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Richard Murphy
Leaving his job as a feature writer for Literary Digest to go to Hollywood in 1937, Murphy started in the shorts department at MGM. His first screenplays, penned for Paramount and Republic in the early 1940s, were B-action flicks and Gene Autry oaters. After Army Air Force service during WWII, Murphy signed with 20th Century-Fox and received his first Oscar nomination for the screenplay of "Boomerang" (1947), Elia Kazan's powerful, documentary-styled noir about the murder of a priest. Murphy's typewriter next yielded "Cry of the City" (1948), a superb film noir directed by Robert Siodmak.