Florence Ryerson (1892–1965)

Florence Ryerson, née Willard, was born in Glendale, California. Her father Charles Dwight Willard was a well-known journalist, author, and political reformer. While still a student at Pasadena High School, she wrote a play that was later produced by the Los Angeles Children's Theatre. She also wrote numerous short stories that appeared in national publications such as The American Magazine, Ladies Home Journal, and Metropolitan. She married Harold Swayne Ryerson, with whom she had a son, and retained his surname after they divorced. In 1926, she was hired by Paramount Pictures to work on silent film scripts. After sound films came in, she wrote the screenplays for the Fu Manchu and Philo Vance series. She co-authored the screenplay for The Wizard of Oz in 1939 with her frequent collaborators Edgar Allan Woolf and Noel Langley. In 1928, she married Colin Clements, also writer, and they soon began writing together. They wrote plays for Broadway such as Glamour Preferred (1941), Harriet (1943), and Strange Bedfellows (1948); and novels such as Fear of Fear (1931), Diana Laughs (1932), and The Borgia Blade (1937). In the 1930s, the couple bought a 19th-century ranch near Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley and renamed it Shadow Ranch. They restored and lived on the property for several years before selling it in 1948. Shadow Ranch has since become one of the most popular historic-cultural monuments in Los Angeles and a city park. After Clements' death, Florence retired to Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, where she continued to write plays, including some for the local high school.