Wendell Mayes has had a successful screenwriting career since the late 1950s. Most of his work has called on his skills as an adaptor; sixteen of his nineteen screenplays have been based on novels. He has also worked repeatedly within the same genres and with the same directors and actors.

Mayes was born in Hayti, Missouri. He attended Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities but graduated from neither. He left school to join the U.S. Navy and served in the Pacific in World War II. After leaving the navy, Mayes went to New York City to pursue a career as an actor. He also began writing plays.

In 1957 one of his plays. The Most Blessed Woman, was produced on television and received good reviews. This led Billy Wilder to ask Mayes to work on The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), an adaptation of Charles Lindbergh's autobiography for the screen...