Claude Binyon was a screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

 and director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

. His genres were comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

, musical

Musical film

The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...

s, and romance

Romance film

Romance films are love stories that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus...

s.

As a Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

-based journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, he became city editor of the show business trade magazine Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

in the late 1920s. Binyon, according to Variety staffer and historian Robert Landry, came up with the famous 1929 stock market crash

Wall Street Crash of 1929

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 , also known as the Great Crash, and the Stock Market Crash of 1929, was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout...

 headline, "Wall Street

Wall Street

Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...

 Lays an Egg."

He switched from writing about movies to writing for them with 1932's If I Had A Million

If I Had A Million

If I Had a Million is a Paramount Studios anthology film. There were seven directors: Ernst Lubitsch, Norman Taurog, Stephen Roberts, Norman Z. McLeod, James Cruze, William A. Seiter, and H. Bruce Humberstone...

; his later screenwriting

Screenwriting

Screenwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is a freelance profession....

 credits included The Gilded Lily

The Gilded Lily (1935 film)

The Gilded Lily is a 1935 film made by Paramount Pictures, directed by Wesley Ruggles, and starring Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland and C. Aubrey Smith...

(1935), Sing You Sinners

Sing You Sinners (1938 film)

Sing You Sinners is a 1938 black-and-white American musical comedy film starring Bing Crosby, Fred MacMurray, Donald O'Connor, and Ellen Drew. The movie was written by Claude Binyon and directed by Wesley Ruggles...

(1938), and Arizona

Arizona (1940 film)

Arizona is a 1940 American Western film starring Jean Arthur, William Holden and Warren William. It was directed by Wesley Ruggles.Victor Young was nominated for the Academy Award for Original Music Score, while Lionel Banks and Robert Peterson were considered for the Academy Award for Best Art...

(1940).

In 1948, Binyon made his directorial bow with The Saxon Charm

The Saxon Charm

The Saxon Charm is a 1948 drama film made by Universal International Pictures. It was written and directed by Claude Binyon and produced by Joseph Sistrom, based on a novel by Frederic Wakeman. The music score was by Walter Scharf and the cinematography was by Milton R...

(1948). He went on to direct the low-key comedy noir

Film noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

 Stella (1950), the Clifton Webb

Clifton Webb

Clifton Webb was an American actor, dancer, and singer known for his Oscar-nominated roles in such films as Laura, The Razor's Edge, and Sitting Pretty...

 farce Dreamboat

Dreamboat (film)

Dreamboat is a 1952 comedy film starring Clifton Webb as a college professor with a mysterious past.-Plot:The respectable lives of Professor of English literature Thornton Sayre and his daughter Carol are severely disrupted when it is revealed that he was once a matinee idol known as "Dreamboat"...

(1952), and Bob Hope

Bob Hope

Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...

's sole venture into 3-D

3-D film

A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...

, Here Come the Girls

Here Come the Girls (1953 film)

Here Come the Girls is a comedy film directed by Claude Binyon, filmed in Technicolor, produced by Hope's company Hope Productions Inc., and released by Paramount Pictures.-Storyline:...

(1953); he also helmed the 1952 Aaron Slick of Pun'kin Crick.