Educated in Scotland, Darling moved to the U.S. around WWI and landed work as a freelance writer, occasionally working for newspapers. He moved to Hollywood in 1918 and became a scenario writer for Christie Studios. He gradually gained a reputation as something of an extremely prolific hack screen writer. By the 1940's he was largely employed by Universal and today is blamed by film buffs for scripting several of the worst Laurel and Hardy features.