Jesse Lasky Jr.

Biography

Jesse Lasky Jr. was born in the golden age of Hollywood. The son of the man who produced the film town's first feature in a barn, grew up surrounded by the greatest stars, writers, and musicians of the 1920s. After attending Dijon University in France, he returned home to Hollywood to find his world turned upside down by his father's disastrous reversal of fortune on the stock market. Young Jesse, who had already had his first book of poetry, Songs from the Heart of a Boy, published at nineteen, had always wanted to be a writer. He got a job as a lowly reader and briefly dated Jean Harlow. Eventually he became a screen writer and his career boasts over 60 films for some of Hollywood's best known directors including Hitchcock, Sam Fuller, and his father Jesse Sr.'s ex-partner Cecil B. De Mille for whom he wrote many landmark films including The Ten Commandments (1956). In the sixties he settled in London and with his wife, Pat Silver, wrote many of the iconic British series of the day, including The Saint, Danger Man, The Prisoner, Space 1999, The Persuaders and The Baron. Lasky's collaboration with Silver on the first series of Chandlertown, the Philip Marlowe teleplay starring Powers Booth, is considered a classic by mystery buffs. Produced plays include Ghost Town, Love Scene and The Vicious Circle. Books include Spindrift, Naked in a Cactus Garden, the Offer, and his amusing and unvarnished autobiography, Whatever Happened to Hollywood?.