Winifred Dunn — Biographical Sketch (1927) 🇺🇸

An isolated childhood spent on an island at Squirrel Lake, Wis., did not hamper Winifred Dunn in her ambition to become a writer. Squirrel Lake is far removed from Hollywood, but Miss Dunn makes her home at the latter place now and is one of the leading scenarists out that way.

At the early age of six Miss Dunn made up her mind to be a writer, as she was related to a family of writers on her mother’s side, and she also boasts a long line of British barristers and statesmen on her father’s side, among them Lord Charles Russell, Chief Justice of England from 1894 to 1900.

There are few fictionists of any description who are fortunate enough to have their initial effort accepted, but Miss Dunn is one of these. She submitted a story to the Selig Polyscope Company, and it was promptly accepted, as were others that followed.

Miss Dunn was then seized with the urge to reform the world, via the screen, and wrote “And the Children Pay.” It stirred several prominent Chicago reformers and they organized a company to produce it. After she wrote “The Red Viper,” an Americanization picture endorsed by the late Theodore Roosevelt, she discovered that the world did not want to be reformed, so she engaged in editing discarded pictures, transferring them from shelf to screen.

Following that Miss Dunn went to the Coast with Sawyer & Lubin as feature writer, then to Robertson-Cole, writing for Pauline Frederick. Her real success started when she joined the old Metro studios as scenario editor and title writer, writing scripts and titles for such pictures as “The Eagle’s Feather,” “Along Came Ruth,” “The Man Life Passed By,” “Happiness,” “The Beauty Prize,” and “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.”

An engagement with Mary Pickford followed, where she wrote “Sparrows.” Then came “Twinkletoes” for Colleen Moore, “Lonesome Ladies” for Louis Stone [Lewis Stone] and Anna Q. Nilsson, “The Drop Kick” and “The Patent Leather Kid” for Richard Barthelmess. She is free-lancing now and her services are much in demand.

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Winifred Dunn

Writer

Recent Releases

• Sparrows
• Twinkletoes
• The Drop Kick
• The Patent Leather Kid

Now in preparation:

• “Head of the House of Coome” and
• “Robin” by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

First National Production

Management Edward Small Co.

Collection: Motion Picture News, October 1927 (Booking Guide and Studio Directory)