Sidney Buchman was born in Duluth, Minnesota. Following education at the University of Minnesota, Columbia, and Oxford, he traveled for a year in Europe, working for a short time as an assistant stage director at the Old Vic in London. Two of his plays were produced when he returned to New York. This One Man was produced on Broadway in 1930, and Storm Song opened in Philadelphia in 1931. Neither was well received, and he decided to try his hand at screenwriting. He left for Hollywood and joined the staff at Paramount. His first film work was writing dialogue for a Fu Manchu serial, Daughter of the Dragon (1931); he rose to prominence as a screenwriter by 1932 with his adaptation of Wilson Barrett's play The Sign of the Cross for Cecil B. De Mille.

In 1934 Buchman went to work for Harry Cohn at Columbia. It was at this studio that Buchman...