Ray Bradbury, TCM's Guest Programmer for November, is one of America's most influential writers and has published more than 500 works including short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, television scripts and verse. Among his best-known and most beloved books are Fahrenheit 451, which in 1966 became a film directed by Francois Truffaut and starring Oscar Werner and Julie Christie; The Martian Chronicles, which became a television series starring Rock Hudson in 1980; and Something Wicked This Way Comes, which was adapted for the screen by Bradbury himself in 1983.

Born in Waukegan, Illinois, as a teen Bradbury moved with his family to Los Angeles. He originally planned to become an actor, but turned to writing and trained himself by reading the works of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and other authors. His first paid work, a short story entitled Pendulum, was published in 1941. He became a full-time writer the following year and published his first book, a collection of stories called Dark Carnival, in 1947.

In recognition of his stature in the world of literature, Bradbury was awarded the National Book Foundation's 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the National Medal of Arts in 2004. Tune in on November 20 as Bradbury explains to host Robert Osborne the reasoning behind his programming picks: The Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), Rebecca (1940) and Citizen Kane (1941).

by Roger Fristoe