Richard Brooks

At 79 years old, Richard Brooks physical status not available right now. We will update Richard Brooks's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Early life and career

Reuben Sax was born in Reuben Sax to Hyman and Esther Sax, two Russian Jewish immigrants. They found jobs in Philadelphia's textile and clothing industry as they immigrated to the United States in 1908. Reuben Sax, the couple's only child, was born in 1912 in Philadelphia. Joseph Leidy Elementary, Mayer Sulzberger Junior High School, and West Philadelphia High School all graduated from the former in 1929.

Sax was a student at Temple University for two years, writing articles and playing on the school's baseball team. When he learned that his parents were going to debt to pay for his tuition, he burst out and left home. For a time, he rode freight trains around the East and Midwest, eventually returning to Philadelphia to seek jobs as a newspaper reporter. Sax began using the name Richard Brooks professionally during the Great Depression in the 1930s. In 1943, he changed his name lawfully.

Brooks wrote sports for the Philadelphia Record and later joined the Atlantic City Press-Union as a writer. He moved to New York to work for the World-Telegram; shortly afterward, he began working with radio station WNEW for a larger paycheck. As a newsman for the station, he gathered and read news on the air and provided commentary.

In 1938, Brooks began writing plays and began directing for the Mill Pond Theater in Long Island. On a whimsy, he and his theatre colleagues escaped to Los Angeles in the hopes of finding work in film. He may have been attempting to escape a marriage; a legal document shows he was married at least part of the time he lived in New York.

He didn't find film work, but he was hired by the NBC affiliate to write original stories and read them for a daily fifteen-minute television show called Sidestreet Vignettes. His second marriage, which took place in 1941, to Jeanne Kelly, an actress at Universal Studios, might have opened the door to writing for the studio. He appeared in a few films and wrote two screenplays for Maria Montez, referred to as the "Queen of Technicolor" in the film. He left Universal and joined the Marine Corps in 1943, with no intention of progressing to more sophisticated sets.

Brooks never served overseas during the war, instead serving in the Marine Corps film unit at Quantico, Virginia, and at times at Camp Pendleton, California. In his two years as a soldier, he learned more about filmmaking, including writing and editing documentaries. In addition, he took time to write The Brick Foxhole, a revealing portrait of some stateside soldiers who were contaminated by religious and racial bigotry, as well as anti-gay sentiments. He divorced his wife in 1944, then known in films as Jean Brooks. He later admitted that he had been a self-centered husband and not suited for what she needed.

His book was released in 1945 to encouraging reviews. It was based on the film Crossfire (1947), but without the homosexual element removed. It was the first major Hollywood film to be concerned with anti-Semitism, earning an Academy Award. After leaving the Marines, independent producer Mark Hellinger, who hired Brooks as a screenwriter, was attracted by the book's writing.

Brooks returned to film, sparking a long relationship with actor Humphrey Bogart, a close friend of the producer. Brooks told The Killers (1946), which introduced actor Burt Lancaster, an uncredited screen story. He wrote the scripts for two other Hellinger films, notably Brute Force (1947), which also starred Lancaster. Brooks wrote screenplays for three Warner Brothers films, including Key Largo (1948), starring Bogart and wife Lauren Bacall, and written by John Huston, another Brooks mentor. Huston and Brooks had worked together in the uncredited rewrite for The Killers before, and Huston will be the only co-writer Brooks ever had. While filming Key Largo, Huston allowed Brooks to be on the Key Largo set during shooting so that he could learn more about directing a Hollywood film.

Brooks published two more books shortly after the war, The Boiling Point (1948) and The Producer (1951), a thinly disguised portrait of Mark Hellinger. Brooks may also have contained autobiographical information. He married again in 1946, to Harriette Levin, who had no apparent links to the film industry. They married before 1957, when she requested a default divorce.

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