Biography
Jay Dratler was an American screenwriter and novelist. He received screenplay credit, shared with others, on the 1944 film Laura, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay. He also wrote the screenplay for Call Northside 777 (1948), which won an Edgar Allan Poe Award, and his novel The Pitfall (1947) was the basis for the 1948 film of the same name. Other screenwriting credits include The Dark Corner (1946) and Impact (1949).
Dratler attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the late 1920s, then studied at the Sorbonne in France and the University of Vienna, becoming fluent in French and German. After returning to the United States in 1932, he worked as an editor and translator in New York before moving to Hollywood. He wrote six novels and numerous screenplays and television scripts, including episodes of The Addams Family (1964) and Perry Mason.
