Laurence Stallings Filmography

The Sun Shines Bright

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Charles Winninger, Arleen Whelan, John Russell, Stepin Fetchit, Russell Simpson

Synopsis: Director John Ford, notoriously difficult to please, regarded The Sun Shines Bright as his favorite film. Laurence Stalllings' screenplay is based on several short stories by Kentucky humorist Irvin S. Cobb, some of which had previously been cinematized in Ford's 1934 Will Rogers vehicle Judge Priest Read More

What Price Glory?

Crew: Play Author

Actors: James Cagney, Dan Dailey, Corinne Calvet, William Demarest, Craig Hill, Robert Wagner

Synopsis: James Cagney signed on to play Captain Flagg in 20th Century Fox's 1952 remake of the 1926 classic What Price Glory after being told that the old property was being converted into a musical. By the time Cagney learned that Fox had no intention of adding songs and dances to the venerable Maxwell Anderson Read More

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: John Wayne, Joanne Dru, John Agar, Ben Johnson, Victor McLaglen

Synopsis: The second of John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy", She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is the only one of the three to be lensed in Technicolor. In an Oscar-calibre performance, 42-year old John Wayne plays sixtyish Cavalry Captain Nathan Brittles. In his last days before his compulsory retirement, Brittles must Read More

On Our Merry Way

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Burgess Meredith, Paulette Goddard, Fred MacMurray, James Stewart, Hugh Herbert, Dorothy Lamour

Synopsis: Also known as A Miracle Can Happen, On Our Merry Way is a multipart comedy linked by inquiring reporter Burgess Meredith. It is Meredith's job to interview several people, asking them what effect children have had on their lives. First he checks with two itinerant musicians (James Stewart and Henry Fonda Read More

The Three Godfathers

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: John Wayne, Harry Carey, Jr., Ward Bond, Mae Marsh

Synopsis: John Ford had already directed one of the three previous film versions of Peter Kyne's novel under the title Marked Men (1919) with his mentor Harry Carey, a great cowboy star of the silent era who had recently died. It's not difficult to see how the story's sentimentality and Christian symbolism Read More

Christmas Eve

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: George Raft, George Brent, Randolph Scott, Joan Blondell, Virginia Field

Synopsis: This episodic holiday film centers around a rich spinster aunt whose greedy nephew is attempting legal action to take her estate. Before he makes a final decision, a caring judge tells the spinster that she can rally together the three foster children she raised to help her keep the estate, he Read More

Salome, Where She Danced

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Yvonne De Carlo, Rod Cameron, David Bruce, Walter Slezak, Albert Dekker

Synopsis: This campy little drama launched the career of B-girl Yvonne De Carlo. It is set during the Franco-Prussian war and chronicles the exploits of Salome, a beautiful Viennese dancer who falls for an American reporter and for him gets involved in cloak-and-dagger activities involving the Bismarck Read More

The Jungle Book

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Sabu, Joseph Calleia, John Qualen, Frank Puglia, Rosemary de Camp

Synopsis: The Jungle Book isn't always faithful to the Rudyard Kipling original (in fact, it seldom is), but 1942 audiences swept up in the grandeur of the production values and the lush Technicolor photography didn't mind at all. Indian juvenile-star Sabu plays Mowgli, who having been lost in the jungle as Read More

The Man from Dakota

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Wallace Beery, John Howard, Dolores Del Rio, Donald Meek, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: Wallace Beery trots out his "lovable lout" act for the zillionth time in Man From Dakota. Beery plays a Union army sergeant who, along with his superior officer (John Howard), is captured and incarcerated in a Confederate prison. Upon escaping, Beery and Howard cross the path of Dolores Del Rio Read More

Northwest Passage

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Robert Young, Walter Brennan, Ruth Hussey, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis:
Kenneth Roberts' fact-based novel Northwest Passage would seem too raw and explicit a book to be considered for an MGM film adaptation-much less one in Technicolor. Amazingly, MGM retained many of the grim episodes from the Roberts' novel, though - thanks to the Hays Code - most are discussed Read More

Too Hot to Handle

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Walter Pidgeon, Walter Connolly, Leo Carrillo

Synopsis: Alternating effortlessly between comedy and suspense and back again, Too Hot to Handle stars Myrna Loy as a famous aviatrix and Clark Gable as an opportunistic newsreel photographer. Gable and rival shutterbug Walter Pidgeon agree to accompany Loy on her search for her missing brother, sensing a Read More

So Red the Rose

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, Walter Connolly, Janet Beecher, Harry Ellerbe, Robert Cummings

Synopsis: So Red the Rose is a Civil War drama that plays like a warm-up for Gone With the Wind--and, unlike Wind, has two genuine Southerners in the leading roles. Margaret Sullavan is the aristocratic mistress of a sprawling Southern plantation, whose sheltered lifestyle is rent asunder by the War. Read More

After Office Hours

Crew: Screen Story

Actors: Clark Gable, Constance Bennett, Stuart Erwin, Billie Burke, Harvey Stephens

Synopsis: Society girl Constance Bennett goes to work as a reporter for a big-city newspaper. Harried editor Clark Gable fires the flighty socialite, but rehires her when Bennett starts dating the co-respondent (Harvey Stephens) in a major divorce case. Things get sticky when the wife in the case is Read More

First World War

Crew: Editor

Synopsis: Playwright-journalist Laurence Stallings, himself a battle-scarred WWI veteran, served as editor and overall guiding spirit for this feature-length documentary. Digging deeply into archival footage, The First World War tells the story of the tragic 1914-18 conflict largely through images. Indeed Read More

Fast Workers

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: John Gilbert, Robert Armstrong, Mae Clarke, Muriel Kirkland, Vince Barnett

Synopsis: This story centers around a love triangle between two construction workers and a girl. The film climaxes with a fight on top of a skyscraper. The story is based on a play called Rivets. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Big Executive

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Ricardo Cortez, Richard Bennett, Elisabeth Young, Sharon Lynne, Dorothy Peterson

Synopsis: The Big Executive is Ricardo Cortez, to whom success is less important than the pursuit of success. Having lost as many fortunes as he's gained, Cortez again teeters on the verge of bankruptcy. His principal business rival, who'd like nothing better than to see Cortez standing on a street corner Read More

Song of the West

Crew: From Musical by, Play Author

Actors: John Boles, Vivienne Segal, Marie Wells, Joe E. Brown, Sam Hardy

Synopsis: Based upon an ambitious but unsuccessful stage operetta by Oscar Hammerstein and Vincent Youmans, Song of the West is set in the middle 1800s during the great western Gold Rush. At a fort in Kansas, Lt. Singleton is in love with Virginia, daughter of the fort's Colonel. Singleton encounters Capt. Read More

Way for a Sailor

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: John Gilbert, Wallace Beery, Leila Hyams, Jim Tully, Polly Moran

Synopsis: In his second talkie, former silent screen lover John Gilbert plays Jack, a sailor in the merchant marine who takes time out from carousing with pals Tripod (Wallace Beery) and Ginger (Jim Tully) to woo and marry Joan (Leila Hyams), the lovely pay clerk, whom he has promised to quit the sea for Read More

Billy the Kid

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Johnny Mack Brown, Wallace Beery, Kay Johnson, Karl Dane, Wyndham Standing

Synopsis: The tall and virile Johnny Mack Brown portrays the short and dyspeptic outlaw William Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid. Wallace Beery is more effectively cast as Pat Garrett, the sheriff who's sworn to bring in Billy dead or alive despite his grudging friendship for the young killer. Hardly the Read More

The Cock-Eyed World

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Lili Damita, Lelia Karnelly, El Brendel

Synopsis: This sequel to the enormously successful silent film What Price Glory reunites director Raoul Walsh with stars Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe. As in the earlier film, McLaglen and Lowe are cast respectively as Flagg and Quirt, those ever-brawling U.S. Marine sergeants. With WWI but a dim memory Read More

Marianne

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Marion Davies, Cliff Edwards, Lawrence Gray, Benny Rubin, Scott Kolk

Synopsis: Marion Davies made her talkie debut in this early musical romance set during World War I. Marianne (Davies} is a beautiful French girl who is engaged to marry a soldier fighting on the front. However, she soon attracts the attentions of Pvt. Stagg (Lawrence Gray), an American soldier fighting in Read More

Show People

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Marion Davies, William Haines, Dell Henderson, Paul Ralli, Tenen Holtz

Synopsis: This Marion Davies vehicle was loosely inspired by the career of Gloria Swanson. Davies plays would-be starlet Peggy Pepper, who arrives at the gates of MGM Studios with her dad Colonel Pepper (Dell Henderson) in hopes of becoming a great dramatic actress. Instead, she a scores a hit as an ingenue Read More

Old Ironsides

Crew: Screen Story

Actors: Esther Ralston, Charles Farrell, Wallace Beery, George Bancroft, George Godfrey

Synopsis: Long derided by film historians as a talented but visually unimaginative director, James Cruze made up for any and all past artistic sins with his rousing Old Ironsides. Per its title, this 11-reel silent film is set at the time of Stephen Decatur's defeat of the Barbary pirates in Tripoli. Read More

What Price Glory?

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Dolores Del Rio, William V. Mong, Phyllis Haver

Synopsis: From the minute it opened on Broadway in 1924, Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson's gritty WWI comedy-drama What Price Glory? was a center of controversy. Prudes and blue-noses condemned the play for its explicit language, while a group of politicians tried to bring about a federal action to Read More

The Big Parade

Crew: Screen Story

Actors: John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Hobart Bosworth, Claire McDowell, Claire Adams

Synopsis: The Big Parade was designed as a modest programmer concerning one young man's disillusionment in the face of war. When the MGM executives took a look at the projection-room rushes, they gave director King Vidor the go-ahead to film an all-out "spectacular", which ended up running 13 reels and Read More