Edgar Allan Woolf ✝

Edgar Allan Woolf (April 25, 1881 – December 9, 1943) was an American lyricist, playwright, and screenwriter. He is best known as the co-author of the script for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Woolf was the son of Albert E. Woolf, a feather works employee, a manufacturer of disinfectant and an inventor of electrical devices, and Rosamond Wimpfheimer Woolf. Woolf attended City College of New York and Columbia University, graduating from the latter with an A.B. in 1901. He wrote the annual Varsity Show, The Mischief Maker, in his senior year. Woolf joined the Murray Hill Stock Company as an actor, and played in New York City with it for several years, but soon was writing sketches and plays for vaudeville star Pat Rooney (1880-1962) and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. One of the better-known plays Woolf wrote for Pat Rooney was "Wings of Smoke." He also wrote, in collaboration with Jerome Kern, the comic opera, "Head over Heels," in which Mitzi Hajos starred. Woolf was a prolific writer and produced many sketches for vaudeville.