Frank was born in 1907 in Cleveland. His father was a tailor and owned a dress shop. Frank graduated from Ohio State University and later moved to Greenwich Village with the hope of becoming a poet. Later he landed a job on a newspaper in Cleveland and published pieces in The New Yorker and The Nation.

He married Lillian, and had two children.

Mr Frank wrote about the lives of the Jews of Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. In 1934 he made a film about Jewish life in a Polish shtetl. The film had rare scenes of the Warsaw Ghetto which he later donated to the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research.

During World War II, he worked as a war correspondent in the Middle East, and he collaborated with Bartley Crum in the work Behind the Silken Curtain, an account of the work of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine.

He wrote a biography of Judy Garland entitled Judy and one of Zsa Zsa Gabor entitled Zsa Zsa Gabor: My Story.His book I'll Cry Tomorrow, co-written with Lillian Roth and Mike Connolly was a bestseller, selling seven million copies in more than twenty languages. It was later adapted for the movies by Frank and Susan Hayward, who played the starring role.

Frank won two Edgar awards from the Mystery Writers of America for his works The Boston Strangler, and The Deed, a book about the assassination of Lord Moyne.

According to Mr Frank's son, he ghostwrote at least 17 books.

• The Boston Strangler
• Judy
• An American death; the true story of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King
• The Deed
• Zsa Zsa Gabor: My Story with Zsa Zsa Gabor
• U.S.S. Seawolf, Submarine Raider of the Pacific
• I'll Cry Tomorrow with Lillian Roth and Mike Connelly
• Beloved Infidel with Sheila Graham

Books made into films

• Boston Strangler (1968)
• Beloved Infidel (1959)
• Too Much, Too Soon (1958) Full title: "Too Much, Too Soon: The Daring Story of Diana Barrymore"
• I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)