The screenwriting career of Ring Lardner, Jr., began in 1937 at Selznick International Pictures, was disrupted from 1947 to 1963 when he was blacklisted in the film and television industries, and resumed in 1965 with his screen credit for The Cincinnati Kid. The son of Ellis Abbot and sportswriter and humorist Ring Lardner, Lardner grew up in a journalistic household. After a two-year stint at Princeton, he worked briefly for the New York Daily Mirror in 1935. Hoping to learn the movie business, Lardner traveled to Hollywood and was signed to a contract by David O. Selznick which specified that Selznick could assign Lardner to any sort of work he wanted him to do. After giving Lardner a screen test, Selznick decided he should become a writer and assigned him to the studio publicity department, where Lardner worked from 1936 to 1937. He married Silvia Schulman, Selznick's secretary, in 1937; they had two children. Lardner met...