author
Polan Banks
1906–1984
A novelist and screenwriter from Virginia, he moved easily between popular fiction and Hollywood drama. His stories reached new audiences when novels like January Heights and Carriage Entrance were adapted for the screen.
1 Audiobook
Black ivory
by Polan Banks
About the author
Born in Norfolk, Virginia, on July 21, 1906, Polan Banks built a career as both a novelist and a screenwriter. Reliable sources connect him with a run of fiction across the 1920s through the 1940s, including Black Ivory, January Heights, and Carriage Entrance.
His work also found a life in film. January Heights became the basis for the 1941 movie The Great Lie, and Carriage Entrance was adapted into the 1951 film My Forbidden Past. Screen credits and film references also link him to projects such as Street of Women.
Banks died in 1984. While much of his life remains lightly documented online, the record that does survive shows a writer whose stories crossed from bookshelves to movie screens, giving his work a wider reach than many forgotten popular novelists of his era.