Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf
Langley 1911–1980 · Ryerson 1892–1965 · Woolf 1881–1943 · credited screenwriters, The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The three writers who share the screen credit on MGM’s The Wizard of Oz. Noel Langley, a South African-born novelist and playwright, delivered the first adaptation and is generally credited with reshaping Baum’s book for the screen; Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf were brought in afterwards to rewrite, and the finished card reads “Screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf.” A long list of uncredited hands — among them Irving Brecher, Herbert Fields, Samuel Hoffenstein and lyricist Yip Harburg — also passed through the script, so no single writer can honestly be named as the author of this particular sentence.