Ryskind earned credits for script and lyric writing, and directing Broadway theatrical productions, and Hollywood motion pictures scripts from 1927 to 1945. He collaborated with George S. Kaufman on several Broadway hits. Ryskind wrote or co-wrote several Marx Brothers theatrical and motion picture screenplays including the script and lyrics for Broadway musical Animal Crackers (1929) and wrote the script for Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), and A Night at the Opera (1935).

In 1933, he earned a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the Broadway production Of Thee I Sing, a musical written in collaboration with composer George Gershwin. Ryskind was twice nominated for an Academy Award for his part in writing the films My Man Godfrey (1936) and Stage Door (1937).

Ryskind attended Columbia University but did not graduate. He was suspended shortly before he was due to graduate after he called university president Nicholas Murray Butler "Czar Nick" in the pages of the humor magazine Jester in 1917. Ryskind was criticizing Butler for refusing to allow Count Nikolai Tolstoy, nephew of Leo Tolstoy, to speak on campus.

His politics moved to the right as he aged. For many years he had been a member of the Socialist Party of America, but left with the party's "old guard" faction led by Louis Waldman. In 1940 he opposed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's pursuit of a third term. Ryskind abandoned the Democratic Party, and wrote the campaign song for that year's Republican Party presidential nominee Wendell Willkie. About this time, he became a friend of anti-Communist figures Max Eastman and Ayn Rand.

Later, he appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities as a friendly witness. Ryskind never sold another script after that appearance, although there is no evidence of any organized campaign against "friendly witnesses".

Ryskind went on to promote conservatism through a feature column in the Hearst newspaper, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. He joined the John Birch Society, briefly, but soon disassociated himself from the group when they began to claim that Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower were part of the Soviet conspiracy.

His son, Allan H. Ryskind, was the longtime editor of the conservative Washington weekly Human Events. His autobiography, I Shot an Elephant in My Pajamas: The Morrie Ryskind Story, details his adventures from Broadway to Hollywood, as well as his conversion to conservative politics.

• George Kaufman et al., Kaufman & Co.: Broadway Comedies, Laurence Maslon, ed. (New York: The Library of America, 2004) ISBN 1-931082-67-7; includes The Royal Family (1927, with Edna Ferber)
• Animal Crackers (1928, with Marx Bros.)
• June Moon (1929, with Ring Lardner)
• Once in a Lifetime (1930, with Moss Hart)
• Of Thee I Sing (1931, with Ira Gershwin)
• You Can't Take it With You (1936, with Moss Hart)
• Dinner at Eight (1932, with Edna Ferber)
• Stage Door (1936, with Edna Ferber)
• The Man Who Came To Dinner (1939, with Moss Hart)

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