Although he wrote nine films directed by Josef Von Sternberg, including some long regarded as classics, he is never identified by name in Sternberg's autobiography. There is a brief and somewhat condescending reference to a young screenwriter whom Sternberg claimed to have trained in the art of writing motion pictures, but he is not named. Furthman was six years older than Sternberg, had begun working in movies much earlier and had written dozens of films before he and Sternberg met.