Frank Russell Butler (December 28, 1889 â June 10, 1967) was an American film and theatre actor and screenwriter, born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England to parents Frederick Butler and Sarah Ann Hedges. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Going My Way. His son, Hugo Butler, also became a Hollywood screenwriter.
His theatre career included two appearances (1920s–1930s) in Broadway-theatre productions in New York City.
Butler's film career started with silent films in the early 1920s. He appeared in almost fifty films and wrote more than sixty screenplays. This included the 1937 film Champagne Waltz.
Herbert Coleman wrote Butler "was known around Paramount as the Story Doctor. He was one of the studioâÂÂs most valuable executives. Although Butler was third in pecking order in the story department, after D. A. Doran and Frank Cleaver, his gifted talents touched almost every screenplay that found its way to his desk. And almost every script did, on direct orders from Barney Balaban, president of Paramount."
He co-won, with Frank Cavett, the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film Going My Way (1944). Butler had earlier been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) twice in the same year, for Road to Morocco and Wake Island, both released in 1942.