Category: Writers
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Ralph Spence
Ralph Spence (1890-1949) became a scenarist in 1912, working for the Selig Company, and went on to contribute to over 130 films. His 1925 Broadway play The Gorilla was filmed several times.
Spence worked on three of Metro’s musicals. He provided additional dialogue for The Florodora Girl, and co-wrote the screenplays for Student Tour and Here Comes the Band.
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Gene Markey
Eugene Willford Markey (1895-1980) was a journalist and novelist who turned screenwriter with the coming of sound, and was occasionally credited as a producer. He also found time to marry not one, not two, but three top Hollywood actors: Joan Bennett, Hedy Lamarr and Myrna Loy. And he had the honour of being described as “a skunk” by actor Louise Beavers.
Markey served with distinction in the Second World War, unlike his close friends John Wayne and Ward Bond, and despite being older than both of them. He rose to the level of admiral, and reputedly demanded to be addressed as such for the remainder of his long life.
Markey’s most enduring screen credit is as co-writer of the infamous Barbara Stanwyck vehicle Baby Face (1933), probably contributing the references Nietzsche. He also contributed, less memorably, to The Florodora Girl, devising the story and writing dialogue.
In later life, Markey settled down as a horse breeder and Southern gentleman.
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Edwin Justus Mayer
Edwin Justus Mayer (1896-1960) was a journalist and occasional playwright who, quite enterprisingly, wrote an autobiography when he was 25 and had achieved very little. From 1927 to 1945 he worked on a number of Hollywood films; in his own words, “I never gave up the stage, the stage gave me up. The pictures gave me a living and the theatre wouldn’t. I see no shame in using your professional weapons to make a living.” His crowning achievement was his final screenplay, for Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not to Be (1945).
Mayer had earlier been one of the three writers credited with the script for In Gay Madrid.
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Salisbury Field
Edward Salisbury Fields (1878-1936) was, amongst other things, a popular playwright, several of whose comedies were adapted into films.
In the early 1930s Fields undertook writing projects for various Hollywood studios. Amongst these was a contribution to the screenplay for MGM’s In Gay Madrid.
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Frances Marion
With a career that lasted more than thirty years, Marion Benson Owens (1888-1973) was undoubtedly one of the most important writers in American cinema, even though her name is not well known today. She worked with Anita Loos on a film for D W Griffith, then became a writer for pioneer filmmaker Lois Weber, developing into one of the most prolific and skilled screenwriters in Hollywood.
Some of the major pictures worked on by Marion include: The Big House (1930), for which she won an Academy Award; Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie (1931); The Champ (1931), bringing a second Academy Award; Dinner at Eight (1933); Camille (1936); and The Good Earth (1937), uncredited.
Marion’s extensive work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer included eight musicals. She co-wrote The Rogue Song, and immediately followed this with an uncredited contribution to In Gay Madrid. She wrote the screenplay for the 1930 version of Good News, and then worked without credit on Going Hollywood, Maytime, Rosalie, Presenting Lily Mars and, her swan song, The Pirate.
