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Bodeen began his career as a stage actor and playwright. As a playwright, he achieved moderate success with "Escape to Autumn" and "Thing of Beauty" before securing work as a reader in Hollywood. One of his plays, "Embers at Haworth" (about the Brontë sisters), caught the attention of Val Lewton, who was then working for David O. Selznick on a Jane Eyre (1943) adaptation. Lewton quickly hired Bodeen as a research assistant to collaborate on the script with Aldous Huxley. When Lewton left Selznick after being signed as a producer at RKO, he invited Bodeen to join his team, tasked specifically with producing horror films on a $150,000 budget. Bodeen earned $75 per week, while Lewton’s salary was only $250. This tight-knit group also included director Jacques Tourneur, editor-turned-director Mark Robson, composer Roy Webb, and writer Ardel Wray. For several weeks, Lewton and Bodeen, now close friends, gained genre experience by watching classic horror films from the previous decade, including Paramount’s Island of Lost Souls (1932).
The first and most successful film of the horror series Lewton and Bodeen worked on was Cat People (1942). Both the title and subject were largely dictated by RKO studio chief Charles Koerner, who believed traditional movie monsters had been overused and that a cat-themed monster was unexplored. Though initially hesitant, Bodeen rejected conventional approaches and wrote the script as an exploration of psychological terror. A novelization based on his story was later published by horror writer Gary Brandner. Cat People was completed in just 24 days and came in well under budget. Initially disappointed with the first cut, Koerner quickly changed his mind when the film began breaking box office records. Some sources even credit it with helping to save the studio from bankruptcy.
Bodeen contributed to two more films in the series: The Seventh Victim (1943), notable for a chilling shower scene that foreshadowed Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), and The Curse of the Cat People (1944), which, despite its title, was neither a sequel to Cat People nor a true horror film but rather a subtle, ambiguous study of childhood loneliness. Bodeen found greater success as co-writer, alongside Herman J. Mankiewicz, of the fable-like, sentimental film The Enchanted Cottage (1945), adapted from a play by Arthur Wing Pinero. After his second contract with RKO ended in 1947, Bodeen freelanced for a time before focusing on teleplay writing. He received multiple Writers Guild Award nominations. A frequent contributor to film journals, he also authored several books on Hollywood stars and one on The Films of Cecil B. DeMille.
