Biography
Longtime Hollywood screenwriter Walter DeLeon had a hand in three of the four film versions of the Paul Dickey-Charles Goddard theatrical chestnut
The Ghost Breakers. DeLeon scripted the 1922 adaptation with
Wallace Reid and the popular 1940 version with
Bob Hope, and was credited as a collaborator on the 1953 version, reworked for Martin and Lewis as
Scared Stiff. Essentially a comedy man, he also worked on Wheeler and Woolseys
Girl Crazy and
Hold 'Em Jail (1932) and Paramount's W.C. Fields and "Big Broadcast" features. He was also listed as one of the scriveners on
Leo McCarey's
Ruggles of Red Gap, and was given "original story" credit for the
Oliver Hardy solo feature
Zenobia (1939). After working on the Paramount musical-comedy product of the early 1940s, Walter DeLeon briefly joined Universal to co-script the offbeat Abbott and Costello vehicle
Little Giant (1946), one of two films in which Bud and Lou were cast as separate characters rather than a unified team. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide