Raoul Whitfield , who wrote under his own name and the pseudonym Ramon Decolta, was nearly as productive as Erle Stanley Gardner for a brief period. Born in 1898 in New York City, young Whitfield went to the Philippines with his father, who served in the U.S. Territorial government. He visited Japan, China and other ports that served him as settings later on. Sent back to the States to recover from an illness in 1916, Whitfield landed in Hollywood and worked as a silent screen actor. He resembled the later actor Cary Grant right down to his cleft chin, but acting bored him. When World War I began, Whitfield signed up and connived his way into pilot's training. By 1918 he was an aviator in France, and although he only flew combat towards the war's end, he used his experience later in dozens of air-adventure stories that Black Mask and other pulps prized.