Life
Stallings was born Laurence Tucker Stallings in Macon, Georgia to Larkin Tucker Stallings, a bank clerk, and Aurora Brooks Stallings, a homemaker and avid reader who inspired her son's love of literature. He entered Wake Forest University in North Carolina in 1912 and became the editor of the campus literary magazine, the Old Gold and Black.
He met Helen Poteat while at Wake Forest. She was the daughter of daughter of Dr. William Louis Poteat, the university president, and the sister of Stallings's classics professor. They were sweethearts throughout their school years. He graduated from Wake Forest College in 1916, and got a job writing advertising copy for a local recruiting office. He was so convinced by his own prose, that he joined the United States Marine Reserve himself in 1917. He was assigned to active duty and arrived in France in time to participate in the fighting at Château-Thierry, where he was wounded in the leg in the Battle of Belleau Wood. After begging the doctors not to amputate, he came home to spend two painful years recuperating (He later damaged it with a fall on the ice, and it was amputated in 1922. Many years later he had to have his remaining leg amputated as well). After finishing his convalescence, Stallings and Poteat married on March 8, 1919; they had two daughters, Sylvia (born 1926) and Diana (born 1931), before divorcing in 1936.
The following year he married Louise St. Leger Vance, his secretary at Fox Studios. They had two children, Laurence, Jr. (born 1939) and Sally (born 1941). Stallings died of a heart attack in Pacific Palisades, California. He was buried with full military honors at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in Point Loma near San Diego.
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