Frank Butler (screenwriter)

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Frank Butler (* 28. December 1890 in Oxford , Oxfordshire , England ; † 10. June 1967 in Oceanside , Long Iceland , New York ) was a British - American actor and screenwriter , who at the Oscars in 1945 with Frank Cavett the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Road to Happiness (1944) for Leo McCarey .

biography

Originally from England, Frank Butler was initially a stage actor , before making his debut as a cinema actor in the silent film Behold My Wife by George Melford in 1920 . By 1927 he worked in almost fifty other silent films, some under the stage name "FR Butler", although he hardly got beyond supporting roles.

After a scenario that had been written in the meantime ( Naughty Mary Brown , 1921), he began working full-time as a screenwriter for the Hollywood film industry in the mid-1920s and was also the writer of the subtitles for silent films. During his thirty years as a writer, he has contributed to the creation of more than 60 films. He wrote scripts for the comedies of Laurel and Hardy and the Road to ... films with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the leading roles. However, he also wrote outside the comedy genre, for example for the Joan Crawford films Untamed (1929) by Jack Conway , Montana Moon (1930) by Malcolm St. Clair ; and for the western From the Life of a Doctor (1955) by Mervyn LeRoy . His last work was in 1959 when he wrote the screenplay for The Madonna with Two Faces with his daughter-in-law Jean Rouverol .

At the Academy Awards in 1943 he was nominated twice for the Oscar in the category of best original screenplay, on the one hand with Don Hartman for The Road to Morocco (1942) by the unrelated director David Butler and on the other hand with WR Burnett for Wake Island (1942 ) by John Farrow . In 1945 he and Frank Cavett won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay for the film Der Weg zum Glück (1944) directed by Leo McCarey . In addition, he was together with Karl Kamb 1950 for the Prize of the Writers Guild of America (WGA Award) for the best written western for The Death Despiser (1948) by Leslie Fenton .

Frank Butler's son Hugo Butler was also a well-known screenwriter.

Filmography (selection)

As an actor (selection)

As screenwriter (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Butler, Frank
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actor and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Oxford , Oxfordshire , England
DATE OF DEATH June 10, 1967
Place of death Oceanside , Long Island , New York