Richard Brooks was an American screenwriter, film director, novelist and occasional film producer. His outstanding works as director are Blackboard Jungle , Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , Elmer Gantry — for which he won an Academy Award for Best Writing — In Cold Blood and Looking for Mr. Goodbar . His parents, Hyman and Esther Sax, were Russian Jews. Married teenagers when they immigrated to the United States in 1908, they found employment in Philadelphia’s textile and clothing industry. Their son, Reuben Sax, was born in 1912. He attended public schools and graduated from... high school in 1929. Reuben took classes at Temple University for two years, studying journalism and playing on the school’s baseball team, but he dropped out and left home when he discovered that his parents were going into debt to pay for his tuition. He rode freight trains around the East and Midwest for a period of time but eventually returned to Philadelphia to seek work as a newspaper reporter. At some point in the 1930’s Reuben began using the name Richard Brooks professionally. He changed his name legally in 1943.
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