Laurence Stallings (1894-1968) is best known for co-authoring, with Maxwell Anderson, the First World War play What Price Glory?, which was filmed twice, and for writing the novel that formed the basis of The Big Parade (1925). Informed by his own wartime experiences, these helped qualify Stallings to contribute dialogue to the doughboy story Marianne.
Later in his career Stallings contributed to three of John Ford’s more personal pictures: Three Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and The Sun Shines Bright (1953). But, after Marianne, his only involvement in MGM musicals was uncredited work on Let Freedom Ring and At the Circus.
