Frank Butler (writer)
Frank Russell Butler was an American film and theatre actor and screenwriter, born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England to parents Frederick Butler and Sarah Ann Hedges. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Going My Way. His son, Hugo Butler, also became a Hollywood screenwriter.
Career
Theatre
His theatre career included two appearances in Broadway-theatre productions in New York City.
Film work
Butler's film career started with silent films in the early 1920s. He appeared in almost fifty films and wrote more than sixty screenplays. This included the 1937 film Champagne Waltz.
Herbert Coleman wrote Butler "was known around Paramount as the Story Doctor. He was one of the studio’s most valuable executives. Although Butler was third in pecking order in the story department, after D. A. Doran and Frank Cleaver, his gifted talents touched almost every screenplay that found its way to his desk. And almost every script did, on direct orders from Barney Balaban, president of Paramount."
Awards
He co-won, with Frank Cavett, the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film Going My Way. Butler had earlier been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) twice in the same year, for Road to Morocco and Wake Island, both released in 1942.
Partial filmography
Behold My Wife! The Great Moment The Sheik Beyond the Rocks A Tailor-Made Man My American Wife The Tiger's Claw The Call of the Wild Satan in Sables Made for Love 30 Below Zero The Honorable Mr. Buggs Flying Elephants The Big Killing Just Married China Bound Untamed Strictly Unconventional Those Three French Girls Remote Control New Moon This Modern Age When a Feller Needs a Friend College Humor Search for Beauty Babes in Toyland Vagabond Lady Coronado Strike Me Pink The Milky Way The Bohemian Girl The Princess Comes Across Champagne Waltz Waikiki Wedding Paris Honeymoon Never Say Die The Star Maker Road to Singapore I Want a Divorce Rangers of Fortune Road to Zanzibar Aloma of the South Seas My Favorite Blonde Beyond the Blue Horizon Wake Island Road to Morocco Hostages Going My Way A Medal for Benny Incendiary Blonde California Welcome Stranger The Perils of Pauline Golden Earrings Whispering Smith Road to Bali