Post contributed by Toppan Rare Books Librarian Mary Beth Brown

While searching for materials on lobbyist and writer Olga Moore Arnold (1900–1981), I was surprised to find an IMDB page for Arnold that included four projects—three writing and one acting—that she was attached to. Most of the biographic information surrounding Arnold, including her obituary, lists her two books and numerous short stories, but there is no mention of any connections she had with the entertainment industry. The bio listed on the IMDB page indicated that this is the Olga Moore I was looking for, but the acting project involved an Australian woman also named Olga Moore, erroneously indicating they are one and the same. The credits for “You Can’t Beat Love” and two television episodes, however, belong to the Wyoming native Olga Moore Arnold whose papers are part of the Barratt Family Papers at the AHC.¹

As an archivist and historian, rabbit holes of research are not uncommon, and wondering how Arnold might also fit in with some of the AHC entertainment collections led to some very interesting finds and additions to Arnold’s biography, particularly involving her writing career and Hollywood.

In most published biographies and in her 1981 obituaries, Olga Moore Arnold’s career as a lobbyist and writer are mentioned and occasionally there will be mention of her short stories. What is left out is how voluminous her short story career was. Although there is not an exact number of the short stories she wrote, she listed 30 articles and short stories as being published during the period 1928 through 1941 on her resume.

One of the best sources for information on her writing career is the University of Wyoming’s student newspaper, The Branding Iron, which faithfully followed her publishing career. Moore, a UW alum, had been one of the first female editors of the publication and stayed involved with the campus community while her husband, Carl Arnold, was the head of the law school.

In 1935, the paper wrote that she “probably is Wyoming’s best known and most popular short story writer.”² Her stories were “nationally praised for their descriptions of Wyoming life, and their vivid creation of characters.”³ Her conversational style of writing and focus on everyday life from a woman’s perspective reminded me of Erma Bombeck. She did not hesitate to make light of the situations she found herself in or look at life with a sarcastic bent. Her writings were published in many of the popular magazines and newspapers of the day and attracted enough attention that several were optioned for projects in Hollywood.

The November 14,1936 issue of Liberty, a weekly magazine, included a story titled “Quintuplets to You” by Olga Moore. The story is written as a conversation, with Mills, the narrator, writing letters to a man named Bill. Mills relates how he flippantly entered the town’s mayoral race but soon became enmeshed into a town scandal involving the mayor and the police chief. Meanwhile Mills trades barbs with a woman named Judy Allen, the governor’s daughter, who works with the opposition. This interesting take on a lighthearted romance mixed with a small-town scandal was then adapted into a screen treatment by Maxwell Shane in 1936. The movie resulting from the short story, You Can’t Beat Love, was released on June 25, 1937, and starred Jean Fontaine and Preston Foster.

Olga Moore also had a short story called “Secretary in Name Only” that was optioned for a nationally broadcast radio show in March 1939. The story was presented as a play and starred actor Charles Boyer. The Barratt Family Papers includes an autographed photograph of Boyer, who congratulates Olga on “such a fine story.”⁴ Cheyenne’s paper, the Wyoming Eagle, reported on the play and provides that the original short story ran in the women’s magazine The Delineator. Moore had numerous short stories published in this magazine and while I was able to locate dates of publications for several of these, I have not been able to find the articles.

Another publication listed on Arnold’s resume and in the IMDB entry is a radio play. Unfortunately, the title of the radio play is not known as of this time. On January 3, 1949, the first episode for the NBC television show Colgate Theatre, titled “Fancy Meeting You Here,” aired. The episode was written by Olga Moore and William L. Stewart. Because many of her short stories were published, it is possible to find them online; however, I have not been able to locate this one.

Even Olga herself kept quiet about her Hollywood accomplishments. One of her manuscripts in the AHC is titled “My Fling with Fame (Almost)” with a draft title “My Short Happy Life on Television.” Hoping it was focused on her adaptations that were made into Hollywood productions, I was a little disappointed to realize it was instead about her publicity tour for her memoir I’ll Meet You in the Lobby and her hesitation to be in the spotlight. She also did not mention this area of her writing in her memoir, instead focusing on her lobbying work alongside her husband for the university and her “lobbying efforts”⁵ while a housewife. Her writing was known far beyond Wyoming, but today her work has been somewhat forgotten by contemporary readers. But one thing remains true: her stories about Wyoming and her life have timeless aspects that still resonate in many ways today.

1. “Olga Moore.” IMDB. Accessed September 28, 2026, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0601693/. ↩︎
2. The Branding Iron, February 28, 1935. ↩︎
3. The Branding Iron, February 18, 1937. ↩︎
4. Wyoming Eagle, March 8, 1939. ↩︎
5. Her lobbying career and her definition of what being a lobbyist entailed is a whole other blog post. ↩︎