Original sentence: What threatened to be a lucrative and successful career as a film writer - graduating up from Charlie Chan movies in the late 30s to such well respected war films as Guadalcanal Diary (1943), a successful adaptation of Forever Amber (1947) and the police procedural Call Northside 777 (1948) - came to an abrupt end when he died of a sleeping pill overdose onboard his yacht off Catalina Island in 1948
Edited sentence: What promised to be a lucrative and successful career as a film writer - graduating up from Charlie Chan movies in the late 30s to such well respected war films as Guadalcanal Diary (1943), a successful adaptation of Forever Amber (1947) and the police procedural Call Northside 777 (1948) - came to an abrupt end when he died of a sleeping pill overdose onboard his yacht off Catalina Island in 1948