Bezzerides was born in Samsun, Ottoman Turkey, to a Greek father and an Armenian mother, who emigrated to America before he was two years old.

[14] Bezzerides began writing short stories as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied electrical engineering.

He later commented, "I had no idea whether it was guilt or conscience, or greed to swindle more stories out of me, that motivated Warner Bros. to offer me a seven-year contract ... Whatever their reason, I grabbed their offer so I could quit my putrid career as a communications engineer by becoming a writer, writing scripts in an entirely new world.. His first screenplay was for 1942's Juke Girl, which starred Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan.

[15] Films based on his novels or screenplays included Desert Fury (1947), Thieves' Highway (1949), On Dangerous Ground (1952), Beneath the 12 Mile Reef (1953) and Track of the Cat (1954).

He wrote the screenplay for the 1962 espionage thriller The Angry Hills, which was set in Nazi-occupied Greece during World War II and based on a novel by Leon Uris.

[16] Bezzerides' script for Kiss Me Deadly (1955) transformed the novel by Mickey Spillane into an apocalyptic, atomic-age paranoia film noir.