Balderston, John L. (John Lloyd), 1889-1954

Journalist and playwright of Beverly Hills, Calif.

Playwright and screenwriter, John L. Balderston was born in Philadelphia, but lived for many years in England.

He trained as a journalist, was a war correspondent during World War I and in the early 1920s worked as a journalist in London. As a playwright, Balderston often worked in collaboration and specialized in horror, fantasy and romantic adventure scripts.

John L. Balderston was born in Philadelphia and began his newspaper career in 1912 while still a student at Columbia University as the New York correspondent for The Philadelphia Record . He was a war correspondent for the McClure Newspaper Syndicate during World War I and then director of information in England and Ireland for the U.S. Committee on Public Information. In the early 1920s he was editor of Outlook Magazine in London and then head of the London bureau for the New York World . Balderston retired from the newspaper field when The World went out of business in 1931.

Balderston had had his first success as a playwright with the 1926 London production of Berkeley Square that he wrote with Jack Squire, the editor of The London Mercury . The play was not produced in the U.S. until 1929 with Leslie Howard in the lead. He also wrote books and screenplays. Balderston often worked in collaboration and specialized in horror, fantasy and romantic adventure scripts. Scripts he worked on include Dracula, Frankenstein, Red Planet, Gone with the Wind and Gaslight .