Robert Lively

Robert Dawson Lively

Early life and career Born in Hinton, West Virginia on February 3, 1905, but raised primarily in Charleston, In the week following his death, it was noted that Lively's music career had begun with his work as a choir boy in a Charleston church.

In the fall of 1935, their original play, a backstage musical / murder mystery titled Death in the Dressing Room, debuted over the BBC.

In 1937, Laidlaw and Lively signed a four-year contract with Grand National Pictures, terms of which included a minimum of four scripts a year, with the option of "work[ing] for others in between GN assignments." Unfortunately for all parties concerned, GN's bold projection may have succeeded, if at all, only in hastening L&L's demise. In any event, Personal Secretary, the last of three scripts the team managed to crank out almost within the allotted one-year window, proved to be the final credit in Laidlaw's short-lived screenwriting career.

Personal life and death By no later than March 1928, Lively had married his then fellow performer and future writing partner, Betty Laidlaw.,

On April 4, 1943, aged 38 and said to residing "in a New York hotel" (or, more specifically, "his apartment" at Manhattan's Hotel Mansfield ), Lively died in his bed, his death attributed to "a heart disease".

Selected filmography Enlighten Thy Daughter, 1934 (additional dialogue) Inside Information, 1934 (screenplay) The Marriage Bargain, 1935 Custer's Last Stand, 1936 (story dialogue) The Black Coin, 1936 (adaptation and screenplay) Sandflow, 1937 (songs: "Sandflow" and "We Are the Rangers") Rhythm Racketeer, 1937 (story) The Girl Said No, 1937 Tough to Handle, 1937 (adaptation) Danger on the Air, 1938 (screenplay) Personal Secretary, 1938 (story "The Comet") The Great Victor Herbert, 1939 (screenplay / story) Isle of Destiny, 1940 (screenplay) The Hard-Boiled Canary, 1941 (story and screenplay)