1892-1962
Screenwriter Joseph Franklin Poland, whose career spanned from the early silent era all the way through 1950's as an active writer (he wrote so many scripts, that many were produced for the first time after his death) was born on this date in Waterbury, Conn. His first writing credit for a short story comes in 1913 with the short comedic western The Taming of Texas Pete , a film made for Selig Polyscope. This was is his only credit for that year; additionally he had only one credit for the following year with American Film Manufacturing's The Smoldering Spark (1914). By contrast, he penned six films in 1915; after this, he was never out of work for the remained of his life. By the dawn of the the 1920's, he had written dozens of films--most of them short melodramas. His scripts were purchased and produced across of wide range of production houses from Fox to Thomas H. Ince's company. During the 1920's, he scripted nearly 50 films, with Universal's It Can Be Done (1929) representing the first of his scripts used in a film with sound (it is a partial silent, with some talking sequences and sound effects--including music--by MovieTone). The Leo McCarey comedy The Sophomore (1929) was the first full sound picture made of one of his screenplays; and Salior's Holiday (1929) starring Alan Hale Sr. --a film that he worked on anonymously--was the last film of his writing materials to be made in the decade. He would not pen another film for five years, when the Gene Autrey musical western Sagebrush Troubadour was released in 1935. In the 1940's, he penned, amongst many, many other genres, a number of B-grade pot-boilers, including some Dick Tracy adventures. In 1950, his work made it's television debut, with screenplays for three episodes of the popular western The Lone Ranger, starring Canadian Mohawk actor Jay Silverheels and Clayton Moore. Though Poland passed away in Los Angeles on the 23rd of March, 1962--his work was produced for a further 12 years, with the last film coming in 1974 with The Three Stooges Follies. He was either buried or cremated at Grand View Memorial Park in Glendale, Ca. He was 69 years old at the time of his death.
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