A former journalist, Willis Goldbeck entered films as a screenwriter in the early 1920s. He wrote most of the "Dr. Kildare" series for MGM, starting with the first one, Young Dr. Kildare (1938), and directed several of them. Although he directed several more films after that--including one of Burt Lancaster's more enjoyable early swashbucklers, Cezayir Casusu (1951)--he mainly concentrated on screenwriting, and in the mid-'50s turned to producing. He retired from films in 1962.