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Cherub-faced writer/director Marc Connelly started out as a New York theatre critic. Eternally stagestruck, Connelly launched his formal theatrical career as a playwright, collaborating with George S. Kaufman on such Broadway hits as Dulcy, Merton of the Movies and Beggar on Horseback, all of which were later adapted to film. In 1930, Connelly won a Pulitzer Prize for his all-black stage production The Green Pastures; he was engaged by Warner Bros. to direct the 1936 film version of this play, though most of the "traffic cop" duties on the set were performed by co-director William Keighley and cinematographer Hal Mohr. From time to time, Connelly was brought west to work as a screenwriter, though he tended to take an imperious attitude towards Tinseltown. Connelly spent most of the 1950s teaching drama courses at Yale University, then made his on-camera debut in Tall Story, repeating his Broadway stage performance; it was the first of several acting appearances for Connelly over the next decades, most of these confined to television. The author of several memoirs, Marc Connelly was at one time married to silent film actress Madeline Hurlock, who divorced him to marry another Pulitzer-winning playwright, Robert E. Sherwood.