[1] After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he volunteered for service in the United States Navy, went through officer training and then was assigned to Armed Forces Radio, becoming one of the co-founding members of the Navy unit of Armed Forces Radio, where he wrote training films and entertainment programs for sailors and marines.
During the war, he had experienced how screenwriters were almost completely ignored by the studio brass and received close to no artistic recognition in movies they wrote.
When MGM offered him work as a staff writer in Hollywood, he moved to the West Coast and subsequently wrote some 20 motion pictures, including Main Street Lawyer (1939), The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947), The Fuller Brush Man (1948), Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949), Tell It to the Judge (1949), Borderline (1950), The Yellow Cab Man (1950), Three Sailors and a Girl (1953), Francis in the Navy (1955), The First Traveling Saleslady (1956), Dance with Me, Henry (1956), and The Girl Most Likely (1958).
The novel, with a different, darker conclusion, was adapted into the 1981 motion picture Taps, starring Timothy Hutton, George C. Scott, Sean Penn and Tom Cruise.
Writers Guild of America Award for outstanding television drama in 1957 for his work on The Great American Hoax, based on a story by Paddy Chayefsky.