Frank Partos (born Ferenc Pártos; July 2, 1901 – December 23, 1956) was a Hungarian-American screenwriter and an early executive committee member of the

Screen Actors Guild The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) was an American labor union which represented over 100,000 film and television principal and background performers worldwide. On March 30, 2012, the union leadership announced that the SAG membership voted to m ...

, which he helped found.

Emigration from Europe

Born in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

on July 2, 1901, Pártos began as a clerk and, sailed to the United States as a steerage passenger on board the S/S ''Mount Carroll'', which departed the

Port of Hamburg The Port of Hamburg (, ) is a seaport on the river Elbe in Hamburg, Germany, from its mouth on the North Sea. Known as Germany's "Gateway to the World" (), it is the country's largest seaport by volume. In terms of TEU throughput, Hambur ...

, Germany, on April 28, 1921, and arrived at the Port of New York on May 10. According to the ship's passenger manifest, his destination was to his stepfather Ignatz Reitzer of 214 Hope Avenue, in Passaic, New Jersey.

Career

He arrived in California in the late 1920s with a letter of introduction to

Irving Thalberg Irving Grant Thalberg (May 30, 1899 – September 14, 1936) was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and ability to select scripts, choose actors, gather productio ...

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly shortened to MGM or MGM Studios) is an American Film production, film and television production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered ...

. Partos was given a position as a reader and later given a book by Vicki Baum to write a synopsis. Thalberg decided to make '' Grand Hotel'' (1932) based on that synopsis and had Partos work as a screenwriter on the project. Partos did not get screen credit and, because of that slight, left MGM. In the 1930s, he was a staff writer at

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount ...

, during the early years to the

talkie A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed befo ...

era. In 1939 he moved to

RKO Radio Pictures RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, is an American film production and distribution company, historically one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Kei ...

, where he collaborated on the early noir film '' Stranger on the Third Floor'' (1940). During the mid-1930s Partos worked extensively with screenwriter Charles Brackett, and was Brackett's first choice for a writing partner. In 1944, he co-wrote the screenplay for '' The Uninvited'', an early haunted house story starring Ray Milland and Gail Russell. He shared an

Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...

nomination for '' The Snake Pit'' (1948) with Millen Brand. He also co-wrote the 1951 film noir '' The House on Telegraph Hill'', directed by

Robert Wise Robert Earl Wise (September 10, 1914 – September 14, 2005) was an American filmmaker. He won the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for his musical films ''West Side Story'' (1961) and ''The Sound of Music'' (1965). He was als ...

. Partos died December 23, 1956.

Selected filmography

* '' Her Bodyguard'' (1933) * '' The Jungle Princess'' (1936) * '' Night of Mystery'' (1937) * '' Rio'' (1939) * '' Stranger on the Third Floor'' (1940) * '' The Uninvited'' (1944) * '' The Snake Pit'' (1948) * '' The House on Telegraph Hill'' (1951) * '' Night Without Sleep'' (1952) * '' Port Afrique'' (1956)

References

External links

*
AllMovie bio
1901 births 1956 deaths American male screenwriters Robert Meltzer Award winners 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American screenwriters Hungarian emigrants to the United States {{US-screen-writer-1900s-stub