From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jay Dratler (September 14, 1910- September 25, 1968) was an American screenwriter and novelist. Born in New York City, his mother was from Austria. After attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the late 1920s, he studied at the Sorbonne in France and the University of Vienna, becoming fluent in French and German. He returned to the United States in 1932. Cashing in on his exceptional language skills on his return to the United States, he was employed as an editor by a New York publisher and translated the books Goya and Zeppelin from German to English. He moved to Hollywood and become a successful screenwriter and novelist. He wrote six novels, many screenplays and more than twenty television scripts. He was considered very influential during the classic era of film noir in th...read more