As a young man, he was a mechanic and driver for the trucking company his father had started, and was an engineer at the Los Angeles water department. He sold short stories to Scribner's, The New Republic, and Esquire.
Name is pronounced bez-AIR-a-dees.
Later, when he worked at the movie studios, stars such as Edward G. Robinson hired him to rewrite their dialogue.
Born in Turkey, but grew up in the San Joaquin Valley, an area of Fresno, California.
Born in 1908 to a Greek father and Armenian mother, Bezzerides immigrated to Fresno, California when he was a toddler.
Writers never understand; producers are the god-damnedest crooks you ever saw.
[on his very free adaptation of Mickey Spillane's "Kiss Me Deadly"]: I tell you, Spillane didn't like what I did with his book. I ran into him in a restaurant and, boy!, he didn't like me.