Wendell Mayes

Who was Wendell Mayes?

Wendell Mayes was a Hollywood screenwriter. His father Von Mayes was a lawyer and his mother Irene was a teacher.

Mayes began as an actor. An episode he wrote for the "Kraft Television Theatre" received a good review in a Los Angeles newspaper and Billy Wilder hired him to work on the script to the film The Spirit of St. Louis. That was his first credit in a successful screenwriting career.

For Anatomy of a Murder, Mayes received a New York Film Critics Circle Award for best screenplay in 1959 and an Oscar nomination in 1960. It is claimed to be one of the best trial movies of all time. Mayes died of cancer at the age of 72.

His screenwriting credits included:

⁕The Spirit of St. Louis, Warner Brothers, 1957

⁕The Enemy Below, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1957

⁕The Way to the Gold, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1957

⁕From Hell to Texas, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1958

⁕The Hunters, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1958

⁕The Hanging Tree, Warner Brothers, 1959

⁕Anatomy of a Murder, Columbia, 1959

⁕North to Alaska, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1960