Career Highlights: The Phantom of the Opera, The Spoilers, Law and Order
First Major Screen Credit: The Acquittal (1923)
Biography
American screenwriter Tom Reed's entree into films was as a title writer on the 1925 Lon Chaney starrer Phantom of the Opera. Even after the advent of talking pictures rendered subtitles virtually obsolete, Reed continued composing titles for the silent-film versions of such early sound productions as Universal's Broadway (1929). He remained with Universal as a scripter in the early '30s, working on such major releases as Waterloo Bridge (1931), Bad Sister (1931), and Murders in the Rue Morgue (1933). At Warner Bros. in the mid-'50s, he co-scripted two of that studio's Perry Mason programmers, then freelanced until the late '50s. In 1955, Tom Reed shared an Academy Award nomination for 20th Century Fox's Night People. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide