Myles Connolly

Myles Connolly (October 7, 1897 – July 15, 1964) was an American writer and a Hollywood screenwriter/producer.

Biography Myles Connolly was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts (a neighborhood-suburb of Boston) in 1897. Connolly received his college preparatory education at Boston Latin School and then graduated as salutatorian from Boston College in 1918. After serving one year in the U.S. Navy during World War I, Connolly worked as a newspaper reporter with The Boston Post. For many years, Connolly was a frequent contributor of verse and short stories to national magazines; in 1928 he served on the first board of directors of the Catholic Book Club. Even so, in his tenure as magazine editor, the magazine published 5 original articles by G.K. Chesterton and 10 original articles by Hilaire Belloc. When the Catholic Church in Mexico was persecuted during the imposition of Calles Law and Knights of Columbus leadership spoke out against the Mexican government as well as against the silence of the U.S. government, Columbia editor Connolly boldly produced a November 1926 issue cover with Knights carrying banners declaring "Liberty" and "The Red Peril of Mexico". Their daughter, Mary, also became a nun and Mrs. Connolly had a nephew who was a priest. In addition to their daughter Mary, Myles and Agnes had four other children: Kevin, Terrence, Myles Jr. and Ann. He began his work at FBO as a film producer in the 1929 Frank Craven and Richard Rosson comedy The Very Idea. FBO was purchased by RCA to become RKO studios in 1930. At RKO, Connolly served as associate producer for that studio's earliest Wheeler & Woolsey vehicles. In 1933, his work as a screenwriter-producer of dramatic films was introduced with The Right to Romance.

Though Connolly chided Capra for turning out frivolities when he thought Capra could produce thought provoking pieces, Connolly did not necessarily follow his own advice. He produced numerous pieces of escapist entertainment, such as the Tarzan pictures of the 1940s.

Myles Connolly helped write and produce over forty films. His last screenwriting credit was MGM's musical biography of Hans Christian Andersen with Danny Kaye (1952).

Connolly died following complications from open-heart surgery at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California in 1964 at the age of 66 years.

Novelist Connolly wrote and published several Roman Catholic parable novels, including Mr. Blue (originally published in 1928 by the Macmillan Company and then reprinted). Although Connolly wrote additional novels, nothing came as close in popularity as Mr. Blue, which he wrote at the age of 27 years. The book remained in print for 60 years and, in spite of his steady and respectable film career, remained his most lasting legacy. In 2016, Mr. Blue was printed again. This time, the text was published as a Cluny Media classic with Stephen Mirarchi, a professor of literature at Benedictine College in Kansas, writing the introduction and annotation of the text. In a 2017 interview with Kathryn Jean Lopez of the online news magazine Crux Now, Mirarchi explained that Mr. Blue did not sell very well when it was first published. Mirarchi and Lopez called the book a "flop". It only sold 70 copies in its first year of publication (which was before the 1929 Stock Market crash). When Dorothy Day and her work lifting up the poor with the Catholic Worker Movement began, however, "Americans started to see that there really were people like Blue in the world; he wasn't just some fanciful ideal". Connolly is also credited with co-writer Jean Holloway as Screenwriter for the 1946 MGM film, Till the Clouds Roll By. While Myles Connolly collaborated with Frank Capra on State of the Union (1948) and Here Comes the Groom (1951), he was also an uncredited contributor to the Capra films Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It's a Wonderful Life and Harvey. 1n 2001, he posthumously shared the nomination for a 1951 Retro-Hugo award (Best Dramatic Presentation) for the screenplay of Harvey. In 1952, he was nominated for the Best Written American Musical award by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) for Here Comes the Groom. Productions included Jazz Heaven (1929), Hook Line and Sinker (1930), The Sin Ship (1931), The Right to Romance, and It Happened in Hollywood (1937).

Publications Mr. Blue, 1928, dedicated to wife Agnes The Bump on Brannigan's Head, 1950, dedicated to wife Agnes Dan England and the Noonday Devil, 1951, dedicated to sons Terrence, Myles Jr., and Kevin The Reason for Ann, 1953, dedicated to daughter Ann Three Who Ventured, 1958, dedicated to daughter Mary