A. I. Bezzerides
Albert Isaac Bezzerides (AI Bezzerides; born August 9, 1908 in Samsun, manic Otto Reich, † January 1, 2007 in Los Angeles, California ) was an American novelist and screenwriter.
Life and career
He was born into a Greek- Armenian family that emigrated to America before he was two years old. Bezzerides began to write short stories when he was studying at the University of California, Berkeley. His first story (passage into Eternity ) released 1935. Three years later, his first novel, The Long Haul, which was filmed in 1940, directed by Raoul Walsh, entitled They Drive by Night with Humphrey Bogart and George Raft appeared. Bezzerides received by Warner Bros. $ 2,000 for the film rights, because the script was already written.
Warner offered him a seven-year contract as a screenwriter for a weekly salary of 300 dollars and Bezzerides quit his job to work for the studio. His first original screenplay was written for the film Juke Girl ( 1942) by Curtis Bernhardt with Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan in the lead roles. Bezzerides wrote in the 1940s and 1950s, a few screenplays for the film noir (including rat's nest ) and most recently in the 1960s, co-author of the Western television series The Big Valley.