Nationality United States Name Florence Ryerson Known for film scripts | Other names Florence Willard Role Playwright | |
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Full Name Florence Willard Spouse Colin Clements (m. 1927–1948), Harold Swayne Ryerson (m. 1914–1927) Children Harold Swayne Ryerson, Jr. Parents Charles Dwight Willard, Mary McGregor Movies The Wizard of Oz, The Canary Murder C, A Wicked Woman, Tough Guy, Moonlight Murder Similar People Edgar Allan Woolf, Noel Langley, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger | ||
Florence Ryerson (September 20, 1892 – June 8, 1965) was a playwright, screenwriter, and co-author of the script for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
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Early years
Florence Ryerson was born in Glendale, California. She was the daughter of Charles Dwight Willard and Mary McGregor. Charles Dwight Willard (1860-1914), journalist and political reformer, was an 1883 graduate of the University of Michigan, worked on the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Herald, and was author of The Fall of Ulysses - An Elephant Story (1912), The Herald's History of Los Angeles City (1901), and other books. In 1920 Florence and her husband, Harold Swayne Ryerson, worked in the manufacture of ladies' clothes. Florence was also a stage actress and wrote short stories for magazines.
Screenwriter
In 1926, Florence Ryerson joined Paramount Pictures to work on silent film scripts, among them Adam and Evil and Wickedness Preferred. Later sound films she wrote include the Fu Manchu and Philo Vance series.
She was co-author of the screenplay for The Wizard of Oz, along with frequent collaborator Edgar Allan Woolf and British author Noel Langley. Both Ryerson and Woolf created the Wizard's Kansas counterpart, Professor Marvel.
Shadow Ranch
In the 1930s, Florence Ryerson and second husband Colin Campbell Clements acquired the 19th century Workman Ranch in Canoga Park, in the western San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. She renamed the estate Shadow Ranch for the amount of shade provided by the numerous large Blue Gum (Eucalyptus globulus) eucalyptus trees, originally planted in the 1860s during the Workman era. They restored and expanded the historic adobe and redwood ranch house, and lived there through the 1940s. Ryerson co-wrote the 'The Wizard of Oz' screenplay while living there.
Playwright and novelist
Ryerson wrote plays and mystery novels with husband Colin Clements. For Broadway in the 1940s they wrote Glamour Preferred, Harriet, and Strange Bedfellows. In Harriet, Helen Hayes was Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Later years and death
Colin Clements died in 1948. Ryerson retired to Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, in 1951, where she continued to write plays, some for the local high school.
Florence Ryerson Clements died in Mexico City of cardiac insufficiency in 1965. Her remains were cremated in Mexico and given to her son, Harold Swayne Ryerson, Jr.