Mary C. McCall, Jr.

Biography

Mary C. McCall, Jr. (April 4, 1904, New York, New York – April 3, 1986, Los Angeles, California) was a writer best known for her screenwriting. She was the first woman president of the Writers Guild of America, serving from 1942–44 and 1951-52. Born in 1904, McCall was a graduate of Vassar College and Trinity College, Dublin. She began writing advertising copy and fiction after graduation. McCall got into the film industry when Warner Bros. hired her to help with the screenplay of the film Scarlet Dawn (1932), based on her novel Revolt. Among her screen credits are the 1935 film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, starring James Cagney as Puck, The Fighting Sullivans, and Mr. Belvedere Goes to College. She also wrote or co-wrote eight of the ten films in the Maisie series. In the late 1930s, she was one of the founders of the Screen Writers Guild. In the 1950s and 1960s, she branched out into television, being credited with four episodes of The Millionaire and one each of Sea Hunt, I Dream of Jeannie, and Gilligan's Island, among others. A number of her stories were published in such magazines as Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Collier's, and The Saturday Evening Post from the 1930s to the 1950s. McCall was one of many who clashed with the conservative Motion Picture Alliance. On July 27, 1954, she had to defend herself in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee against reports that she was a communist sympathizer. She was completely exonerated by the separate California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities of the General Research Committee in its report to the California Senate. Mary C. McCall, Jr. died of "complications of cancer" at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital, one day shy of her 82nd birthday. She was survived by two sons and two daughters. She was the first recipient of the Writers Guild's Valentine Davies Award in 1962. In 1985, she also received the Guild's Edmund J. North Award.