John L. Balderston

John L. Balderston (October 22, 1889 – March 8, 1954) was an American playwright and screenwriter best remembered for his horror and fantasy scripts.

[1] Balderston began his career as a journalist in 1912 while still a student at Columbia University; he worked as the New York correspondent for The Philadelphia Record.

Balderston co-authored "Cross-Styx, A Morality Playlet for the Leisure Class," a part of the Dutch Treat Club's 1920 annual dinner extravaganza written by him, Fred Dayton, Rae Irvin, Berton Braley, James Montgomery Flagg with music by Arthur Samuels.

In 1927, he was retained by Horace Liveright to revise Hamilton Deane's 1924 stage adaptation of Dracula for its American production.

Balderston did some significant work on the adaptation, which was a success when it debuted in October, running for 261 performances and making a star of Bela Lugosi.

Deane then hired Balderston to adapt Peggy Webling's 1927 play version of Frankenstein for American audiences.

Balderston's play of Dracula formed the basis of the 1931 film version starring Lugosi, made by Universal Pictures.

He was an uncredited contributor to the script of Mark of the Vampire (1935) and wrote a version of Dracula's Daughter (1936) for David O. Selznick which was sold to Universal.

[9] In Hollywood, Balderston specialised in British themed subjects: The Man Who Changed His Mind (1936); Beloved Enemy (1936) for Sam Goldwyn; The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) for David O. Selznick.

He wrote an unused script, Murder in Church in 1938 and was one of the team of writers who collaborated on the film adaptation of Gone with the Wind (1939) for Selznick.