Niven Busch - Film Career

Film Career

Through the rest of the thirties, Busch worked for most of the major Hollywood studios, scripting mostly B-movies like The Big Shakedown. In 1938 he was nominated for an Academy Award for In Old Chicago, which was based on his story We the O'Learys, but failed to win. In 1940 he co-wrote The Westerner for director William Wyler and producer Samuel Goldwyn. Soon thereafter he went to work as Goldwyn's story editor, recommending Pride of the Yankees, in which Gary Cooper and Busch's soon-to-be wife Teresa Wright co-starred.

Settling in the hills of Encino with his growing family, Busch began writing novels. The Carrington Incident, published in 1941, was followed by the best-seller Duel in the Sun, which Lewis Selznick's other son David purchased and turned into the 1946 blockbuster of the same title. He now alternated between the writing of screenplays and novels, most of which became best-sellers. They Dream of Home, a tale of returning veterans, was followed by The Furies (1950), which became a film that starred Barbara Stanwyck.

Another notable film of the period — for which Busch wrote the original screenplay — was Pursued starring Robert Mitchum and Teresa Wright, one of the first psychological Westerns with "noir" overtones. Around the same time, Busch also adapted the noir thriller The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.