American screenwriter, born in New York, United States. He began his career in 1917, wrote several plays, and then became famous for co-writing the scripts for horror films such as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mark of Zorro (1940), and Before Dawn (1933). He traveled to India in 1937 to continue writing screenplays, then became depressed and returned to America. He died on October 26, 1945, in Hollywood of a drug overdose.