Niven Busch

American novelist and screenwriter Niven Busch was born in New York City in 1903. In the early '20s he began writing for "Time" magazine. He had risen to editor of the publication, and was also at the same time working for "The New Yorker" magazine, when he decided to use the Hollywood connections he had--his agent was Myron Selznick, the son of producer Lewis Selznick and the brother of producer David O. Selznick--to try to break into the movie business. His agent got him some work at Warner Bros. Pictures, and his first film was The Crowd Roars (1932), directed by the legendary Howard Hawks and starring the equally legendary James Cagney--not a bad start for a freshman screenwriter (although his name was misspelled in the credits). Busch's talent for screenwriting secured him steady work in the '30s, at the major studios. He wrote his share of "B" pictures, but in 1938 he was nominated for an Oscar for his work on 20th Century-Fox's big-budget In Old Chicago (1937), which was based