American dramatist and screenwriter, whose work often concerned the fantastic and the macabre. Balderston was educated at Columbia University, commencing a journalistic career in 1912 as New York correspondent for The Philadelphia Record. During World War I, he served as war correspondent for the McClure Newspaper Syndicate. In the early 1920's, he became editor of Outlook Magazine in London and then head of the London bureau for the New York World, a job he held until the publication folded in 1931. Thereafter, he worked steadily in Hollywood as a screenwriter, usually in collaboration with others.