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Columbia University graduate Edward Anhalt worked as a continuity writer during television's "caveman" era of the 1930s and 1940s. Anhalt's first screenwriting credit was for the 1946 "B" film Avalanche. He won a 1950 Academy Award for his work on Panic in the Streets (1950), sharing the Oscar with Edna Anhalt, his wife and most frequent collaborator. Anhalt was busiest during his film career as an adaptor of other writer's works. Notable achievements in this vein include Member of the Wedding (1952), from Carson McCullers's play; Not as a Stranger (1955), from Frank G. Slaughter's novel; The Young Lions (1958), from the bestseller by Irwin Shaw; and The Right Stuff (1983), based on the nonfiction book by Tom Wolfe. In 1964, Edward Anhalt won another Oscar for his screen adaptation of the Jean Anouilh play Becket.