Dan Totheroh

Born Webster Daniel Totheroh in California in 1894, he became an American author, playwright, and screenwriter whose work stayed closely tied to the theater for much of his life. Archival and reference sources describe him as active on the professional stage from an early age, with roots in the San Francisco and Marin County area.

In the 1920s and 1930s, he built a reputation as a playwright and then expanded into screenwriting. He is associated with works including The Count of Monte Cristo and Deep Valley, and theater catalogs and film references show how comfortably he moved between stage material, fiction, and studio-era film projects.

Totheroh died in 1976. Surviving archival collections of his papers and portraits suggest a long, varied career that connected regional theater, Broadway-era playwriting, and Hollywood writing.