Bülent Oran

Bülent Oran — Biography

Bülent Oran, born Mehmet Bülent Oran in Istanbul's Bakırköy district on 27 March 1924, was the son of writer Cevat Rıfat Atilhan. After Pertevniyal High School he enrolled to study law but left home young to live in a squatter settlement near Zeytinburnu; for ten years he worked as a porter and timekeeper in a textile factory, alongside stints as a teacher, typesetter and illustrator, and wrote humor pieces for magazines such as Akbaba and Karikatür. Urged on by his director friend Sırrı Gültekin, he broke into film as an extra in 1948-49, later moving into lead roles across more than 60 films, including playing Azmi in Dracula in Istanbul (1953). After 1952 he concentrated on screenwriting and became one of Yeşilçam's most prolific writers, remembered as a master of the era's most quotable lines; he scripted nearly 250 films between 1952 and 1988, and across his full career — part of it alongside his wife, fellow screenwriter Ayşe Şasa — put his name to more than a thousand scripts. One of his screenplays, The Broken Pots, was selected for the 11th Berlin International Film Festival, and his credits also include Kezban (1953) and Ankara Ekspresi (1970). He taught for a time in Marmara University's Cinema-TV department, and a new generation of Turkish viewers came to know him in the 2000s playing Hanım's father in the series İkinci Bahar. His screenplay for Ankara Ekspresi won Best Screenplay at the 1971 Golden Orange Film Festival, he received that festival's Lifetime Honour Award in 2001, and the Sadri Alışık Cinema Honour Award in 2002. Bülent Oran died in Istanbul on 23 September 2004.