Who is Florence Ryerson?

Florence Ryerson (September 20, 1892 – June 8, 1965) was a playwright, screenwriter, and co-author of the script for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

Florence Ryerson was born in Glendale, California. She was the daughter of Charles Dwight Willard and Mary McGregor. Charles Dwight Willard (1860-1914), journalist and political reformer, was an 1883 graduate of the University of Michigan, worked on the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Herald, and was author of The Fall of Ulysses - An Elephant Story (1912), The Herald's History of Los Angeles City (1901), and other books. In 1920 Florence and her husband, Harold Swayne Ryerson, worked in the manufacture of ladies' clothes. Florence was also a stage actress and wrote short stories for magazines.

In 1926, Florence Ryerson joined Paramount Pictures to work on silent film scripts, among them Adam and Evil and Wickedness Preferred. Later sound films she wrote include the Fu Manchu and Philo Vance series.

She was co-author of the screenplay for The Wizard of Oz, along with frequent collaborator Edgar Allan Woolf and British author Noel Langley. Both Ryerson and Woolf created the Wizard's Kansas counterpart, Professor Marvel.