In the spring of 1937, Brooklyn's Daniel Fuchs, twenty-seven years old and already the author of three remarkable novels (now collected as The Brooklyn Novels), came to Hollywood to bang out a treatment of one of his short stories. His thirteen-week contract turned into a permanent residence--and a lifelong love affair with the movie business. Fuchs worked with the best: Warner and M-G-M and RKO, Wilder and Huston and Joe Pasternak,...