Biography

Date of Death 4 October1941, Santa Monica, California  (cerebral hemorrhage) One the more prolific and fast working screenwriters in Hollywood. He once completed ten five-reel films in ten-weeks. Between 1918 and 1925 he turned out one hundred full-length films. Had been the editor of The Pittsburgh Leader and The New York Evening Sun. Was working for the publicity department of an Eastern US film company when he decided to try his hand at scenario writing. His father, Maurice Frederick Cunningham (c.1861-1937), was a building contractor who had built many of the Hollywood studios constructed in the early 1920s. Never recovered from a stroke he suffered while working on the film Union Pacific (1939).