Edgar Allan Woolf on AllMovie

Before entering films, Edgar Allan Woolf was a prolific vaudeville sketch writer; at one time, 60 of his sketches were playing simultaneously on the vaudeville circuits. Woolf also penned special material for Broadway musical revues, not to mention a few plays, one of which, April Fool, was filmed in 1926. When talkies came in, he was signed by MGM as a scenarist (Freaks, Mask of Fu Manchu) and script doctor. He usually worked in tandem with Florence Ryerson; their best-known collaboration was the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. In addition to his scripting talents, Woolf was an accomplished gourmet chef, and for many years his weekend dinner parties were major Hollywood social events. At the time of his death in 1943, Edgar Allan Woolf hadn't received a screen credit for nearly five years, though he'd kept active rewriting the works of others sans billing.