Attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Yale University (1955-59), majoring in drama. Before his graduation, he worked as production assistant on the
John Wayne western,
The Comancheros (1961). He continued to work as a production associate through most of the early 1960s. Screenwriter of three back-to-back James Bond thrillers,
Diamonds Are Forever (1971),
Live and Let Die (1973) and
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).