and producer, born on May 21, 1904, in New York. His father was the president of the New York Rubber Company and his mother committed suicide in 1922 by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. He went to New York to be a writer, and on the advice of a friend, tried acting. He made his debut in This Is College (1929). Among his most known works are The Big House (1930), and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941). He died of cancer in 1981, at the age of 77 in New York.