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.
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.
John Colton (1887-1946) was a successful playwright who was enticed to Hollywood by MGM in 1927, to write titles for some of their last silent films. This was not taxing work, with Colton’s name in the credits being more valuable than anything he wrote.
The Broadway hit Rain, co-written by Colton with Clemence Randolph, was filmed by MGM in 1928 as Sadie Thompson, but the author was not invited to work on it. Other films based on Colton’s plays were The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn (1949).
Colton contributed to conventional screenplays after the introduction of sound, including for three MGM musicals: The Rogue Song, Call of the Flesh and The Cuban Love Song. All three lent themselves to the interest in exotic settings that Colton demonstrated in his plays.
Most of the names synonymous with silent film comedy are performers: Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd, and Laurel and Hardy. But they are joined by two producer-directors: Mack Sennett and Harold Eugene Roach (1892-1992).
Roach began working as an extra in Hollywood in 1912, and produced his first comedy shorts in 1915, in partnership with his friend Harold Lloyd. He worked with Lloyd until 1923, and went on to establish the Laurel and Hardy team. Roach wrote, produced and sometimes directed hundreds of comedy shorts and features.
In 1928, the Hal Roach studio began releasing its films through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which is how he became connected with its early musical pictures. In 1930, MGM wanted to add comic relief to The Rogue Song, so Roach directed additional sequences featuring Stan and Ollie as members of Lawrence Tibbetts band of outlaws.
In 1933, the Hal Roach Studio and MGM co-produced The Devil’s Brother, a Laurel and Hardy musical that Roach directed. He also worked as an uncredited director on Swiss Miss and The Bohemian Girl (which he co-wrote), and produced Babes in Toyland and Nobody’s Baby.
Paul Bert Dickey (1883-1933) was a former vaudeville performer who partnered with Charles W Goddard to write a number of successful plays. The best-known of these is The Ghost Breaker (1909), which was filmed at least four times, most famously with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard in 1940.
Dickey also directed in the theatre, notably the first production of the musical Rose-Marie in 1924. He acted as well, but only appeared in one film, playing Guy of Gisbourne opposite Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1922). His acting career was hampered by health problems.
Dickey undertook occasional screenwriting assignments, and provided the adaptation for Free and Easy.
Frank Russell Butler (1889-1967) was a prominent screenwriter, though his most successful days were at Paramount rather than MGM.
Born in England, Butler started out as an actor at Famous Players-Lasky in 1920, writing his first scenario the following year. His acting career ended with silent cinema, and he directed only one film for Hal Roach: Flying Elephants, with Laurel and Hardy before they had established their comedy duo characters.
Butler signed on as a writer at Metro in 1929, and worked on four musicals during his time there. He worked with regular collaborator Sylvia Thalberg on Montana Moon and New Moon. He subsequently worked on two scripts for films involving Laurel and Hardy, Babes in Toyland and The Bohemian Girl.
Returning to Paramount, Butler wrote frequently for Bob Hope, including four of the Road pictures. He was nominated for the Oscar in 1942 for two very different screenplays, Road to Morocco and war drama Wake Island. He won two year later for Going My Way (1944).
It is hard to avoid describing Sylvia Thalberg (1907-88) as the younger sister of Irving Thalberg and the wife of MGM producer Lawrence Weingarten, though she would, quite understandably, not have welcomed it. Becoming the youngest writer at Hollywood’s biggest studio in 1927 inevitably attracted accusations of nepotism. This, along with writing a novel, led to her leaving Metro in 1933.
Having published the novel, Thalberg signed a contract with Paramount in 1935. Her last, uncredited, work on a screenplay was in 1937.
While at MGM, Thalberg worked on two musicals, Montana Moon and New Moon, both times with regular collaborator Frank Butler. Her brother’s opinion of his sister was, according to Douglas Shearer, “talented but lazy”. But that’s brothers for you.
Arthur Baer (1886-1969) was a journalist, cartoonist and humourist, part of the Algonquin Round Table group and named as the greatest living humourist by Damon Runyon.
‘Bugs’ Baer had baseball connections (it was he who dubbed Babe Ruth ‘the Sultan of Swat’), which is probably why he was brought in to provide additional dialogue for They Learned About Women.
John Kenyon Nicholson (1894-1986) was a playwright, and a number of his films were adapted for the cinema. He also contributed to the screenplays of a number of films, including the James Cagney vehicle, Taxi (1931).
In 1929 Nicholson provided dialogue for Chasing Rainbows.
