Laurence Stallings was a rarity among American screenwriters, one of the few playwrights who went to Hollywood and did significant motion picture work before the era of sound films. Like many other writers who came to the movies with a background in the theater, Stallings never enjoyed working in motion pictures, and his film career was interrupted by several periods of retirement and by military service during World War II. A screenwriter for nearly three decades, he displayed a skill for writing realistic, usually fact-based drama.

Laurence Tucker Stallings was born in Macon, Georgia, the son of Larkin Tucker Stallings, a bank clerk, and Aurora Brooks Stallings, who instilled in her son a love of literature. Growing up in turn-of-the-century Georgia, Stallings was exposed to stories of Southern Civil War heroes, and he developed a fascination with war. He entered Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 1912 and...