Biography

Prior to his career as a writer, Chase was employed as chauffeur for notorious prohibition-era gangster Frankie Yale -- until Yale was 'rubbed out' by Al Capone's mob in July 1928. Chase, then still going by the more prosaic name Frank Fowler, as well Yale's other regular driver, James Caponi, were lucky to be alive: Yale, having received a strange phone call, was in a panic about something that had happened to his wife Lucy, and decided to drive his coffee-colored Lincoln himself. The car was machine-gunned near Tenth Avenue by the occupants of a black Nash and crashed into a curb. For good measure, one of the gunmen jumped out and shot Yale in the head with a .45. After that adventure, Chase went in for tamer pursuits, first working as a digger on the Holland Tunnel and then as a taxi driver.

His first idea for a story occurred to him, when working as a tunnel digger and one of his co-workers died as the result of an accident. His resulting novel "Sandhog", was picked up by 20th Century Fox and later filmed as Under Pressure (1935). At this time, Frank Fowler became Borden Chase (the name an amalgam of a milk company and the famous bank). Over the next three decades, Chase published numerous short stories for the pulp magazine Argosy, several novels and dozens of Hollywood screenplays. He free-lanced for most of the major studios, except for a period under contract to Universal, from 1950 to 1958. Many of his best films were westerns, featuring anti-heroes with flawed characters, long before these were re-invented in the Spaghetti westerns of the 1960s. His scripts also stood out for being unusually complex for this particular genre, with strong emphasis on powerful emotions (ie. greed or revenge) and relationships. In addition to classic motion pictures, such as Red River (1948), Winchester '73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952) and the superlative Vera Cruz (1954), Chase also penned the TV pilots for the western series Laredo (1965) and Daniel Boone (1964).

During the 1950s, Chase was very much a part of the conservative Hollywood establishment, as a member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. On a lighter note, he lent his name to a famous cocktail made from Scotch whiskey, vermouth, Pernod and orange bitters.
- IMDb mini biography by: I.S.Mowis

Father of dancer/actress Barrie Chase and writer Frank Chase.

The Chase family lived on a horse ranch in Encino in the 40s in what was an undeveloped San Fernando Valley. They all rode well and liked to show off the garter snakes living in the barn.

He was married three times.

In 1955, he legally changed his name to Borden Chase, dropping all the extras from his birth name: Frank Stanley Gilman Borden Chase Fowler.

In 1953, he married his ex-stepdaughter, who was named as a co-respondent in his 1949 divorce from her mother, Lee Keith.

I simply don't like the idea of a change of government. I like the government we now have. I admit it is not the best of all possible governments, and I certainly am not an admirer of Mr. Nixon. But I do know about life in Russia and I don't want to exchange a life that will allow a hack driver who went to work when he was fourteen to make enough money to buy this house.

[on Anthony Mann]: Tony was just a thousand per cent work. He didn't fancy himself a great director, and he was extremely competent. I could ask for nothing better than to have him direct every picture I wrote.

[interviewed in old age]: I was anti-Communist and didn't hesitate to say so. I was not very well-liked. I'm not very well-liked today. That's quite all right.