Born June 23, 1903 in New York, New Yo0rk, Anthony Veiller was the son of Oscar nominated actress, Margaret Wycherly, and her husband, playwright Bayard Veiller.

Veiller was a journalist, publicist, and stage manager prior to moving to Hollywood in 1930. He married literary agent Laura Kerr in 1934 with whom he would have a daughter born in 1936. Under contract to RKO from 1934 through 1937 as both a writer and producer, his screenplays included those for Break of Hearts, Star of Midnight, The Ex-Mrs. Bradford, Swing Time (contributing writer only), A Woman Rebels, Winterset, and Stage Door, receiving an Oscar nomination for the latter along with Morrie Ryskind.

One of Veiller’s best screenplays for RKO was Gunga Din which was not produced until 1939. In the U.S. Army during World War II, he was a major in the film office where he worked with Frank Capra on four Why We Fight documentaries. He also collaborated with the British on two of their documentaries including 1944’s Tunisian Victory.

Back in Hollywood after the war, Veiller was divorced from Kerr in 1945, the year he wrote the screenplay for the widely panned Adventure. He rebounded with two major successes in 1946, Orson Welles’ The Stranger and Robert Siodmak’s The Killers, earning an Oscar nomination for the latter. That film also earned him an Edgar Allan Poe award for Best Picture which he shared with Siodamak and producer Mark Hellinger.

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Born October 16, 1881 in London, England to a Canadian doctor and his American wife, Margaret Lovett De Wolfe, known professionally as Margaret Wycherly, had a long and distinguished career on the Broadway stage, but is probably best remembered for two iconic film roles as the very different mothers of screen legends Gary Cooper and James Cagney.

Wycherly married Brooklyn born writer Bayard Veiller in 1901 when she was just 19 years old. Her son, Anthony Veiller, was born in 1903. The younger Veiller would become an even more successful writer than his father and earn two Oscar nominations to his mother’s one.

Wycherly made her Broadway debut as a producer of William Butler Yeats revivals in 1905. She quickly emerged as a major star headlining such hits as 1907’s The Primrose Path, 1908’s Candida, 1910’s The Blue Bird and 1912’s The Fight, which she made into a film in 1915. It would be her only film until 1929’s The Thirteenth Chair, the Broadway version of which she starred in in 1916. Both plays were written by Bayard Veiller whom she would divorce in 1922.

Between her first and second films, Wycherly appeared regularly on Broadway, starring in such plays as 1920’s Jane Clegg, 1922’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1923’s The Adding Machine, 1925’s The Devil to Pay, and 1928’s Strange Interlude. She returned to Broadway after filming The Thirteenth Chair to star in 1932’s Another Language and 1933’s Tobacco Road before making another film, 1934’s Midnight.

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