Joseph Franklin Poland — Biographical Sketch (1927) 🇺🇸

Joseph Franklin Poland [Joseph F. Poland] sold his first story to a moving picture company when he was still a freshman at Columbia University. The writing bug stung him severely at this point, and the dust has never yet been wiped from his law books.

After selling some sixty-odd one- and two-reelers, written at night while he worked in Wall Street during the day, Poland joined the old Kalem Company as staff writer. Following this came staff positions with Vitagraph, Fox and Metro, all in New York. At the end of several years of this work he began to chafe at the routine work of adaptation, where his creative ability was, if not submerged, at least kept in a conventional rut. So he gave up the regular stipend that went with staff work and took to writing originals.

Within a period of fourteen months he had his name on seventeen original feature productions, produced by every company then in business. From this period on Poland grew with the screen comedy, and in a measure, to which he contributed, screen comedy grew with him. He left New York to take a position with Thomas H. Ince, and during his two and a half years with Ince, Poland wrote for Douglas MacLean and other stars, and learned much from that master producer. Following this he wrote a number of comedies and comedy-dramas for the Fox productions. Then he wrote two of Colleen Moore’s successes during that first year when she blossomed out as a big box-office attraction — “The Perfect Flapper” and “Flirting With Love.”

After this, Poland furnished Douglas MacLean with two of the year’s mirth-provoking releases — “That’s My Baby” and “Hold That Lion.”

It was at this point that the Universal Company, seeking a man who could supervise the getting into production of some thirty feature comedies a year, asked Poland to take the job. Poland took it finally. And out of his first year’s work on that job has come what Carl Laemmle and Universal proudly point to as the most consistent line-up of feature comedies the company has ever presented.

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Collection: Motion Picture News, October 1927 (Booking Guide and Studio Directory)