Education
Columbia University.
Columbia University.
He is also sometimes credited as Sydney Buchman. Born to a Jewish family in Duluth, Minnesota and educated at Columbia University, he served as President of the Screen Writers Guild of America in 1941–1942. Buchman was one of the most successful Hollywood screenwriters of the 1930s and 1940s.
He would go on to receive Academy Award nominations for his writing on Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Talk of the Town (1942), and Jolson Sings Again (1949), winning an Oscar for Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941). He also did uncredited work on various films during this period.
He was the 1965 recipient of the Laurel Award of the Writers Guild of America, West. Buchman"s refusal to provide the names of American Communist Party members to the House Un-American Activities Committee led to a charge of contempt of Congress.
Buchman was fined, given a year"s suspended sentence, and was then blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses.
Buchman would return to screenwriting in the 1960s, working on Cleopatra (1963) and The Group (1966). He died in Cannes, France.