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A study of the "eastern" writer in Hollywood in the 1930's

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A study of the "eastern" writer in Hollywood in the 1930's

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73-31,388
SCHULTHEISS, John Edward, 1942-
A STUDY OF THE ' 'EASTERN" MITER IN
HOLLYWOOD IN THE 1930's.
University of Southern California, Ph.D.,
1973
Theater
University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan
(§) Copyright by
John Edward Schultheiss
1973
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED.
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A STUDY OF THE "EASTERN" WRITER
IN HOLLYWOOD IN THE 1930's
by
John Edward Schultheiss
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Communication)
August 1973
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UNIVERSITY O F SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. CALI FORNIA 90007
This dissertation, w ritte n by
J©_hP...Edward__Schulth ........
under the d ire ction o f h ± s ... D issertation Com
mittee, and approved by a ll its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in p a rtia l fu lfillm e n t of requirements of
the degree o f
D O C T O R O F P H IL O S O P H Y
>MMITTEE
J S . 3 . 3 .
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION ...................................... 1
II. PRELUDE: THE EASTERN WRITER IN A
YOUNG HOLLYWOOD................................. 12
III. THE SECOND COMING OF THE EASTERN WRITER .... 29
IV. THE HOLLYWOOD "SYSTEM" ........................... 51
V. ALIENATION AND CONFORMITY: THE INTELLECTUAL
CONFRONTS FINANCIAL SUCCESS ................... 110
VI. THE DRAMATISTS.................................... 161
VII. THE NOVELISTS, THE POETS, AND O T H E R S .......... 254
VIII. CONCLUSION— A DEFENSE OF HOLLYWOOD............ 329
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................ 345
APPENDIXES
Appendix A. The Eastern Writer in Hollywood .... 363
Appendix B. Eastern Writer Academy Award
Nominations and Winners ............... 365
Appendix C. Eastern Writer Filmographies ......... 372
ii
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C H A P T E R I
INTRODUCTION
Almost from its inception, Hollywood— the American
motion picture industry— has sought to employ well-known
writers for the production of original screen stories and
screenplays. It was long hoped that not only would the
resulting films benefit financially from the writers' estab
lished literary prestige, but that the intrinsic quality of
the art form would be augmented as well.
The addition of the dimension of sound to the silent
motion picture caused a drastic shift in focus from dynamic,
fluid cinema to the increased verbalization of filmed sto
ries in the late 1920's and early 1930's. This artistic
realignment, while devastating to the technicians then pres
ent in Hollywood, was particularly compatible with the word-
oriented men in literary fields. It soon precipitated a
spectacular movement to Hollywood of the best-known writers
in America. The ensuing era trembled with cinematic and
sociological importance, because never before had there been
concentrated in any artistic arena in this country so many
writers and intellectuals for any single purpose. Dramatist
and screenwriter Ben Hecht remarked about this phenomenon:
1
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2
"Once in Hollywood, within a two-mile radius you could find
two-thirds of the great talent of the world. Poets and
painters and philosophers. Lured here by the gold."1
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the
employment of selected so-called "Eastern" writers (also
called the "New York school" of screenwriters) by the Holly
wood studios. (The term "Eastern" writer is used in recog
nition of the fact that the Eastern seaboard, particularly
New York and Boston, has been traditionally thought of as
metonymical representation of America's literary establish
ment.) The study is concerned with those writers who had
their literary origins and developed their reputations in
non-movie fields, including those noted British and European
authors whom the studios imported to work in various film
writing capacities. The focus is on those professional
writers who had established, or were in the embryonic stages
of establishing literary reputations either as novelists,
dramatists, short story writers, poets, or critics.
The primary concern of the study is the investiga
tion of the validity or speciousness of the established
attitude (especially of "purist" Eastern critics like Edmund
Wilson and George Jean Nathan) that Hollywood is the de
stroyer of literary talent. The conviction that writers who
"sold out" to Hollywood lost their creative energy and
artistic abilities is so widely accepted, that a major
effort has been directed toward putting this attitude into
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3
proper perspective. Accordingly, the refutation of the
"Hollywood-as-destroyer" canard is the central thrust of
this work.2
In addition, specific aspects of the Hollywood
environment which significantly influenced the tangible
qualities of the writers' employment are noted. But no
attempt has been made to capture the unique spiritual and
aesthetic nature of the literary excellence possessed by the
disparate writers. Nor was there any intention to distill
the flamboyant essence of the studio atmosphere (as Ben
Hecht was able to do in A Child of the Century) which the
writers faced in the 1930's. The study is designed as a
clinical, dispassionate, virtually statistical compilation
ofnever-before anthologized expository passages and writer
comments (together with a catalogue of literary and filmic
works produced by individual authors), selected to illumi
nate general writer attitudes toward their movie employment,
and to exculpate Hollywood for responsibility in the
diminution of writers' artistic creativity.
The first half of the study concerns the writers'
relationship with the peculiar structure and operation of
the Hollywood studios: the general position of the writers
and how they were treated within the studio hierarchical
framework; the pervasive studio attitudes and artistic
points-of-view toward the writers' creative endeavors— and,
conversely, the views of selected writers toward their
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employment by the Elollywood movie companies, and toward the
screen stories, adaptations, and screenplays on which they
worked.
The second half concerns the impact of film-writing
employment on the writers' independent (non-cinematic) lit
erary desires, potential, and productivity: whether
selected writers remained as fertile in their non-movie
writing as they had been before the Hollywood employment;
whether there was any impairment of the literary quality of
the independent writing because of prolonged exposure to or
assimilation of the unique artistic requirements of motion
picture production.
I make no attempt at comprehensiveness through a
career analysis of every Eastern writer concerned in a mi
gration West which easily involved close to 200 noteworthy
personalities. Instead, writers were selected for analysis
who seemed to typify the following three arbitrary catego
ries: (1) those who had only momentary confrontation with
studio employment, and who departed almost immediately;
(2) those who stayed, became firmly rooted in the Hollywood
environment, and virtually stopped writing for magazine and
book publishers; and (3) those who maintained an active and
artful literary productivity of their own while accepting
occasional jobs with the Hollywood studios.
The most significant of the several Hollywood
flirtations with the Eastern intellectual occurred in the
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5
early sound-film period (roughly the 1930's), and the major
effort of this study will concern those years. In order to
evaluate the employment and involvement of the imported
author within a broader historical framework, however, I
give some background on Sam Goldwyn's earlier famous experi
ment with "The Eminent Authors." And its influence on other
studios. This ambitious undertaking was initiated in 1919
and fizzled out in the early 1920's, but was a precedent-
setting and characteristically flamboyant prelude to the
massive influx of creative talent which overwhelmed Holly
wood less than ten years later.
While the number of writers involved in both the
silent and sound eras is too large for an exhaustive exami
nation of each career, the Eastern screenwriter filmogra
phies which are appended represent a concerned attempt to
formulate a comprehensive film credits list of those writers
who came to Hollywood from other literary sectors. With the
exception of a few writers, whose filmographies were
included in a general list of Hollywood screenwriters in the
Winter, 19 70-71, issue of Film Comment magazine, such a
compilation is a first of its kind. A list of Eastern
writer Academy Award nominations and winners is also
included.
There is no single source for the complete screen-
writing credits of writers who worked in Hollywood. The
most accurate film reference work available is The American
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6
Film Institute Catalog; Feature Films 1921-30, but its use
for this study is limited because the major writer influx
did not occur until the early 1930's. The best available
source for the sound era is Who Wrote the Movie, but this
listing does not begin until 1936', is riddled with inaccu
racies, and is difficult to use because "source material"
credits are mingled with actual screen credits whether an
author actually performed a writing function on a film or
not. Thus, the richest period for the Eastern-writer pres
ence in Hollywood (1931-1935) is not covered by any formally
compiled reference work. These gaps had to be filled in
through recourse to the annual listings in the Film Daily
yearbooks and the superb newspaper clipping and writer
credits files at the library of the Academy of Motion Pic
ture Arts and Sciences. In any case, the appended Eastern-
writer filmographies represent reference material unavail
able in any other source.
The difficulty in finding objective studies of the
role of the writer in the Hollywood studios is directly
related to the fact that the writer was considered a secon
dary entity in the production of motion pictures. The
writer, almost always shackled by anonymity or his co-work
ers' indifference, usually had completed his contribution to
the film before the arrival of the director, cast, or crew
on the set. And his work was always subject to the caprice
of the producer or director, neither of whom often made an
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attempt to preserve the integrity of the writer's original
conception. Thus, lacking the glamour, and the on-the-set
presence and flamboyance of the director and his star per
formers, the writer-figure only infrequently has captured
the interest of general readership— and only the peripheral
concern of film scholars.
In the absence of lengthy, in-depth research on the
overall phenomenon of the Eastern-writer Hollywood movement,
our available material is generally restricted to isolated
passages in individual biographies and autobiographies, mem
oirs, periodical articles, and newspaper columns on specific
writers. (General film history surveys have treated the
occurrence in only the most superficial fashion.) The col
lected letters of involved writers such as Eric Knight, Ray
mond Chandler, and F. Scott Fitzgerald are especially valu
able. There is also a rather bulky amount of fictionalized
literary material contained in novels and short stories and
plays of the "Hollywood" sub-genre, which were employed as
cathartic outlets for the grief of writers who felt misused
by the system. This latter material is extremely useful in
observing how the writers1 involvements in the Hollywood
milieu manifested themselves in their literary responses to
it.
Superb miscellaneous sources for the Hollywood novel
material (which occupies important background for the dis
cussion of the Hollywood system in Chapter IV) are well-
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researched unpublished Ph.D. dissertations by Carolyn See
and Virgil L. Lokke; and an independent study by Jonas
Spatz. I use the theater criticism of George Jean Nathan
extensively to establish the foundation for the anti-Holly
wood attitude, against which the study develops its main
thesis.
Through analysis of the literature, an attempt has
been made to view the Eastern writer within the context of
the unique organizational and hierarchical structure through
which the film studios of the time functioned. A major
assumption of this study is that only through an understand
ing of the vicissitudes and artistic ramifications of the
Hollywood "studio system" does one begin to appreciate the
nature of the writer's struggle.
In order to gain some insight into the chemistry of
a staggeringly complex and protean phenomenon (as the pat
terns vary from writer to writer, and from memory to mem
ory) , I felt it necessary to explore the motivations which
triggered the writer deluge, a s much as it is ever possible
to formulate generalities which are applicable to various
and diverse personalities, an attempt has been made to
relate the traditional concept of the struggling intellec
tual looking for a profitable forum for his ideas with the
writers' move to Hollywood. In order to impose some control
and workable structure on a situation of such complexity,
the conditions of employment and the motivational framework
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9
and the evaluations of artistic productivity are all dis
cussed in terms of writers who fall into the three divisions
mentioned before: (1) those who left almost immediately
after initial confrontation, (2) those who abandoned inde
pendent writing in favor of the Hollywood assignments, and
(3) those who were able to remain fertile in their non-movie
writing, while accepting regular jobs with the studios.
Finally, perhaps the major and most difficult meth
odological task has been to evaluate whether there was any
severe diminishing of selected writers' literary potential
and productivity because of their screenwriting activities.
I derive judgments of the effect of Hollywood on these
writers through a critical inspection of specific works of
literature which the writers in question produced before and
after and during their Hollywood employment. The evalua
tions and conclusions are necessarily subjective (although
supplementary critical reviews of their literary works by
contemporary critics have been noted), but in many in
stances, depending on an individual writer's immersion into
the Hollywood milieu, it is less significant that what he
wrote was of high quality, than that he wrote anything at
all. In addition to reading the literature, a majority of
the films on which selected writers worked were viewed, in
order to isolate and evaluate the contributions made by the
writers in that medium. In the difficult area of trying to
judge the writer's contribution in a basically collaborative
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art form, certain criteria have been useful in ascribing
creative credit: (1) the association of a writer with a
number of excellent films, (2) the emergence of a common
style in films with different directors and actors, and
(3) the reception of sole writing credit on several films
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1 1
NOTES
1 Ben Hecht, quoted in Cecil Smith, "Ben Hecht
Returns, Rips Hollywood Apart," Los Angeles Times,
August 26, 1956.
2A corollary to this attitude exists in the preju
dice which is often expressed by Eastern critics (Nathan,
Mencken, Wilson, and others) toward book writers who also
work in Hollywood. Often a literary work is condescendingly
reviewed as an inferior product because of its author's
"base" associations. Ben Hecht feels he has been tainted in
the critics' eyes by his Hollywood screenwriting:
"I can understand the literary critic's shyness
toward me. it is difficult to praise a novelist or a
thinker who keeps popping up as the author of innumer
able movie melodramas. It is like writing about the
virtues of a preacher who keeps carelessly getting him
self arrested in bordellos.
"The drama critics under whose attention I have come
from time to time are in a similar dilemma. They are
fierce fellows who have never tasted defeat in the
shooting gallery which is their battlefield. And they
are never so fierce as when confronted by a man of
letters with a Hollywood address. There is no critic
so soupy-minded he does not feel hotly superior to the
creations of the movie capital." (A Child of the
Century [New York: New American Library, 1954], p. 8.)
Novelist Irwin Blacker, in a recent interview, says
that his former editor, Donald Friede, at World Publishing
Company insisted that no mention be made on the jackets of
any of his books that Blacker was connected with film pro
duction, lest his literary works be reviewed by "motion pic
ture s tandards."
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C H A P T E R I I
PRELUDE: THE EASTERN WRITER IN
A YOUNG HOLLYWOOD
In our focusing on that stage in the development of
the cinematic art from which germinated the first signifi
cant Eastern writer movement, the following polemic of Ben
Jonson against Inigo Jones is paradoxically representative
of the orientation of the earliest motion pictures. It
might well be the ironic anger of a screenwriter against a
director or producer primarily concerned with visual values:
. . . 0 Showes! Showes! Mighty Showes!
The Eloquence of Masques i What need of prose
Or Verse, or Sense t'express Immortall you?
You are the Spectacles of State! "Tis true
Court Hieroglyphicks! and all Artes affoord
In the mere perspective of an Inch board!
You aske noe more then certeyne politique Eyes,
Eyes that can pierce into the Misteryes
Of many Coulors! read them! and reveale
Mythology there painted on slit deale!
Oh, to make Boardes to speake! There is a taske!
Painting and Carpentry are the Soule of Masque!
Pack with your pedling Poetry to the State!
This is the money-gett, Mechanick Age!1
The accusation of commercialism and mechanization is a
strong one; Jonson's complaint is based on an assumption of
the superiority of verbal language, the inadequacy of images
and visual symbols. It is an indictment which would have
12
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1 3
been fairly applicable to a great problem of the early cine
ma: a general lack of some basic appeal in plot and charac
terization. This was perhaps because the very nature of the
silent film put a premium on the broad and the obvious, on
stereotypes and swift violence, on chases and spectacles.
The problem was directly related to the scarcity of
quality writers working for the movies. From the beginning
of the feature film, pictures were made based on well-known
novels and plays. Almost always, however, the stories
appeared less significant on the screen. The movement of
the films seemed stiff and the action static; most impor
tantly characterization suffered. The filmic reasons for
these defects were obvious: entire scenes were shot from a
single camera sethip; acting was too broadly theatrical; and
filmed books suffered from lack of spoken dialogue. But
the adaptors were often blamed for these deficiencies, and
one solution manifested itself in the effort to get novel
ists and playwrights to work directly for the screen.2
That the acquisition of so-called "star fiction
writers" would not be an unqualified remedy for the maladies
of the silent cinema was pointed out by George Rockhill Craw
in 1911:
I think we must grant that much of the fame of our
star writers lies in the newspaper publicity, both in
the advertising and reading columns, that enterprising
and merit-exaggerating publishers of their work have
given them, and in the ability of these writers to make
unique and unusual combinations of words; that is, in
the ornamentation rather than in the form of their cre
ations or in the logic of their situations, the dis-
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1 4
discrepancies of form and logic being hidden in the
reader's wonder and admiration for the writer's fili
gree .
It is easy to see that this ornamentation is un
fitted for use in the photoplay, which traffics not in
words but in form and logic, and that therefore most of
our fiction writers, being loosely trained in such mat
ters, produce nothing exceptional in their scenarios for
photoplay production.3
Nevertheless, the early movie industry continued to
draw on those men who had established some sort of a liter
ary reputation in other writing media. Among the first were
Roy McCardell, Lloyd Lonergan, and Russell E. Smith from the
New York World newspaper staff. Frank E. "Spec" Woods wrote
comedies for Biograph while he was the motion picture editor
for the New York Dramatic Mirror. Novelists and dramatists
included William Lord Wright, Arthur Leeds, Maibelle Heikes
Justice, Clay M. Greene, and Captain Leslie T. Peacocke— all
who wrote for Selig, Essanay, or Universal while those com
panies were still located in the East. Epes Winthrop
Sargent, music and drama critic, wrote hundreds of stories
for Lubin, Imp, Vitagraph, and Edison. Perhaps the highest
paid writer of the very early days was novelist James Oliver
Curwood (The Valley of Silent Men, 1920) , one of the few
successful authors from other fields at that time who could
write practical, filmable scripts.1 *
Among the most noteworthy authors (Books) who became
connected with early film endeavors, though not always
yielding a firm screenwriting credit, were James Oppenheim
(Dr. Rast, 1909; Songs for the New Age, 1914), Richard Hard
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1 5
ing Davis (Soldiers of Fortune, 1897; In the Fog, 1901), Rex
Beach (The Spoilers, 1906) , Augustus Thomas (The Witching
Hour, 190 7; As A Man Thinks, 1911) , Charles Klein (The Auc
tioneer, 1901; The Music Master, 1904), Jack London (The
Call of the Wild, 1903; The Sea Wolf, 1904), and Edwin
Milton Royle.
Royle, whose The Squaw Man (1906) was one of the
most successful plays of its day and the basis for Cecil B.
De Mille's first feature (also the first to be shot in
Hollywood, 1913), was an early convert to the possibilities
of writing for films:
The first motion pictures I ever saw seemed to me
silly, almost infantile, and it was impossible for me
to understand how any one could take them seriously. I
have changed my mind. Not only do I now believe that
the motion picture is a new and marvelous medium of
dramatic expression, but I am convinced that for certain
kinds of plays it is absolutely superior to the speaking
stage. . . . I am persuaded that in the days to come
writers of plays will be found writing for the screen
primarily if not exclusively. The vastness of the
motion picture possibilities is quite clear.5
Universal Pictures (then known as the Eclair-Univer
sal Company) publicized the fact that not only was it pro
ducing adaptations of the books and stories of such cur
rently popular authors as Annie Fellows Johnstone, George
Bibbs, Campbell MacCullough, Molly Elliot Seawell, George
Bronson Howard, Bruno Lessing, and Clara Louise Burnham, but
also that certain prominent writers would take an actual
hand in film production. Novelists such as Louis Joseph
Vance (the "Lone Wolf" novels), Booth Tarkington (Penrod,
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16
1914; The Magnificent Ambersons, 1918; Alice Adams, 1921),
Eugene Manlove Rhodes ("The Little Eohippus," 1912; Paso Por
Aqui, 1926), William McLeod Raine (Wyoming, 1908; A Texas
Ranger, 1911), and poet Arthur Stringer (Watchers of the
Twilight and Other Poems, 189 4; Irish Poems, 1911) became
actively involved in the scenarios and directorial supervi
sion of various film enterprises.6 (For these and all ensu
ing authors, refer to the filmography appendix for actual
film writing credits received.)
Thus, even from the earliest days of the theatrical
film the quest for quality film authors was an established
practice. In August, 1916, the Famous Players Film Company
made an unprecedented monetary proposal: the offer of $1000
each for 100 scenario ideas, making a total of $100,000 for
story material. "The chief object of the revolutionary step
in the procuring of screen material," the advertisement
announced, l 'is a desire to establish direct contact with the
best imaginative brains of the country in a permanent
association."7
"The Eminent Authors"
When Samuel Goldfish formed his own company late in
1916, he got more from his new Broadway partners, the Selwyn
Brothers, than the "wyn" to replace "fish" in the name he
adopted somewhat later. Goldwyn, with his flare for distin
guished collaborators, acquired the works and/or services of
popular playwrights, novelists, and stars. Among the
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17
authors associated with Goldwyn Pictures, circa 1916, were:
Irvin S. Cobb, Margaret Mayo, Edgar Selwyn, Roi Cooper
Megrue, Peter Emerson Browne, Edward Childs Carpenter, Avery
Hopwood, George Weston, Arthur Train, and Anatole France.
Not satisfied with these, in June, 1919, Goldwyn
formed a new organizational unit within his studio— "The
Eminent Authors"— which he announced with a double-page
spread in a 36-page insert in the trade magazines:
ANNOUNCING EMINENT
AUTHORS' PICTURES
EMINENT Authors' Pictures, Inc., organized by Rex
Beach and Samuel Goldwyn, unites in one producing organ
ization the greatest American novelists of today. It
insures the exclusive presentation of their stories on
the screen and each author's cooperation in production.
These authors are:—
Rex Beach Gertrude Atherton Mary Roberts Rinehart
Rupert Hughes Gouverneur Morris Basil King
Leroy Scott
The creation of Eminent Authors' Pictures, Inc., is
the natural outgrowth of the association of Mr. Beach
and Mr. Goldwyn in the making of such successes as "The
Crimson Gardenia," "The Brand," "The Auction Block."
Editors and magazines vie with one another to secure
the manuscripts of these writers. They pay large sums
for the exclusive rights to their works. Every word of
these men and women is contracted for, both for serial
and book publication, months in advance.
Every picture will be as popular an achievement for
the motion picture world as the story has been in liter
ature. It will not be offered for release until the
author has given his personal approval of it. The pic
ture must first pass the severest critic that it will
ever meet— the author of the story.
During the year each author of the corporation will
be represented by at least two stories. These splendid
productions will be sold only in the projection rooms of
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1 8
the Goldwyn exchanges one at a time— on merit.8
Goldwyn's move was in part a response to the success
of Jesse Lasky's Famous Players emphasis on the star per
former, for which he sought some competing feature. Goldwyn
also intended to alter the focus of screen creativity, by
elevating the importance of the story and dramatic structure
in the artistic pattern:
Gradually there grow [sic] up within me a belief
that the public was tiring of the star and a corres
ponding conviction that the emphasis of production
should be placed upon the story rather than upon the
player. In the poverty of screen drama lay, so I felt,
the weakness of our industry, and the one correction of
this weakness which suggested itself to me was a closer
co-operation between author and picture-producer.9
To assist these authors mentioned in the advertise
ment, Goldwyn imported writers who were particularly indige
nous to the East, all of whom had had some connection with
the theater: Clayton Hamilton, playwright (The Big Idea,
1914) and dramatic critic of The Bookman; Louis Sherwin,
dramatic critic of the New York Evening Globe; and play
wrights Charles Kenyon (Kindling, 1911; Husband and Wife,
1915) , Cleves Kinkead (Common Clay, 1915) , and Thompson
Buchanan, author of several successful melodramas and senti
mental comedies (The Intruder, 1909; Life, 1914).
Whether or not Famous Players-Lasky (Paramount Pic
tures) consciously sought to copy Goldwyn's pattern by hav
ing similarly prestigious writing talent work on its film
projects, in 1921 it boasted that Joseph Conrad, Sir James
Barrie, Sir Gilbert Parker, Henry Arthur Jones, among oth-
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19
ers , were working at its studio. Other studios began to
bolster their staffs with such "eminent" writers as Gene
Stratton-Porter, Zane Grey, Kathleen Norris, and Rita Wei-
man.
An article by Sir Gilbert Parker, "The Author and
Motion Pictures," professing the virtues and potentialities
of the film medium, was representative of a series of essays
in the popular press by famous writers in Hollywood explain
ing their involvement in this new field. Parker referred to
still additional authors who were attempting the screenwrit-
ing format:
I have never been converted to approval of motion
pictures. I believed in them from the first, and fur
ther acquaintance with the art— I use this word delib
erately— has only deepened my faith. . . . For myself I
have always believed that every important author in the
world will want to write for the film stage in good
time; and that time is at hand. To say naught of emi
nent authors in the United States, in England Pinero,
Arnold Bennett, Robert Hichens, Edward Knoblock, Somer
set Maugham, Elinor Glyn, and even Kipling, are writing
for the screen, and my prophecy is fast coming true.10
Rupert Hughes, Rex Beach, Henry Arthur Jones, and Somerset
Maugham wrote similar articles.11
Early Charges of "Selling Out"
Robert E. Sherwood, in his "Silent Drama" column of
film criticism for the old Life magazine, April 14, 1921,
noted the famous writer phenomenon in a manner which gave an
early suggestion that there was something less than respec
table about the Hollywood employment:
The eminent authors who were lured out to Culver
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2 0
City (Cal.) by the seductive scent of the Goldwyn gold,
have sponsored a great deal of press matter, in which
they have frantically attempted to justify their motives
in devoting themselves to this new and somewhat more
lucrative form of literary endeavor.
The motion picture had been indicted from the earli
est days of its history as a corporate, mechanical medium,
which directed its product toward a mass 14-year-old mental
ity. Accordingly, it had been generally denied the stature
of art which was rendered to its literary and musical coun
terparts. Thus, Sherwood's innuendo that a sordid relation
ship existed between formerly pristine author and commercial
film was an early entry in a quickly-multiplying string of
contemptuous statements in which the writer was depicted as
whore and betrayer of his literary art. The image of the
artist who "sold out" would persist for the next three dec
ades. It was an image that most writers themselves
believed, and which only the strongest managed to discard.
Of the numerous authors mentioned in connection with
this early movement of Eastern writers to Hollywood, only
James Oliver Cur-wood, Rupert Hughes, Charles Kenyon, and
Elinor Glyn achieved success and remained for a substantial
length of time in the movie capital. In the case of most of
the famous authors working on scripts, the results were no
better than when journeymen screenwriters adapted the works
of other men and women.
Reasons for the Failure
In the beginning Hollywood's motives were honorable.
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2 1
But, because of a kind of literary arrogance on the part of
the writers, and an artistic and organizational intransi
gence in the studios, the mating did not work out. William
C. de Mille, in his Hollywood Saga, said:
Few writers of the primitive cinema won academic
honors as authors, and as real authors began to drift
into the field they seemed to take strange pleasure in
their utter ignorance of the medium and its demands.
For the most part they regarded their studio experiences
as literary slumming and delighted to talk about the
"prostitution" of their art, not realizing, poor dar
lings, that what the studios were offering was honorable
marriage. They could not, of course, marry so far
beneath them; the most their literary honor would con
cede was that, for gold, they would lie awhile with this
new Caliban.12
Thus, for at least two reasons, the great writer
experiment was a failure:
First, the majority of the theater-oriented, East
ern-based authors simply were unable (or unwilling) to
understand and utilize the peculiar dramatic mechanism of
the cinema to tell their story. DeMille, a playwright (The
Woman, 1911; After Five, with Cecil B. DeMille, 1913) who
years before Eminent Authors had come to Hollywood to adapt
literary material to the screen, told what happened:
The gentlemen from Broadway decided at once to dis
regard such picture technic as we had been able to
evolve and to follow more closely their rules of the
theater. They thought the whole ideas was to photograph
a play very much as it would be performed on the stage.
They disdained the close-up method of telling a story,
thereby losing that value of greater intimacy which is
one of the screen's advantages over the stage. They
played most of their scenes in long ensemble shots
which, from a screen standpoint, left many of their
characters out of the action at any given moment. In
short, while being compelled to retain all the liabili
ties of picture form, they rejected its few hard-won
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2 2
assets. In addition, they chose to keep all the limita
tions of stage drama although forced by screen condi
tions to lose the theater's most valuable elements, the
living actor and the spoken word. Their experiments
were not successful, largely, perhaps, because the pub
lic, having accepted a new technic for pictures, was not
pleased by a reversion to theater methods in a medium
which had already discarded them in order to find its
own more appropriate form of expression.1 3
Those writers who took the trouble to learn some
thing about the new medium in which they were working had a
tendency to stress the other extreme and became intoxicated
by the freedom of screen style. "Just because a picture
could change its background every few seconds they tended to
avail themselves of the opportunity until dramatic action
was in danger of being entirely lost in physical
movement.111 4
The Belgian writer, Maurice Maeterlinck (Pelleas et
Mdlisande, 1892; The Blue Bird, 1909), was probably the
first Nobel Prize winner to be employed by a Hollywood
studio. His difficulty in creating powerful literature for
the screen was typical of most of the eminent writers.
Dramatist Elmer Rice (The Adding Machine, 1923; Street
Scene, 1929), who was also employed by the Goldwyn Studios
at this time (1920) , tells of being given the assignment of
revitalizing a story Maeterlinck had written;
It concerned a kindly farmer to whose blissful
domain comes a touring banker, seeking a night's shelt
er. Next morning the banker sees a telltale film upon a
pool. Oil! He contrives to dispossess the farmer and
take over the land. Disaster descends upon the bucolic
family; the wife dies of concumption or of a broken
heart (I forget which); the son becomes a criminal, the
daughter— need it be said?— a harlot. The farmer takes
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2 3
to the hills, brooding over his wrongs and vowing ven
geance. Years later, his moment comes. The banker, now
a great oil magnate, goes hunting in the mountains,
where he encounters his victim. The avenger levels his
gun, but as he is about to pull the trigger love enters
his heart; he lowers his weapon and extends his hand in
token of forgiveness.15
Rice read the story in amazement, unable to believe that a
man of Maeterlinck's stature could have produced it. He was
"shocked by this evidence of the corrupting influence of
Hollywood.1,1 6
Robert Sherwood, reviewing The Lost Romance (1921),
saw a similar corruption in the work of Edward Knoblock:
In the main Mr. Knoblock seems to have followed the
example of the numerous other writers who have flocked
out to Los Angeles of late, and who were careful to
check their intellects at the Grand Central Station
before leaving.17
The tide of indictments against Hollywood's effect on
writers was beginning to gain momentum.
A second set of reasons for the writers' ineffectual
impact on Hollywood moviemaking tends to mitigate the
authors' total culpability in the experience. Many writers
accepted the Hollywood position largely on the strength of
Goldwyn's promise of free creative scope. But there already
existed a scenario department's entrenched bureaucracy which
made this impossible. Elmer Rice explains that the practi
tioners of the established patterns of picturemaking saw in
the invasion from the East a threat to their security. The
stars and the directors did not take kindly to Goldwyn's
concept of the writer's importance. Then too, the Eastern
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2 4
writers, received with apprehension, did not enhance their
popularity by frequent affectionate references to the world
of the theater.
The proposed revolution in writing came to nothing.
All story material was channeled through [Jack] Hawks
[story department head], who vetoed every innovation
with the comment that it was "not pictures." Everything
went into the old sausage machine and it all came out
looking and tasting alike. I once sat beside Gertrude
Atherton during the screening of a film made from one of
her novels. When I asked her opinion she said, "What I
like most about it is that there is still a picture to
be made out of my book."18
Some individual examples seem to bear out this
analysis. Mary Roberts Rinehart (The Circular Staircase,
190 8; The Bat, 1920), one of the original Eminent Authors,
was supposedly engaged for her story ideas; but:
It was immediately clear that they did not want my
ideas. All they asked of me was to go home and draw my
guarantee of fifteen thousand dollars a year and a small
percentage of profits which never developed. I had no
place to work. I had no function on the lot. I had a
chair in the studio cafeteria, but that was all, save
that the gate-keeper passed my car without question.
. . . I found that I had one function in the studio, and
only one. That was publicity. Whatever its origin, the
Eminent Authors idea ended as a publicity stunt.
The experience of Arnold Bennett in the actual
writing of a screen story was fairly typical:
I wrote out the story at full length and delivered
it. Mr. Macallarney representative of Famous Players-
Lasky did not care for it, and sent Miss Turnbull to see
me. Miss Turnbull wanted the principal heroine to be a
lady of title, and the secondary heroine to be of good
birth. Why not? I agreed. She wanted more stress laid
on the luxurious country-house scenes. Why not? I
agreed. She wanted a motor-car race to London. I disa
greed. She wanted the story to be presented in the form
of a short novel. I agreed. I did the whole thing
afresh. The story was not approved. No reasons for the
decision were ever furnished. . . . Nothing else hap-
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2 5
pened. For three months' continuous work I received
5,000 dollars, a sum which I could have earned in a
month at my ordinary work.20
Elinor Glyn discovered quickly that at Famous
Players-Lasky Productions, like Rinehart at Goldwyn, it was
her name and not her literary abilities which was required
by the studio. She wrote in her memoirs:
The blatantly crude or utterly false psychology of
the stories as finally shown upon the screen was on a
par with the absurdity of the sets and clothes, but we
were powerless to prevent this. All authors, living or
dead, famous or obscure, shared the same fate. Their
stories were rewritten and completely altered either by
the stenographers and continuity girls of the scenario
department, or by the Assistant Director and his lady
love, or by the leading lady, or by anyone else who hap
pened to pass through the studio; and even when at last,
after infinite struggle, a scene was shot which bore
some resemblance to the original story it was certain to
be left out in the cutting-room, or pared away to such
an extent that all meaning which it might once have had
was lost.21
The results of Eminent Authors and the first Eastern
writer emigrations to Hollywood certainly were not totally
satisfactory to either the film producers (Goldwyn: "When
the tradition of the pen ran athwart the tradition of the
screen I am bound to say that I suffered considerably from
the impact"22), or to the writers (Rice: "Creatively I had
accomplished nothing . . . nothing is more important than
independence of thought and freedom of action"23).
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26
NOTES
*A fascinating survey of the traditional tension
between the so-called "iconographic programming" (visual)
and the "linguistic" (literary) nature of art is to be found
in Peter Wollen's Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (Blooming
ton, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1969), pp. 105-115.
2Typical of the pleas among the intelligent press
for the acquisition of better authors for film was Walter
Prichard Eaton's "Wanted— Moving Picture Authors," The
American Magazine, March, 1916, pp. 34, 67-73.
3George Rockhill Craw, "Star Fiction Writers in the
Field of the Photoplay," The Moving Picture World, March 25,
1911, p. 637.
“ *Epes Winthrop Sargent, "The Literary Side of Pic
tures," The Moving Picture World, July 11, 1914, pp. 199-
202.
5Quoted in W. Stephen Bush, "Edwin Milton Royle,"
The Moving Picture World, February 21, 1914, p. 930.
5"Famous Authors with Universal," The Moving Pic
ture World, September 5, 1914, p. 1356.
7"$100,000 for Photoplay Ideas," The Theatre,
August, 1916, p. 88.
8Reproduced in Kenneth Macgowan, Behind the Screen:
The History and Techniques of the Motion Picture (New York:
A Delta Book, Dell Publishing Co., 1965), p. 273.
9Samuel Goldwyn, Behind the Screen (New York:
George H. Doran, 1923), p. 235.
1°Sir Gilbert Parker, "The Author and Motion Pic
tures," Mentor, July, 1921, pp. 14--16.
11 Rupert Hughes, "Fiction Writers and Scenarios,"
Mentor, July, 1921, p. 30; Rex Beach, "The Author and Film,"
Mentor, July, 1921, p. 31; Henry Arthur Jones, "Dramatist
and the Photoplay," Mentor, July, 1921, p. 29; W. Somerset
Maugham, "On Writing for the Films," The North American
Review, May, 1921, pp. 670-678.
12William deMille, Hollywood Saga (New York: E. P.
Dutton & Co., Inc., 1939), pp. 158-159.
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27
1 3Ibid., pp. 257-258. Mildred Cram, "Author in
Hollywood," m The American Spectator Yearbook, ed. by
George Jean Nathan, et al. (New York: StokesPublishing
Co., 1934), p. 184, also comments on this tendency to "the-
atricize" the film medium: the famous author, "in spite of
himself, is apt to work in terms of the theatre until he
discovers the tricks of the new trade— how to turn a
sequence on sound, how to 'cut away1 from a scene, how to
reduce dialogue to a minimum, how to catch the elusive and
vitally important 'tempo,' the beat and measure of a good
picture. The writer trained in the studio carries this
'beat' in his head. He is like the composer who 'hears' an
orchestra mentally. The newcomer, unless he is divinely
flexible, must undo his technique--be it that of novelist,
biographer, playwright or poet— and weave new patterns with
new threads."
^DeMille, Hollywood Saga, p. 259.
15Elmer Rice, Minority Report: An Autobiography
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), p. 177.
1 6 ^id.
1 7Robert E. Sherwood, "The Silent Drama," Life,
June 2, 1921, p. 804.
1 8Rice, Minority Report, p. 179.
19Mary Roberts Rinehart, My Story (New York: Farrar
& Rinehart, Inc., 1931), pp. 292-293. On p. 292 she elabo
rates further: "I believe now that Mr. Goldwyn's plan for
utilizing the author in the picturization of his story was a
perfectly genuine one. I have always given him credit for
more vision than falls to the lot of most picture producers.
If he saw, in a list of well-known names, a certain public
ity value, he also believed that people whose business it
was to tell stories could be helpful in transposing stories
to the screen.
"The stubborn resistance which he met was not in the
authors, most of them humble in their ignorance of a new
art; but in his own organization. If authors could
arrange in what sequences their stories were to be
developed, leaving to mere technicians the details of
that development, the high-salaried scenario department
would become superfluous."
20Arnold Bennett, The Savour of Life (London:
Cassell and Co., Ltd., 1928), p. 228.
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28
2Quoted in Anthony Glyn, Elinor Glyn (London:
Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1955), p. 275.
22Goldwyn, Behind the Screen, pp. 242-243.
23Rice, Minority Report, p. 186.
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CHAPTER III
THE SECOND COMING OF THE EASTERN WRITER
Anyone who goes to Holly
wood simply for the money to
be got out of it and not with
a great faith and pride and
artistic belief in writing for
the pictures should be allowed
no place there.
— Zoe Akins
The movies, if you ask me,
have taken over the field of
entertainment in this country.
The theatre, which once had a
potent and powerful voice, has
dwindled to a little squeak
that sometimes, but not often,
sounds something cultural.
— Clifford Odets
Film had superseded all
other carriers of culture and
had proved to be the one
international instrument of
any value in the spread of
ideas among mankind.
— Laurence Stallings1
Advent of the Sound Film
After the failure of the first major Eastern writ
ers' presence in Hollywood--the "Eminent Author" era, 1919-
circa 1923— the big name authors tended to drift back East.
The indigenous Hollywood screenwriters remained, of course,
and continued to execute their longstanding expertise in the
29
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3 0
construction of the rhythms and patterns of motion pictures.
They could not write salable stories or books; but they
could construct muscular, visually compelling screen sto
ries. They were not really writers; they were plot carpen
ters and masters of the stereotype.
The invention of the sound film revolutionized the
motion picture industry. In the post-Jazz Singer quest for
speakable dialogue, history repeated itself, and again there
was a quest for quality authors who had established a facil
ity with words. Many of the best screenwriters who were in
Hollywood during the advent of the sound film could not
write good dramatic dialogue, and even for those who could
there was still a brand-new kind of screenplay to be devel
oped. There were no accepted forms, no models to follow.
How much or how little dialogue should be used was a matter
of future experiment. There were only a few writers who had
written both for stage and screen, and these bore the brunt
of the first months, but the supply of writers was far from
sufficient. (In the very early years, 1927-1929, the number
of scripts received by Hollywood studios dropped at least
fifty per cent.2) Other writers had to be called in and,
for the second time in its history, Hollywood was gorged
with famous dramatists, novelists, critics.
The rekindling of effort in the acquisition of fam
ous authors and accomplished playwrights forced some silent-
film scenarists out of the industry and injured the standing
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3 1
of others. Extreme responses are seldom completely satis
factory, and, in the initial period, the film medium was
severely jolted by this creative realignment. The Eastern
writers created urbane dialogue and witty repartee, well-
rounded characters and subtle situations, sophisticated
plots and people. But the stories did not move. These men
were working in the tradition of the stage and were writing
plays, not screenplays.
For a time film continuity suffered, because, as
film makers were soon to discover, a new, excessive depen
dence on dialogue enlarged an old problem. Action was elim
inated to provide enough time for speeches. Scenes tended
to play longer, and montage became of secondary importance.
The continuity of the story itself revolved around the dia
logue, and the visual abilities of the film to tell a story
were disregarded. Soon the problem of writing the talkie
had produced two schools of thought. One believed in taking
the stage dialogue and emphasizing the action; the other, in
taking the screen action and emphasizing the dialogue.3
Desperate for some artistic balance, producers
teamed the playwrights and novelists with the oldline scen
ario writers and "plot constructionists." The scripts of
the Eastern writers were out, edited, and arranged into
sequences strippdd of verbiage and driven by action. The
execution of a movie script became a massive collaborative
effort of the prominent authors, together with such people
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3 2
as dialogue writers, "additional dialogue" writers, story
doctors, plot experts, gag men, anyone with a gimmick.
These Hollywood veterans, with their facility for the
rhythms of broad visual excitement, added pace and imagina
tive plot refinements to the solid characterizations and
polished language of the Eastern literary figures. The
result was a screenplay which told a story with camera and
dialogue.
There was no question but that the policy of import
ing celebrity writers was having a profound influence on the
complexion of film production. It was within this context
that writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, who was already in Holly
wood, sent his famous telegram to Ben Hecht back in New
York: "Will you accept three hundred per week to work for
Paramount Pictures. All expenses paid. The three hundred
is peanuts. Millions are to be grabbed out here and your
only competition is idiots. Don't let this get around."4
The telegram was reflective of an Eastern writer renaissance
which has been unequalled in Hollywood cinema history.
The introduction of distinguished authors to Holly
wood did an enormous amount for the prestige of movie
writers, and bit by bit it became apparent that the movies
were beginning to achieve a higher— often admirable— sta
ture. Hollywood was never to become a modern Parnassus, as
some predicted, but its claim for artistic consideration was
becoming increasingly justified— and was in no small way
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3 3
related to the burgeoning staffs of Eastern writers on the
studio payrolls.
So massive and diverse was the writer influx during
this famous period that several literary and artistic cir
cles developed. The slickest of these cliques was centered
at The Garden of Allah Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. Its mem
bers were essentially those writers from the "Round Table"
set of New York's Algonquin Hotel, and included, among many
on different occasions, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley,
Donald Ogden Stewart, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, Marc
Connelly; and such intimates of the Algonquin crowd as
F. Scott Fitzgerald,5 Samuel Hoffenstein, Edwin Justus
Mayer. This group had expensive tastes and habits, and did
not hesitate to exhaust their large salaries in sustaining
them.6
A second group of writers was more cosmopolitan than
the elegant Garden of Allah coterie. It included Christo
pher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Gerald Heard, and associated
actors, musicians, and philosophers, such as Aldous's
brother, Julian, Mrs. Berthold (Salka) Viertel, Greta Garbo,
Charles Chaplin, Anita Loos, Bertrand Russell, and Igor
Stravinsky. This group was also the focus for the German
intellectual emigrds during World War II: Thomas Mann,
George Froeschel, Franz Werfel, Bertolt Brecht, Arnold
Schoenberg, among many others. It seemed to have a Bohemian
cohesion, with an emphasis on pacifism and Hindu mysticism,
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3 4
and came to be localized in the Santa Monica Canyon.7
A third group was made up of people more committed
to plain writing than urbanity or elegance. These men had
their own kind of Beohemian existence which revolved around
one block on Hollywood Boulevard, the block which contained
the Stanley Rose Book Shop and Musso & Frank's Restaurant.
Here collected Nathanael West, William Faulkner, Elliot
Paul, William Saroyan, and Budd Schulberg.8
The involvement of the imported "Eastern" writer in
the massive Hollywood studio system of the 1930's and early
1940's is the basis for perhaps the greatest love-hate,
good-bad artistic relationship in contemporary cultural his
tory. The entire writer movement was suffused with an
almost chimeric, simultaneous suppression and expansion of
literary and cinematic art. An examination of that cata
clysmic period reveals an almost hysterical perpetuation of
paradox, a phenomenon rocked by sociological and psychologi
cal contradictions. These writers were either meretricious
vagabonds, hideously betraying their true, sublime literary
natures; or they were creators and promulgators of an inno
vative, rich, and imaginative species of cinematic art: so
volatile, capricious, and provocative was the mixture of
formerly autonomous intellectual with assembly-line Holly
wood production methods!
A specific basis for the writers' malaise is not
difficult to detect: the artist was immersed in what
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35
appeared to him to be an irrationally excessive collabora
tion in the mass production of entertainment. (The struc
ture and ramifications of this so-called "Hollywood studio
system" will be discussed in detail in Chapter IV.) Most
writers, therefore, found themselves in a classic approach-
avoidance conflict: (a) intensely drawn to the unparalleled
financial rewards for their talents (a very small minority,
but significant enough to deserve mention, was attracted to
the intrinsic nature of the medium); (b) violently appalled
by the cavalier and insensitive treatment of the writer and
his literary efforts. Only the most strong-willed were able
to satisfactorily reconcile the conflict and maintain an
acceptable standard of living while justifying their artis
tic consciences.
The disaffected and frustrated artists are always
the most vocal, and they manifested their discontent in vol
umes of derisive literature excoriating the system, deplor
ing the movies' treatment of the writer, and denouncing the
writer's prostitution of his artistic values by embracing
the Hollywood employment. Novels such as Horace McCoy's I_
Should Have Stayed Home, Nathanael West's The Day of the
Locust, Stephen Longstreet's The Beach House, Ben Hecht's £
Hate Actors, Jay Richard Kennedy's Prince Bart, Peter Vier-
tel's White Hunter, Black Heart, and numerous others,9 are
representative doses of vitriol directed towards Hollywood,
produced by writers who were generally quite successful
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3 6
there.
The image of the Eastern writer in Hollywood has
come to be represented in the public's mind as identical to
that portrayed in these books. The idea that Hollywood
employment for the writer was an almost totally negative
experience has been buttressed by at least two major fac
tors. (1) The anguished memoirs and anti-Hollywood novels
of the so-called "corrupted" writers— along with the scorn
ful accounts of a decadent Hollywood environment by the
"untainted" Eastern establishment critics such as George
Jean Nathan (see Chapter VI) and Edmund Wilson— were written
mainly from the viewpoint of remorse over the adulturation
or abandonment of the writers' non-movie literary endeavors.
The establishment line would have it that a writer's liter
ary abilities began to corrode the second he stepped across
the California border, and that once he has signed his name
to a Hollywood contract, he will perhaps never again write
anything of substance and real artistic merit. (2) The
American (Hollywood) film has been only infrequently consid
ered worthy of the term "art." Only in the rarest instances
(Chaplin perhaps) has it been thought equal to the more
individual, personal foreign counterparts of an Eisenstein,
Dreyer, Renoir, Clair, or Fellini. Writers generally have
seemed self-conscious and apologetic about their associa
tions with such a mechanical and collaborative process. How
could a screenplay for a feature film compare in artistic
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3 7
accomplishment to even a short story in The New Yorker?
These cliches must not be embraced without
qualification.
While it was true that some authors' desire and
fedundity in independent writing did atrophy, it never
approached the pandemic proportions which are often
asserted. A larger number of writers than is normally
recognized maintained a fertility in their independent lit
erary careers, while remaining active with Hollywood screen-
writing. Several individual cases where a tragic dissolu
tion of literary talent occurred have, of course, received
much publicity. But even in these instances Hollywood's
role in the writer's sterility has been exaggerated. It is
simply too facile to blame Hollywood entirely for such a
complicated and multifaceted occurrence. As Clifton Fadiman
wrote in his adverse review of Merrily We Roll Along (1934) ,
a play by Kaufman and Hart which attempted to blame popular
success for a writer's fall from literary greatness, "The
corruption of American talent is a subtle, highly ramified
problem, involving our whole economic and social life. It
cannot be dramatized in this facile and explosive fashion or
simplified via surface sentiment and surface irony."10
Also, contemporary scholarship has placed the Ameri
can film of the 1930's and 1940's in much higher esteem than
could have ever been imagined at the time of the writer's
studio employment. The writers may have denigrated the
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3 8
the work, but many motion pictures received the benefit of
their verve, wit, and style. The Hollywood film was often
rewarded by imaginative plots and zesty charm, and much of
the svelte texture of the 1930's comedies and social dramas
received its character from these Eastern literary person
alities .
It was mentioned above that close to 200 Eastern
writers were imported to Hollywood over a period of time
which roughly corresponded to the flowering of the studio
system, 1927-1950. During this period there were tangible
indications that noted writers from all literary fields were
actively involved in writing motion pictures.
The Best Plays series, edited by Burns Mantle, is a
basic reference source of the American theater. In each
annual volume the editor presented statistical information
regarding every play produced in New York that year and his
choices for the ten best plays of the season. The ten-best
lists for the late 1920's and 1930's consistently contained
the names of authors who had written or were about to write
motion pictures in Hollywood.
The list of the ten best plays of the 1926-1927
season, for example, included the following active or pros
pective screenwriters (writers not involved with Hollywood
are enclosed in parentheses):
Broadway, by Philip Dunning and George Abbott.
Saturday's Children, by Maxwell Anderson.
Chicago, by Maurine Watkins.
The Constant Wife, by William Somerset Maugham.
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3 9
The Play's the Thing, by P. G. Wodehouse (and Ferenc
Molnar).
The Road to Rome, by Robert Emmet Sherwood.
The Silver Cor57 by Sidney Howard.
Daisy Mayme, by George Kelly.
In Abraham's Bosom, by Paul Green.
Nine of the ten selected plays were by authors involved in
various films. The 1929-1930 season, which prefaced the
richest period of Eastern writer activity in Hollywood, was
also dominated in similar fashion— with seven of the ten
plays authored by these versatile men:
The Green Pastures, by Marc Connelly.
The Criminal Code, by Martin Flavin.
Berkeley Square, by John Balderston.
Strictly Dishonorable, by Preston Sturges.
The Last Mile, by John Wexley.
June Moon, by George S. Kaufman (and Ring W. Lardner).
Rebound, by Donald Ogden Stewart.
And the 1934-1935 season had a ;similarly high representa
tion: nine of tenl
The Children's Hour, by Lillian Heilman.
Valley Forge, by Maxwell Anderson.
The Petrified Forest, by Robert E. Sherwood.
The Old Maid, by Zoe Akins.
Accent on Youth, by Samson Raphaelson.
Merrily We Roll Along, by George S. Kaufman and Moss
Hart.
Awake and Sing, by Clifford Odets.
The Farmer Tak'es a Wife, by Marc Connelly (and Frank B.
Elser).
The Distaff Side, by John Van Druten.11
Appendix B is a compilation of Eastern writer Acad
emy Award nominations and winners, and is included to indi
cate the critical success the imported writer enjoyed as
judged by his Hollywood colleagues. In addition, there were
other critical evaluations which took cognizance of the
Eastern writer's contribution to screenplay literature.
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40
For example, Stage magazine in four of its five
awards for best "Scenario Writing" of 1935-1936 gave recog
nition to films which were all written by Eastern writers:
Robert Sherwood (The Ghost Goes West); Maxwell Anderson,
Laurence Stallings, Edwin Justus Mayer (So Red the Rose);
Lillian Heilman (These Three); Frank Wead (Ceiling Zero) .1 2
In one of the few books devoted to the intelligent
critical analysis of the screenplay as a literary art form,
Twenty Best Film Plays (1943), John Gassner and Dudley
Nichols pick the 20 best screenplays of the period 1933-
19 43. Of the 20, 13 were the work of Eastern writers:
It Happened One Night, by Robert Riskin.
The Women, by Jane Murfin (and Anita Loos).
My Man Godfrey, by Morrie Ryskind and Eric Hatch.
Rebecca, by Robert E. Sherwood (and Joan Harrison).
Wuthenng Heights, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.
The Grapes of Wrath, by Nunnally Johnson.
Make Way for Tomorrow, by Vina Delmar.
Little Caesar, by Francis Edward Faragoh (and Robert N=
Lee) .
Fury, by Bartlett Cormack (and Fritz Lang).
Mrs. Miniver, by James Hilton, Arthur Wimperis, George
Froeschel (and Claudine West) .
The Good Earth, by Tess Slesinger, Claudine West (and
Talbot Jennings).
All That Money Can Buy, by Dan Totheroh and Stephen Vin
cent Benet.
Yellow Jack, by Edward Chodorov.1 3
The members of the Screen Writers Guild were asked
(circa 1939-1940) to "indicate the screen writer whose work
you most admire." Of the ten leading writers named, a
majority (marked with an asterisk) were decidedly of "East
ern" origin:
Dudley Nichols
*Robert Riskin
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4 1
*Donald Ogden Stewart
Claude Binyon
*Ben Hecht
* (Hecht & Charles MacArthur)
*Lillian Heilman
John Lee Mahin
*Jo Swerling
*Nunnally Johnson
*Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett1 * *
Hollywood in the late 1920's and 1930's was a boom
town; what Miami had done for real estate, Hollywood did for
talent, any kind of talent, "from geese trainers to writers
and actors." As Ben Hecht described it:
Hungry actors leaped from hall bedrooms to terraced
mansions. Writers and newspapermen who had hoboed their
way West began hiring butlers and laying down wine
cellars. Talent, talent, who had talent for anything—
for beating a drum, diving off a roof, writing a joke,
walking on his hands? Who could think up a story, any
kind of story? Who knew how to write it down? . . .
Prosperity chased them all.15
Tne Eastern writers made their contributions in the reshap
ing of the Hollywood film, and some specific aspects of
their involvement must be more closely scrutinized.
Edmund Wilson, in his The Boys in the Back Room,
was moved to verse in observing the flight of writers to
Hollywood:
What shining phantom folds its wings before us?
What apparition, smiling yet remote?
Is this— so portly yet so lightly porous—
The old friend who went west and never wrote?16
This sort of creative rendering of a perception of the
1930's was typical of the literary purists, who became
increasingly appalled at the momentum of the Eastern writ
ers' migration West. For the writers and intellectuals who
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42
stayed beind (for the main reason that most of them were
never invited by Hollywood anyway), no motives seemed to
justify the trip to the movie "factory town."
Budd Schulberg, a particularly insightful inter
preter of the Hollywood scene, attempted to concretize
Wilson's apparition. His observation of the atrophy of some
of America's most gifted writers was amplified by his affec
tion for them and by an intense appreciation of their liter
ary capacities. This is how he saw the destructive pattern
take place:
Greatly talented and magnificently paid, they had
seemed to have everything. Seeing them in their stylish
clothes, with their stylish ladies, listening to the
bright polish of their conversation, still respecting
their dreams of returning in triumph to their first
creative love, their plays, their books, one could not
easily foresee the pattern that would trap them all.
Yet, almost without exception, ten years later they were
bankrupt men, broken financially, creatively, even phys
ically. Alcoholism had spread like plague among them.
They were debt-ridden, alimony-ridden, and, worst of
all, conscience-ridden.17
In Schulberg's novel, The Disenchanted, the main
character, Manley Halliday, is depicted as an amalgam of
F. Scott Fitzgerald and other writers who "had talent and
got short-circuited.1 ,1 8 But Halliday is shown as having the
awareness to perceive the tragic irony of the Eastern
writers' Hollywood hegira, and he is fascinated by the psy
chology that precipitated it:
The realization that he and Bob [Benchley] and Dotty
Parker and Eddie Mayer and Sammy Hoffenstein and perhaps
half a dozen others of the old gang had all been brought
into the Hollywood fold suddenly oppressed him. There
had been so many luncheons and cocktails and all-night
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43
sessions when Hollywood had been only a term of deri
sion, when they had vied with each other in witty denun
ciations of this Capital of the Philistines. No one
with any self-respect, he remembered saying, would ever
go to Hollywood, except possibly to pursue Billie Dove.
And fifteen years later here they were, all lured to
the Garden of Allah, all on weekly pay rolls or, worse
yet, trying to get on. Were they men of inadequate
wills who had acquired the authors' cancer— expensive
tastes? Or could they, like Manley himself, persuade
themselves that this was merely a stop-over on the way
back to positive work?19
Halliday's questions are at the crux of the syn
drome. Sheilah Graham, who saw these men at their destina
tion at the Garden of Allah, was also fascinated by the
paradox, but just as mystified:
Why did they do it? No one forced them to go to
Hollywood and write and suffer. No one put a gun to
their heads. Most of those who went had begged their
agents to get them there. I saw them at the Garden
lolling around, enjoying the lazy life while hating the
producers who made it all possible and, meanwhile,
despising themselves.2 0
Any writer who has ever debated with himself whether
or not to accept a job in Hollywood might find the following
self-analysis familiar. It was performed by author Jessamyn
West, who agonized over the offer to do a motion picture
script:
Reasons for doing it:
1. If I go to Hollywood I'll see a world I know nothing
about.
2. I may learn how to do something new.
3. I will be a part of what is one of the characteris
tic phenomena of our times.
4. I will combat the hermit in me.
5. I will combat the coward in me.
6. I will make money.
Reasons why these reasons are not valid:
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4 4
1. There are many worlds you know nothing about and
which your ignorance doesn't justify exploring:
shoplifting, dope pushing, six-day bicycle racing.
2. Instead of learning to do something new, why not
learn to do something old better? Like writing
short stories, novels, poetry?
3. Strip teasing, sky writing, and skin diving are
parts of our time, and probably unsuitable occupa
tions for you.
4. Why combat the hermit in you? Thoreau didn't. He
cultivated that hermit, fed that hermit, listened to
that hermit. And now we listen also.
5. Doing what you're afraid to do, and for that reason
alone, will soon make a flagpole sitter out of you.
6. If money is your object you might, quite probably,
make a lot more sitting home writing a good novel.
Everyone talks of "selling out" to Hollywood. Un
less more money is spoken of than has been, I won't
be selling out to Hollywood, I'll be shelling out.21
After the introspection has been completed, however,
certain explicit, tangible reasons for the Eastern writer's
sojourn to Hollywood began to emerge. According to Ben
Hecht, they were fairly easy to ascertain; but, unlike
Jessamyn West, he would definitely assert that money was
the primary reason which motivated the Thirties writers.
The reasons were: (1) the money--above all the money;
(2) the witty, Bohemian companionship of one's fellow
writers from the East who were all making the trip; (3) the
virtual anonymity which spared the screenwriter any critical
attacks which might be aimed at a motion picture on which he
worked. Hecht explained it this way:
First, the money. It was easy money. You didn't
gamble for it as in the theatre. Or break your back
digging for it as in the field of pose. It was money
in large sums. Twenty-five- and fifty-thousand-dollar
chunks of it fell into your pockets in no time. You got
it sometimes for good work, more often for bad. But
there was a law in the studios— hire only the best. As
a result, the writer who had written well in some other
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4 5
medium was paid the most. . . . Next to the lure of easy
money was the promise of a plush Bohemian vacation.
Witty and superior folk abounded. The town was loud
with wild hearts and the poetry of success. The wit,
superiority, wildness had no place in a movie script.
But there was happy room for them in the cafes, drawing
rooms and swimming pools.
"You write stinking scripts," said Charlie Mac
Arthur, "but you meet the people you like to be in a
room with."
The other matters that took you to Hollywood had
nothing to do with the movies. They had to do with
flaws in yourself— flaws of laziness, fear, greed.
. . . The writer intent on "doing his best" has to
expose that best to critical blasts that mow him down,
two times out of three. And if he wants to keep serving
his art, he and his lacerations must lead to a sort of
hall-bedroom existence. . . . The movies solved such
matters. There were no critics to mow him down. The
writer of a movie is practically anonymous. It's a
pleasant anonymity.22
The writers' primary motivation of money bears reit
eration and elaboration through specific examples. Ben
Hecht continues to emphasize how he made
tremendous sums of money for work that required no more
effort than a game of pinochle. Of the sixty movies I
wrote, more than half were written in two weeks or less.
I received for each script, whether written in two or
(never more than) eight weeks, from fifty thousand to a
hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. I worked also
by the week. My salary ran from five thousand dollars a
week up. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1949 paid me ten
thousand a week. David Selznick once paid me thirty-
five hundred a day.2 3
Pauline Kael gives us
a picture of Herman Mankiewicz, a giant of a man who
mongered his own talent, a man who got a head start in
the race to "sell out" to Hollywood. The pay was fan
tastic. After a month in the movie business, Mankiewicz
— though his Broadway shows had not been hits, and
though this was in 192 6, when movies were still silent—
signed a year's contract giving him $400 a week and a
bonus of $5000 for each story that was accepted, with an
option for a second year at $500 a week and $7,500 per
accepted story, the company guaranteeing to accept at
least four stories per year. In other words, his base
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pay was $40,800 his first year and $56,000 his second.2I>
However, there is need for a word of caution at this
point. The size of a movie writer's earnings has been often
confused with the staggering amounts which Hollywood paid
for novels or plays. The top screenwriters were very well
paid, but they were by no means as well paid as Hollywood's
directors, actors, or producers. In the 1930's there were
close to 800 writers in Hollywood, of one class or another;
and employment for writers was notoriously uneven, short-
termed, and unpredictable. Manywriters were unemployed for
long periods; many who had long-term contracts still were on
shaky ground, because many studio options could result in
termination at any time.
In 1938 there were 17 Hollywood writers who earned
$75,000 or more— as compared to 80 actors, 54 producers and
executives, 45 directors, and 4 musical directors. The fol
lowing 17 writers achieved this exalted status (the Eastern
writers designated by an asterisk):
*Robert Riskin $180,, 125
*Ben Hecht 159 , ,996
*Preston Sturges’ 143 , ,000
Claude R. Binyon 100,,000
*Talbot Jennings 96,,333
Jules Furthman 95,,266
*Sidney Buchman 92,,750
*Vincent Lawrence 91,,333
*Walter de Leon 89,,475
*John L. Balderston 88,,500
Anita Loos 87,,500
Casey Robinson 85,,666
John Lee Mahin 80,, 833
*Laurence Stallings 79,,208
*Sonya Levien 77,,066
*Jack Yellen 76,,800
*William A. McGuire 76,, 250:
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4.7
It all prompted Sidney Howard, Pulitzer Prize winning play
wright and one of the best Eastern screenwriters, to com
ment: "The more fortunate of screen adaptors— in which num
ber I am happy to include myself— are probably the most pre
posterously overpaid men on the face of the earth: at
least, we are paid as much for doing as little as anyone now
visible to my naked eye."26
Nevertheless, novelist Nathanael West found that the
money was essential for the continuation of his independent
writing.
I once tried to work seriously at my craft but was
absolutely unable to make the beginning of a living. At
the end of three years and two books I had made the
total of $7 80 gross. So it wasn't a matter of making a
sacrifice, which I was willing enough to make and will
still be willing, but just a clear-cut impossibility.
. . . It is for this reason that I'm grateful rather
than angry at the deep mud-lined rut in which I find
myself at the moment. The world outside doesn't make it
possible for me to even hope to earn a living writing,
while here the pay is large . . . enough for me to have
three or four months off every year.27
Whatever their reasons, the writers did set out for
Hollywood to confront an exceptionally formidable moral and
artistic challenge.
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48
NOTES
xZoe Akins, Clifford Odets, Laurence Stallings
quoted in George Jean Nathan, "Theater," Scribner's Maga
zine, November, 1937, pp. 66-68.
2Clifford Howard, "Author and Talkies," Close Up,
September, 1929, p. 219.
3Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film: A
Critical History (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,
1939), p. 437.
‘ ‘Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century (New York: The
New American Library, 1954), p. 435.
5During Fitzgerald's final Hollywood period (1937-
1940) he received a letter from Thomas Wolfe (June 26,
1937), who expressed disbelief that "The Garden of Allah"
could be a legitimate address:
"Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald
c/o Charles Scribner's Sons
597 Fifth Avenue, N.Y.C.
Dear Scott:
I don't know where you are living and I'll be
damned if I'll believe anyone lives in a place called
"The Garden of Allah," which was what the address on
your envelope said. I am sending this on to the old
address we both know so well."
(F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack Up, ed. by Edmund Wilson
[New York: New Directions Publishing Company, 1956], p.
312.)
6Two interesting, if rather superficial, anecdotal
discussions of the fascinating Garden of Allah ambience are:
Sheilah Graham, The Garden of Allah (New York: Crown Pub
lishers, Inc., 1970); S. J. Perelman, "Moonstruck at Sun
set," The New Yorker, August 16, 1969, pp. 28-31.
7For an intimate, first-hand glimpse of the Bohemian
Santa Monica group of artists, by one whose home was the
comfortable salon where they collected, see Salka Viertel's
engaging and charming autobiography, The Kindness of
Strangers (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969) .
8Carolyn See, "Will Excess Spoil the Hollywood
Writer?" Los Angeles Times West Magazine, March 26, 1967,
pp. 34-36.
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9For definitive listings and analyses of this pecu
liar genre of American literature— "the Hollywood novel"—
see Virgil L. Lokke, "The Literary Image of Hollywood" (un
published Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1956) and
Carolyn See, "The Hollywood Novel: An Historical and Criti
cal Study" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of
California at Los Aggeles, 1963).
10Clifton Fadiman, "Murder in the Library," Stage,
December, 1934, p. 14.
1 1 Burns Mantle, ed., The Best Plays of 1926-1927,
1929-1930, 1934-1935 (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company,
1927, 1930 , 1935) .
12Katharine Best, "Stage Awards the Falm," Stage,
May, 1936, p. 43.
1 3John Gassner and Dudley Nichols, ed., Twenty Best
Film Plays (New York: Crown Publishers, 1943).
1 ^Leo C. Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, The
Movie Makers (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941),
pp. 325-326.
15Hecht, A Child of the Century, p. 445.
16Edmund Wilson, Boys in the Back Room, quoted in
Leslie Fiedler, "What Shining Phantom: Writers and the
Movies," in Man and the Movies, ed. by W. R. Robinson (Bal
timore: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 304.
17Budd Schulberg, "Why Manley Halliday Is . . .
Manley Halliday," Theatre Arts, December, 1958, p. 17.
18Ibid-f P- 16.
19Schulberg, The Disenchanted (New York: Random
House, 1950), Chap. 4.
2 0Graham, The Garden of Allah, p. 221.
21Jessamyn West, To See the Dream (New York: Har
court, Brace and Company, 1956), pp. 108-109.
22Ben Hecht, Charlie (New York: Harper & Brothers
Publishers, 1957), pp. 157-159.
2 3Hecht, A Child of the Century, p. 436.
2I*Pauline Kael, "Raising Kane— I," The New Yorker,
February 20, 1971, p. 49.
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5 0 '
25Rosten, Hollywood, p. 322. The ranking of writ
ers' earnings was qualified to this extent by Rosten (p.
323): "These names were taken from the salary lists pub
lished by the Treasury Department. The list is incomplete
on several scores: the published data were admittedly not
complete for writers; and the names and salaries were taken
from individual studio payrolls. Since many writers work at
more than one studio in the course of a year, and often sell
original stories during the periods when they are not on
salary, the listing does not give a representative picture
of the high-earning writers in the movie colony. Such men
as Gene Fowler, Morrie Ryskind, Dudley Nichols, and Jo
Swerling, for example, are not included, and their incomes
are unquestionably among the first fifteen in the ranks of
movie writers."
26Sidney Howard, "The Story Gets a Treatment," in We
Make the Movies, ed. by Nancy Naumburg (New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 1937), p. 49.
2’"Introduction," to Nathanael West, The Day of the
Locust (New York: Bantam Books, 1963), pp. xvi-xvii.
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CHAPTER IV
THE HOLLYWOOD "SYSTEM"
The writer— no matter how
small his talent or how modest
his aspirations— tends to
identify himself with a craft
which has always enjoyed high
intellectual status. Writers
have always had an historical
place and an historical func
tion. They are, in a sense,
the unofficial oracles of
society. They shape the
dreams of men; they sing for
the mute and dare for the tim
id. They are, as someone
said, the "divine skeptics,"
enemies of intolerance, rebels
against flatulence and plati
tude. But in Hollywood, they
just make movies.
— Leo Rosten1
Until a sweeping readjust
ment takes place . . . in the
motion picture world, writers
will not be interested enough
in either books or book pub
lishers to regard them as very
much more than little way-
stations on the royal road to
Beverly Hills. . . . How can a
sense of proportion be pre
served when a lot of worn-out
old hacks who haven't written
an honest word or thought an
honest thought for ten years
can still draw a couple of
thousand dollars a week turn
ing out scenarios, and newcom
ers whose first novels are
51
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still wet from the presses are
offered contracts that make
their total earnings from the
book rights look like a lunch
check at the Automat. . . .
The thing that an author wants
most from his publisher these
days is a letter of introduc
tion to Darryl Zanuck.
— Bennett A. Cerf2
Hollywood Implementation of Writers
It must be strongly emphasized that the nature of
the studio organization and operation in the 1930's and
1940's was at the heart of the particular kind of attitude
toward and treatment of the writer at that time. The unique
creative requirements and assumptions of the Hollywood
studio, with its peculiar assembly line approach to the
"manufacture" of motion pictures, produced an artistic
environment for the screenwriter which is probably unparal
leled in any other form of expression. Because of policies
which seem to be conceptually antithetical to art— the con
tractual employment of individual writers for weekly incre
ments, the institutional segregation of these men in "writ
ers' buildings," the clandestine use of multiple writers on
the same script, the ultimate creative decision retained by
the producer— because of these exigencies of film making, a
kind of "slave psychology" enveloped the writer. He was
seldom made to feel other than a hired minion, paid to con
form his vision to the "artistic" whimsy of his superiors.
As Ben Hecht has written: "However cynical, over-
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53:
paid or inept you are, it is impossible to create entertain
ment without feeling the urges that haunt creative work.
The artist's ego, even the ego of the Hollywood hack, must
always jerk around a bit under restraint."3 While the
writer even today is vulnerable to the judgments of the
director, the producer, those who control the money, the
extent and texture, the irrational essence of his artistic
subservience was uniquely intensified during the studio
heyday.
That so much witty, vibrant, artful work was pro
duced under these conditions is a tribute to the writers'
rich and flexible talents, which managed to assert them
selves in spite of the mindless restraints. The writers
were understandably cynical about their own positions within
the structure and about the artistic value of their work,
which was so often truncated and mutilated. But contempo
rary critics are only beginning to perceive how felicitously
the films of that period bear the stamp of those literary
intellects.
The following was the typical pattern of involvement
for the Eastern writer who, because he had established his
literary skills, was brought to Hollywood to (most likely)
adapt his own novel or play (or that of an Eastern colleague)
to the screen. (Certain significant aspects of the syndrome
will subsequently be given more detailed comment.)
Sidney Howard, a notable playwright who was quite
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54:
successful as a screenwriter (Dodsworth, 1936; Gone with the
Wind, 1939), has written a quasi-sarcastic, but nonetheless
truthful, account of the multi-stepped process of preparing
a script for filming. It is entitled "The Story Gets a
Treatment," and it is an excellent insight into the func
tioning of the studio system. "The process by which the
screen adaptor goes to work," said Howard, "is in itself
designed to cancel out inspiration."
The amazing operation begins with the purchase of a
novel in which a studio sees possibilities (one, say, by
Sinclair Lewis, a novelist whose works Howard has had con
siderable success in adapting for films: Arrowsmith, Dods
worth, It Can't Happen Here, never filmed). After Lewis has
been paid for the screen rights of the novel, he "will not
again be given a moment's thought by anyone until, three
days preceding the picture's release, the studio publicity
office remembers that he won the Nobel Prize and invites him
to a private showing of the picture in exchange for an
endorsement to the effect that the picture is ever so much
better than the original novel."5
The Eastern writer, who is also known as a New York
writer (anyone who is not a resident of Hollywood), begins
his involvement in adapting the novel by an interview with
the studio's New York executive who has not read the book.
It is decided that the writer should leave immediately for
Hollywood.
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55;
All writers were not, however, imported Eastern
celebrities. Every studio had on its payroll a group of
so-called "junior writers" (or "younger writers"), who drew
very small salaries (an average of $75 a week), sat in small
offices, and, because they lacked the prestige of the suc
cessful writers, spent most of their time being "broken in."
(Budd Schulberg and Ring Lardner, Jr., started out in this
fashion as junior writers: Schulberg became discouraged and
left for the East; Lardner graduated to higher status with
his first success, Woman of the Year, 1942.) It is quite
possible that the Lewis novel might be given to one of these
writers for adaptation. If so, it would be developed into a
full-length motion picture script which no one would ever
read. As this is very seldom a fruitful approach, the next
logical step in the Eastern writer's involvement is his
first story conference.
Screenwriter Carl Foreman (The Men, 1950; High Noon,
1952) continues the hypothetical case by referring to the
inevitable optimism which surrounds the first story confer
ence, as writer meets his producer and director.
Imagine yourself one of the novelists, playwrights
or radio writers imported to Hollywood in the thirties,
using Hollywood as a mise en scene because it set the
pattern for the western world, ^ 7 . There are story
conferences with both producer and director which are
both stimulating and frightening, holding forthe the
dazzling promise of a tripartite work of art that will
make cinematic history. Later there will be conferences
with one or the other not present, at which you will
gather that these collaborators are not precisely in
agreement, and that each is demanding your unqualified
loyalty and artistic integrity. If you are a man, you
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suddenly find yourself in an unaccustomedly feminine
position, simultaneously wooed by two lovers, and you
begin to suspect (correctly) that when you have given
birth to your child, one or the other of these swains is
going to take it away from you and raise it his way.6
Nevertheless, the writer now retires to his office to write
what is known as the treatment, which is a description on
paper of just how the writer plans to make a picture out of
the Lewis novel.
Once the treatment has been accepted with slight
modifications at a second story conference, the writer pro
ceeds to write his first draft of the script itself. Howard
emphasizes that it is not advisable to put too much of one's
heart into this first draft. "My single object is to put
the book roughly into picture form, sequence by sequence and
scene by scene, including in it as many picture ideas as may
occur to me, but making no particular effort towards a fin
ished script. . . . I adopt my system of being generous with
myself on my first draft of a picture script because I know
that no one is going to pay much, if any, attention to it
except the director, who, under ideal conditions, now be
comes my dominant collaborator;."7
The director now proceeds to contribute his ideas
and the script begins to take the form of a motion picture.
At the end of two or three weeks spent on this second draft
collaboration, the script returns to the producer and the
period of intense artistic jeopardy for the writer begins.
As time has gone by, the writer might have learned— by acci
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57-
dent— that other writers have been employed on the same
script but have, somehow and mysteriously, failed. By a
similar accident, the writer, as Carl Foreman said, "may
learn that one of his predecessors is still working on the
script, unaware that he has been gelded and replaced by you.
Later, you may taste the bitter potion yourself when you
discover that still another writer has been engaged to
rewrite what you are writing."8
With very few exceptions— perhaps David 0. Selznick,
Sam Goldwyn, Darryl Zanuck, Walter Wanger, Irving Thalberg—
the producer seems to have been considered by the writer as
the most grievous violator of his artistic integrity. Much
of the wounded writers' literary bile has been discharged in
the direction of this odious purveyor of the banal and mere
tricious . Howard divides them into two types: the producer
who undertakes to produce, more or less, the picture the
director and screenwriter have given him; and the producer
who imposes his own concepts on the script, and, in effect,
structures the film in his own image and likeness. This
latter type of producer operates without the wisdom to see
that another man's way of telling a story may be as good as
his own. Howard expands on this type:
His determination to get his picture script written
and rewritten until it coincides exactly with his own
conception is more likely to choke out the last germs of
spontaneity and life. It frequently leads him to engage
a whole series of writers, both in collaboration and in
sequence. This not only wastes untold quantities of
money— such producers have more than once spent close on
half a million dollars in screen writers' salaries— but
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58
deprives the finished picture of any homogeneity of
style.9
This kind of miscalculation has prompted Evelyn Waugh to
say: "Each book purchased for motion pictures has some
individual quality, good or bad, that has made it remark
able. It is the work of a great array of highly paid and
incompatible writers to distinguish this quality, separate
it, and obliterate it."10 Ben Hecht said it this way:
"There are different kinds of producers in the studios,
ranging from out-and-out illiterates to philosophers and
aesthetes. But all of them have the same function. Their
task is to guard against the unusual. They are the trusted
loyalists of clichd. Writers and directors can be carried
away by a "strange" characterization or a new point of view;
a producer, never."11
The script from which the picture is made— it may be
the second or the fifteenth version, according to the type
of producer— is called the shooting script. Before it could
be made, however, it had to be submitted to the Hays office
to see what was permitted by the Censorship Boards of vari
ous states. The Hays office's function was to warn the pro
ducer against the deletions which he might expect in any
given state, if he violated any of that state's regulations.
Sidney Howard tells an amusing story regarding cen
sorship problems on his ill-fated adaptation of Sinclair
Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, which was banned on the eve of
its first day of shooting because its themes might have been
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59 :
offensive to Hitler, Mussolini, and the Republican party.
One episode in that unproduced script showed how Lewis's
editor-hero escaped from the American dictator's concentra
tion camp. Jessup, the editor, reaches a farmhouse in the
Green Mountains of Vermont, where the women of his family
are waiting to welcome and to hide him. Among other things
he is given a bath, in the course of which his wife has to
scrub his back for him. Howard continues:
No camera ever looked at the scene, because . . .
the whole enterprise of the picture had to be abandoned
out of deference to Hitler, Mussolini and the Republi
cans. The censors, however, warned us that the business
of the back-scrubbing was permissible only if the
actress who was to play the wife was cautioned never to
look down. The couple were past fifty and had been mar
ried long enough to be grandparents, but the wife must
not look down, for fear, presumably, of making some
startling anatomical discovery.12
Once the obstacle of censorship has been passed, the
script proceeds to what is called the breakdown. At this
stage of the development, technicians (performed in recent
years by a man known as the production manager) estimate
with careful exactitude the physical requirements and the
number of days needed for the shooting. This results in a
final conference, wherein the gossamer textures of art give
way to the sober realities of business— and the writer-
director collaboration have to face up to a hundred thousand
dollar subtraction from the budget. Once this was done, the
writer's contribution to the project has been made. He was
very seldom on hand while the picture was shot.
In the midst of the copious literature satirizing
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6.0
the treatment of the screenwriter is Sidney Sheldon's "The
Truth About Roger Broom," a humorous vignette about a
writer who was banished from Hollywood because he deliber
ately walked onto a sound stage when his own picture was
being shot. "A good writer's work is finished when he
thinks of a title. We have hairdressers and others to make
the pictures."1 3
The Eastern writer is now free to return to New
York, or wherever is home. But, as will be illumined when
specific writing experiences are discussed below, the
chances are good that, in spite of the literary and moral
drawbacks of Hollywood screenwriting, he will remain in (or
quickly return to) the movie capital to extend his involve
ment, to continue the metaphor, to whatever artistic and
financial conclusion his psyche is able to sustain.
Certain aspects of the writer's Hollywood experi
ence are worthy of individual treatment.
The Indictments
The Encyclopaedia Britannica*s commentary on the
creators of Elizabethan drama might have appropriately
described the situation of Hollywood screenwriters:
Writing for the stage only, . . . they acquired an
instinctive insight into the laws of dramatic cause and
effect, and infused a warm vitality into the dramatic
literature which they produced, so to speak, for imme
diate consumption. On the other hand, the same cause
made rapidity of workmanship indispensable to a success
ful playwright. How a play was produced, how many
hands had been at work upon it, what loans and what
spoliations had been made in the process, were consid
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61
erations of less moment than the question whether it was
produced, and whether it succeeded.
This period of the English drama could not therefore
yet be one of full consummation.1
What the artist found when he got to Hollywood was—
in terms of studio structure, production doctrine and proto
col, and establishment attitudes and treatment of writers— a
fairly dismal arena for his talents. In order to establish
the environment which to a great extent determined or con
tributed to many of the failures experienced there, and in .
order to give a flavor of the hostility felt by some writers,
it might be useful to review a few of the more colorful and
eloquent indictments of this Hollywood system.
The basic, underlying principle which imbued the
massive Hollywood industry— an operation which ranked 11th
in the United States in 1937, in size of total assets1 5— is
discussed by Budd Schulberg:
If mediocrity seemed to be the major muse of the
movies, if most pictures were turned out as mechanically
as newspapers were rolled off their presses, and as
quickly tossed aside and forgotten, it was not to be
blamed on the shortcomings of the medium, as many of the
middlebrows and even some of the highbrows claimed. The
fault lay in a system of production that was the logical
expression of American commerce in a period when the
average family went to the movies— any movies— two or
three times a week, and each of the seven magor studios
was grinding out fifty to sixty pictures a year. . . .
Inevitably some 375 of the 400 films a year would be
standard product, slick, smooth, polished to a high pro
fessional gloss, and about as full of real life as the
box of popcorn sold with the show.1 6
The creator of famous fictional detective Philip
Marlowe, screenwriter Raymond Chandler (Double Indemnity,
1944; Strangers on a Train, 1951), gives a bitter synthesis
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of the Hollywood malaise:
The overall picture . . . is of a degraded community
whose idealism even is largely fake. The pretentious
ness, the bogus enthusiasm . . . the all-pervasive
agent, the strutting of the big shots . . . the constant
fear of losing all this fairy gold and being the nothing
they have never ceased to be, the snide tricks. . . . It
is like one of these South American palace revolutions
conducted by officers in comic opera uniforms— only when
the thing is over the ragged dead men lie in rows
against the walls and you suddenly know that this is not
funny, this is the Roman Circus, and damn near the end
of a civilization.17
Perhaps the most ornate analysis is in Christopher
Isherwood's Prater Violet:
The film studio of today is really the palace of the
sixteenth century. There one sees what Shakespeare saw:
the absolute power of the tyrant, the courtiers, the
flatterers, the jesters, the cunningly ambitious
intriguers. There are incompetent favorites. There are
great men who are suddenly disgraced. There is the most
insance extravagance, and unexpected parsimony over a
few pence. There is enormous splendor, which .is a sham;
and also horrible squalor hidden behind the scenery.
There are vast schemes, abandoned because of some
caprice. There are secrets which everybody knows and no
one speaks of. There are even two or three honest
advisers. These are the court foils, who speak the
deepest wisdom in puns, lest they should be taken seri
ously. They grimace, and tear their hair privately, and
wee; .1 8
Robert E. Sherwood, a pioneer film critic, one of
the earliest prominent Eastern writers who saw artistic pos
sibilities in the film medium, and one of the greatest
Hollywood screenwriters (Rebecca, 1940; The Best Years of
Our Lives, 19 46), has on different occasions registered a
striking ambivalence toward motion pictures. During his
days as film critic (1921-1928) his own image of himself was
as "the silent drama's best pal and severest critic";
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63;
but in his moments of frustration and depression over the
failure of motion pictures to live up to their potential,
he could write: "there is only one thing less pleasant than
attending the movies— and that is reviewing them."19 It was
a dour, despairing Sherwood who wrote this:
"What's the use of trying to be artistic?" the film
folk justifiably enquire. "If we give them anything
really good, they don't understand it. The only thing
that isn't over their heads is Sex."
It is this unshakable conviction which deadens
Hollywood, which converts it from the Athens that it
might be into the magnified Gopher Prairie that it is.
Every writer or actor or artist of any kind who journeys
there, however high his hopes or firm his integrity, is
bound eventually to arrive at the point where he must
utter the same unanswerable question: "What's the use?"
And having done so, he must either depart at once,
before the California climate dissolves the tissues of
his conscience, or he must abandon his idealistic pre
tensions, settle down to a monotonous diet of the succu
lent fruits of the lotus, and live out his days, in sun-
kissed contentment, accomplishing nothing of any endur
ing importance, taking the immediate cash and letting
the eternal credit go.
And, by the way, I'm sure that Omar Khayyam would
have loved Hollywood, and that, had he lived there, he
would have left behind him no compositions that an
Edward Fitzgerald would have bothered to translate.20
This kind of criticism has been of the nature of
rather general, sweeping attacks on the sprawling monolith
and the insupportable totality called Hollywood. But some
attention must now be paid to those indictments, those
aspects of the Hollywood system which more closely and more
personally touch on the writer's individual situation.
Literary Thrusts
The injured screenwriter, objective bystanders, even
those who never made it to Hollywood— all took pot shots at
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m
the all-too-easily satirizable aspects of the bizarre,
Byzantine movie making system. The anti-Hollywood litera
ture took all forms, including excursions into poetry.
Thus, Ben Hecht, one of the most prolific commenta
tors on Hollywood peccadilloes, expressed himself this way:
Grind out your sterile panorams,
0 camera god of smirk and pose;
Buy up the Friars and the Lambs.
All yours Janes in underclothes
And all your bankers' high flim-flams
Can't change the cabbage to a rose.
One look at you and Thespis scrams
Into the night to thumb his nose.21
Dorothy Parker was almost the equal to Hecht in her
outspoken loathing of the system which paid handsomely for
ner screenwriting efforts. Like Hecht, she occasionally
chose a poetic outlet:
"The Passionate Screenwriter to His Love"
Oh, come, my love, and join with me
The oldest infant industry.
Come seek the bourne of palm and pearl,
The lovely land of Boy-Meets-Girl.
Come grace this lotus-laden shore,
This Isle of Do-What1s-Done-Before.
Come, curb the new, and watch the old win,
Out where the streets are paved with Goldwyn.
Here let me guide your sedulous pen
To trace the proven lines again;
Here ply your quill, in glory dipt,
And see what happens to your script;
Hear how your phrases— metered, guarded,—
With actors' jokes are interlarded.
Oh, come, my love, nor fret the while
The mighty disregard your smile,
For Cohens, in this haughty small berg,
Bow but to God (Who's cut by Thalberg).
Oh, cast your scruples to the winds
And join us Pegasus' behinds!
Come, learn along with me, my sweet,
How charming thrice a day to eat,
How good to bend the stubborn neck
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6.5,
And hail the rhythmic weekly cheque!
But when, my love, you have been here
A little less than half a year,
You start to talk, who once were dumb,
Of "what a wondrous medium,"
And "why, they haven't scratched the surface,"
(While grieved Mnemosyne hides her face)
And "here's the writer's noblest art"—
That day, my perjured love, we part!22
Those who did not feel poetically inclined filled
the pages of The Screen Writer, which for years was the of
ficial voice of The Screen Writers Guild, Daily Variety, The
Hollywood Reporter, and various other journals with count
less short pieces and essays bruiting their disquiet over
some injustice or another. Representative of this very
large bulk of creative studies, short stories, short one-act
plays, satirical essays, other imaginative items in diverse
forms, would be: "Push Button Marked 'Dialogue'" by Harry
Kurnitz, a humorous parable which deals with the invention
of machines which replace writers as the source for motion
pictures; Ray Bradbury's "Thoughts While Sleeping at My
Machine," a plaintive sign for a situation in which writers
would be able to write films out of love, instead of just
for the money: "Wouldn't it be great, I thought, wouldn't
it be beautiful, if all the major studios went into the oil
business and left films to us, those who love it, those who
really care?"; Ben Hecht's newspaper columns in FM; Hecht's
"The Missing Idol," a virulent short story which dramatizes
Hollywood's concerted effort to erase any element of truth
in its films, and to substitute dream fantasies:
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"These Movies," God continued inwardly, "with My
assistance, might, in a while, take the place of all
Man's present troublesome investigations into Beauty,
Nature, and Truth. . . .
"A sort of millennium of Anti-Thought," God mused,
"that would fill the World, and all of Life would become
a shadow to be enjoyed as a child enjoys the dancing of
a sunbeam across its cradle."
"After Lunch" by Leonard Spigelgass, which bemoaned the
mindless bureaucracy of the studios, and emphasized how time
would be saved and the quality of motion pictures would be
increased if the writer were given more freedom; "A Fable"
by Fred Allen, a humorous sketch which tells how a writer
actually dies from surprise when his producer credits him
with the success of a picture; Richard Connell's "Punch A la
Hollywood," a trenchant portrait of how writers were treated
as servants in Hollywood; "Comedian's Blood Royal" by Sher
wood and A1 Schwartz, a sardonic vignette dealing with the
assassination of a comedian because it was discovered that
he had writer's blood in his veins; S. J. Perelman's "And
Did You Once See Irving Plan?", a focus on the occupational
difficulty which plagued all writers, the impossibility of
seeing the producer when desired— the producer in this case
being the archetype of all production heads, Irving Thal-
berg:
The legends of his munificence rival those of
Lorenzo d'Medici, his wisdom that of Spinoza. Perhaps
the most striking instance of the latter was his evalua
tion of the role of the scenarist in films. "The
writer," he declared with Mosaic profundity, "is a
necessary evil." The assertion that he said "weevil"
appears to have no foundation in fact.23
Of course, the product of the more expansive
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4f.
writers, those that felt that the multitudinous evils of the
Hollywood system could not be accommodated in a shorter
piece, was the Hollywood nove1. It is a special kind of
literature which demands a separate genre classification,
and, while it is much too broad in scope to be adequately
discussed within the context of this study, it is germane to
take some note of how certain novels touched on the writer
condition, his treatment in Hollywood and his artistic
destiny.
Strictly from the point of view of how the screen
writer is portrayed (for obviously the genre was concerned
with many more aspects of the Hollywood experience than this
one alone24), the most compelling Hollywood novels are:
Budd Schulberg's The Disenchanted (1950), the best book to
date for its concentrated analysis and dramatization of the
Eastern writer's struggles to retain his integrity in the
movie capital and maintain his separate literary fertility;
Edwin Gilbert's The Squirrel Cage (1947), leagues beneath
The Disenchanted in literary accomplishment, but fascinating
in its caustic rumblings about the virulent life the writer
faces in Hollywood. Boy Meets Girl (1935) , a play by Bella
and Samuel Spewack, would have to be ranked next in the
screenwriter literature, as it offers a lengthy, in-depth
(albeit zany) portrait of two screenwriters (loosely drawn
from the exploits of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur) func
tioning in Hollywood.
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68
Schulberg's other Hollywood novel, What Makes Sammy
Run? (19 41), a well-written and supremely entertaining evo
cation of Hollywood during the heart of the studio system,
deals in part with the rapacious conniving and avarice in
which many screenwriters partake. In other superb novels—
The Last Tycoon (1941) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Day of
the Locust (1939) by Nathanael West— and in other less com
pletely realized works (such as Ludwig Bemelmans1 Dirty
Eddie [1947], Lee Shippey's If We Only Had Money [1939],
John O'Hara's Hope of Heaven [1938], Helen Partridge's A
Lady Goes to Hollywood [1941], Moss Hart and George S. Kauf
man's Once in a Lifetime [play, 1930]), the role and prob
lems of the writer— especially the Eastern writer— in Holly
wood play an important but more peripheral part.
As portrayed in most Hollywood literature, the posi
tion of the screenwriter is not an enviable one, in spite of
the very large salaries he receives. Phillip Stong, in his
The Farmer in the Dell (193 5), though he treats actors and
producers sympathetically, describes his screenwriter as a
man with l!a round sleepy face and a perpetual expression of
credulity. For this he was paid the modest sum of one
thousand dollars a week." Jane Allen, I Lost My Girlish
Laughter (193 8), portrays her writer as escaping from Holly
wood, refusing to return at any price (a theme that will be
used many times, most notably in Gilbert's The Squirrel Cage
and James T. Farrell' s "$1,000 a Week," [1943]). Shippey, If_
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6.9;
We Only Had Money, has his writer leave Hollywood to save
his family, his creative urge, and his soul. He even
attacks the value of a high salary, because he shows that
the money leads to an increase in expenses and a decrease in
personal liberty. Mumm, the writer in Bemelmans1 Dirty
Eddie, never does a thing except draw $3,000 a week and
demand new office furnishings. Schulberg's Sammy Glick, in
What Makes Sammy Run?, becomes a successful screenwriter by
plagiarizing earlier pictures and lifting ideas from his
best friend. Glick, himself, cannot write at all. The com
mon image of the screenwriter is presented by Carroll and
Garrett Graham, Queer People (1930), in their portrait of
Johnny Grunwold, "who had graduated from Columbia to write
the great American Novel and found himself, eventually, on
the Colossal lot re-hashing the worst American gags."25
In these works the writer is treated as an artisan
without creative integrity or dignity. The successful
screenwriter is a hack resigned to mediocrity in perfor
mance, if not in salary. Carolyn See, who has approached
comprehensiveness as closely as anyone in her very thorough
analysis of the Hollywood novel, refers to a theme in this
literature which intimately involves the writer: the mean
inglessness of work. In Hollywood, the writer is able to
make fantastic sums of money for little if any work, or work
which is seen as either pernicious or silly. The novels are
filled with examples of writers pushed to the brink of
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despair or insanity, through the immersion in an irrational,
ludicrous milieu. For example, in Joseph McEvoy's Hollywood
Girl (192 9), the Eastern writer here, Jimmy Doyle, is told
by the head office that he can no longer use a typewriter:
"... ever since you have been quartered in the Rin-
Tin-Tin bungalow the noise of your typewriter has dis
turbed Rin-Tin-Tin while he is resting there between
scenes . . . this cannot be tolerated."26
Besides writing in longhand, Doyle at one time is asked to
make up fake Eskimo folk songs "to chant the success of a
big seal drive."27
The archetypal (probably apocryphal) real-life exam
ple is P. G. Wodehouse (in accounts by Carolyn See and
Mildred Cram it is Wodehouse; S. J. Perelman tells an
identical story about playwright George Kelly), who took an
unexpected six-week trip to England without telling the
front office, and returned to find six two thousand dollar
checks neatly crisscrossed on his desk. This kind of easy
accumulation of riches was thought of as some sort of per
version of the Puritan ethic; it did not seem to contribute
to the identity of the writer in an accepted sense. In John
O'Hara's Hope of Heaven, Eastern writer Jim Malloy is made
richer than ever before when he comes to Hollywood, and is
rendered more helpless than he has ever been. He wants to
pursue a normal existence, but in this environment nothing
could be more impossible. It all combines to form what
Edmund Wilson has called "goofy unreality." It was so crazy
in Hollywood, dozens of writers have intimated, why try to
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71
deal with it seriously?28
You wrote with the phone ringing like a firehouse
bell, with the boss charging in and out of your atelier,
with the director grimacing and grunting in an adjoining
armchair. Conferences interrupted you, agents with
dream jobs flirted with you, and friends with unsolved
plots came in hourly. Disasters circled your pencil.
The star for whom you were writing fell ill or refused
to play in the movies for reasons that stood your hair
on end. . . . The studio for which you were working sud
denly changed hands and was being reorganized. This
meant usually no more than the firing of ten or twenty
stenographers, but the excitement was unnerving. Or the
studio head decided it would be better to change the
locale of your movie from Brooklyn to Peking.29
As representative of the whole genre, Eastern writ
ers Tony Willard, in The Squirrel Cage, and Brian Carey, in
Hollywood Cemetery (1935) by Liam O'Flaherty, are excellent
examples of the imported writer phenomenon. They are
directly comparable to specific writers in other novels who
were hired by Hollywood on the strength of their creative
work in another environment: the three English writers in
Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One (1948), Ludlow Mumm in Dirty
Eddie, George Boxley in The Last Tycoon, Al Manheim in What
Makes Sammy Run?, as well as writers in minor novels such as
Steve Fisher's I Wake Up Screaming (19 41) and Albert Mor
gan's Cast of Characters (1957).
Tony Willard, protagonist of The Squirrel Cage, was
brought to Hollywood under classic circumstances. He was
the author of a play, The Dark City, which attracted the
attention of a movie executive. He was signed to a finan
cially comfortable screenwriting contract, "yet only a month
ago he had fled New York with a hundred angry creditors
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72
reaching out to him, deviling him, threatening him with sub
poenas, litigations, jail."30 He intends to stay in Holly
wood two years at most; this would be plenty of time to make
the money he needs to go back East and pursue more artistic
work (this, as will be seen below, was a familiar pattern).
But, through a convention that is de rigueur in these
novels, he is betrayed by his friends, his literary energy
and enthusiasm is slowly drained away, and the "system"
makes it impossible for any creative writing to result. He
is eventually driven to this harangue:
"I make five hundred a week, and I can't make it any
place else. But there's no place that emasculates you
like this. You say I can write a book. I haven't had a
decent idea since I've been out here. I don't have any
sense of smell or taste. I seem to vegetate. From the
city hall out to the Pacific, it all acts on me like a
terrible depressant. It's turned from winter to spring
and I have no sense of change or time. It can go on
like that from one season to the next and you'll never
know it and your life burns away in this everlasting sun
and you end up ten years from now still arguing the same
question and still saying that the pictures are getting
better and more daring, and you're still manufacturing
chairs." 31
Only after he has fled the movie capital, in order to pre
serve his sanity, could he breathe a sigh of relief— "he
knew at last that he had come out of the wilderness."32
Like Willard, Brian Carey, an Irish novelist in
Hollywood Cemetery, was brought to Hollywood on the basis of
a book, The Emigrant, which had received critical acclaim.
He originally accepted the offer because of the money (very
few of these writers ever seem to make an adequate living
from their independent literary works), and it did not take
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73
long for disillusionment to set in. He purged his anger and
frustration over the "system" by lecturing his producer:
"I'm beginning to realise, what I should have real
ised in the beginning, that you have no interest in the
screen as an art medium."
"As a what?" shouted Mortimer.
"Here you have the power," cried Carey passionately,
"to do what you please with a wonderful new invention,
to guide it in the direction of becoming a great medium
for the expression of human genius and you are dragging
it in the dung of your own ignorance."33
But he eventually arrived at the all-too-familiar denigrat
ing self-image of a man who prostituted himself for base
rewards: "God gave me great talents. I abused them. I
sold them for a mess of pottage. He gave me a soul and I
lost it. And now I am paying the price."34
In summary, Stephen Longstreet tries to balance out
the many indictments by his valid assertion that the image
of the Hollywood screenwriter has been distorted into a dis
honest, hideous caricature:
This kind of books . . . has slowly poisoned the
mind of the serious reader, so that to him a screenwrit
er is either a neurotic genius brought to Hollywood,
seduced, trampled, stomped on, and spit out when he
rises on his little integrity and tells the big bums
off. After which he flees to the Village, or Capri, or
to a rich widow, to write The Great Play or The Great
Novel (which is never printed or produced). The other
Model T screenwriter, as presented in these novels, is
the rich, drunken, overbearing, unread, uneducated ego
tist, who has sold out his talent and is living in a
welter of swimming pools, Goldwyn girls, knife throwing,
rump kissing and credit stealing. This whore is always
the writer who gets his name on the big pictures, and
the hint is that he either stole it from the neurotic
genius or has taken over Irving Berlin's little colored
boy, whom he flogs until he has written ten pages of
fine script a day.35
Thus, many of the Hollywood novels— especially those
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which have concentrated on the image of the screenwriter—
have been possessed by a kind of literary flatulence, offer
ing at times only the embittered ravings of those men who
were "done wrong" by the system. That the cinema is an art
and the screenwriter is an artist— this has been adumbrated
in only the rarest of instances: most notably in The Last
Tycoon and What Makes Sammy Run?, but also Richard Brooks'
The Producer (1951) and William Murray's The Fugitive Romans
(1955). It is interesting to note that the same Fitzgerald
who wrote one of the fairest and most balanced books about
Hollywood, would also produce the Pat Hobby stories and a
hack writer protagonist, who thought of the movies strictly
as a craft and of himself as a craftsman. Raymond Chandler,
who agrees that The Last Tycoon is the most fully accom
plished Hollywood novel, offers some reasons why the "great"
one has not been— and might never be— written:
It is invariably about the wrong things. . . . You
cannot show the inner workings, the superb skills, the
incredible idiocies, the glory, the opulence, the gran
deur and the decay . . . in the terms of a hot pants
actress, an egomaniac director, a snide executive, four
frantic secretaries, and a sweet young thing in an open
Cadillac.
You can only write about the waste, and the waste is
not the story . . . the story that is Hollywood will
some day be written, and it will not primarily be about
people at all, but about a process, a very living and
terrible and lovely process, the making of a single
picture.3 6
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75i
The Writer's Garden of Problems
The Star System and the Type
Casting of Screenwriters
A double-edged sword, which was a concomitant accre
tion for the screenwriter who was employed in a Hollywood
studio, was the eventual association of that writer with a
particular star, with a particular kind of story, or with a
particular function in connection with a screenplay to be
written. In other words, the general concept of "writing to
order" was a common practice. Not surprisingly, it was
odious to the sensitive artist— whether he had to provide a
tailor-made vehicle for a certain actor or actress, invent a
story with a specified locale, or create a script which con
formed to any number of exotic requirements and specifica
tions prescribed by the producer.
Budd Schulberg has recorded how he and F. Scott
Fitzgerald were sent by Walter Wanger to Hanover, New Hamp
shire, to cook up a story "around" Dartmouth, simply because
Wanger went to Dartmouth and was interested in that back
ground.37 Another producer called in two writers and told
them to do a story about the army— but the extent of his
idea was the title Tomorrow1s Generals. The producer felt,
of course, that he had provided ample story ideas for a
feature script.
Ben Hecht relates that his very first movie assign
ment, dictated to him by producer Bernard Fineman, was to
construct a screenplay which dealt with all the things that
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were affected in the world, when an important industrialist
cut his chin shaving one morning and was delayed fifteen
minutes waiting for an alum stick to stop the flow of
blood.38 During the height of the studio mania and the
omnivorous consumption of story material, it was standard
operating procedure for a company executive to say, e.g.,
"there's a lot of interest in the Lindbergh kidnaping, and
it's safe by now, only it can't be Lindbergh and it can't be
a kidnaping." Or the company which said, we are due for an
ice-carnival picture, or a Colbert picture, or a non-gang
ster picture, or something like an Abbott and Costello, or
something like what the hell is the name of that musical Fox
is cleaning up on, or a period picture— everybody's still
hot for the Civil War after Gone with the Wind.39
Film critic Otis Ferguson summed up the whole mad
dening phenomenon when he wrote:
Whatever the actual genesis, the picture has to
start with a writer. If he has an idea of his own,
fine, he will sell it as an original and maybe clean up
by doing what is called the treatment on salary. But
most of the time he has no time for ideas of his own.
The company wants a Western, a South Sea Islands, a Hedy
Lamarr, or some damn thing. It's a book or a play or a
magazine series the company has on the shelf; it has to
be done to write off a book loss that would worry the
bankers; and it may have to be stretched to include a
big deathbed sequence in the gutter at Tia Juana because
Paramount has just finished with a whole Mexican street
and square they built, and have it uneasy on their
hands; or it may have to have a sea episode, to make use
of the white-elephant tank and enormous ship models
Korda has on his hands over at General Service.1,0
The term "doubled-edged sword" was used earlier to
indicate the dual difficulty which confronted the writer, in
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7-1
both the necessity of writing on assignment, and the likeli
hood (because of his proven facility in writing certain
kinds of material) of becoming typecast for specific films.
Of the many ramifications of this first difficulty of
"writing on order," the impact of the star system has had
probably the most powerful influence on the nature of the
screenwriter's work. A review of several writers' careers
reveals some particularly illustrative patterns.
Casey Robinson, for years a Warner Brothers contract
writer, became a salient functionary of the Hollywood star
system. It was he who was repeatedly called on to provide
the screenplays for Bette Davis during the height of her
popularity. Robinson became associated with and was con
sistently conscripted to perpetuate the alliance of Davis
with the so-called "woman's picture." He provided Davis
with some of her best vehicles: It's Love I'm After (1937),
Dark Victory (1939), The Old Maid (1939), All This, and
Heaven Too (1940), Now, Voyager (1942), The Corn Is Green
(1945).
Over at Paramount Claude Binyon became immersed in a
fairly consistent groove of supplying light comedy scripts
for Fred MacMurray: Invitation to Happiness (1939), Too
Many Husbands (1940), Take a Letter, Darling (1942), No Time
for Love (1943), And the Angels Sing (1944), Suddenly It's
Spring (1947) . Morrie Ryskind had established a similar
relationship with the Marx Brothers: The Cocoanuts (1929),
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78
Animal Crackers (1930) , A Night at the Opera (1935), Room
Service (1938).
Greta Garbo and Clark Gable were perhaps the biggest
stars in the history of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. When
ever a new Garbo or a Gable was being contemplated, specific
writers were usually thought of in connection with its pro
duction. Playwright S. N. Behrman wrote the dialogue for
the best Garbo picture, Queen Christina (1933) , which was a
major success. This insured his involvement in future Garbo
productions: Anna Karenina (1935), Conquest (1937), Two-
Faced Woman (1941). John Lee Mahin was even more prolific
on behalf of Clark Gable, as Red Dust (1932) was an early
demonstration of the harmony between the spirited action and
dialogue of Mahin and the muscular charm of the actor.
After that initial triumph Mahin was destined (by front
office decree) to several ensuing collaborations with Gable:
Chained (1934), Wife Versus Secretary (1936), Love on the
Run (1936), Too Hot to Handle (1938), Boom Town (1940) ,
Mogambo (1953).
The examples cited have generally shown the salutary
interaction of the peculiar persona of a star with intelli
gently tailored scripts. There is no quibble with the
remarkable achievements of writers who were able to invent
dramatic blueprints for the specialized talents of numerous
performers. But how often did this perfect marriage occur?
There seems to be little question, that in the majority of
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7 9
cases, the credibility of plot and the mature handling of
serious themes were strained and almost made impossible, in
order to accommodate certain charismatic values, the limita
tions, the desires, the public's image of a Joan Crawford, a
Gary Cooper, or a George Raft. When the studios elevated
the glamorous stars to an almost deified position, a rigid
formula was automatically imposed on the screenwriters.
Andre Senwald recognized the writing burdens of such a sys
tem back in 193 5:
There is precious little room for variation when a
manufactured star becomes so convinced of her divinely
ordained mission to her millions of subjects that she is
unwilling to embark on a story in which, unexpectedly,
she fails to wind up in the arms of her cinema beloved.
As long as the Hollywood formula insists upon an infan
tile concept of love as the major theme of every film
story, the writers will continue to be forced to limit
their expression to minor reworkings of the same lode.1 *1
In addition to having been hamstrung through the
requirements of various personality pictures, a writer's
range and potential was often restricted by a studio casting
him for pictures with certain themes. Many writers were
typed as being good only for limited types of films, such as
Western, mystery, horror, light romance, drama, melodrama,
musical, farce, sea story, comedy. A writer may have been
typed because the very first picture he happened to be
assigned to was a mystery story. Thereafter, producers
would stamp him to be used almost exclusively on mystery
fi1ms.
Alan Le May is an example of a writer who became
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8 0
typed as a Western screenwriter, because he had established
a reputation as a Western novelist. Before he went to
Hollywood, Le May had written such novels as Painted Ponies,
Gunsight Trail, The Smoky Years, and Empire for a Lady, all
set in the romantic American West. When he became a screen
writer, the projects to which he was assigned were predomi
nantly Westerns: North West Mounted Police (1940), San
Antonio (1945), Cheyenne (1947), The Walking Hills (1949) ,
High Lonesome (1950, which he also directed), The Sundowners
(1950) .
Similarly, Ernest Haycox— who had written the novel
Trouble Shooter, which was the basis for DeMille's Union
Pacific (1939); and a short story, "Stage to Lordsburg,"
from which John Ford made Stagecoach (1939)— came to be used
as a screenwriter on exclusively Western films. Beginning
with Apache Trail (1942), every one of his future Hollywood
writing endeavors was a Western: Canyon Passage (1946) ,
Heaven Only Knows (1947), Montana (1950).
Even more remarkable are the career patterns of
writers such as John Monk Saunders and Frank Wead, who had
established an expertise in a specific field (naval and air
stories), and were employed in that capacity for the length
of their Hollywood tenure. The films on which they worked
had a consistency that was overwhelming. The titles of
Saunders' pictures indicate the trend: Wings (1929), The
Last Flight (1931) , The Eagle and the Hawk (1933), Devil
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Dogs of the Air (1935), The Dawn Patrol (1938); those by
Wead, an ex-naval commander, show a similar and perhaps an
even more impressive skein: Dirigible (1931), Hell Divers
(1931), Air Mail (1932), Murder in the Fleet (1935), Ceiling
Zero (1935), China Clipper (1936), Sea Devils (1937), Sub
marine D-l (1937), Test Pilot (1938), Tailspin (1939), Dive
Bomber (1941), Destroyer (1943), They Were Expendable
(19 45). These two aviation and naval experts combined their
talents on West Point of the Air (1935).
There have been, obviously, cases where the type
casting has been prudent and logical, as in the use on West
ern films of Ernest Haycox, who was known from his novels
for his verisimilitude and sense of historical development
of the West. Other examples of astute casting would include
the employment of Millen Brand on the screen play of The
Snake Pit (1948), a story about a girl who had been in an
insane asylum, because he had demonstrated an insight and
sensitivity with an identical story in his novel The Outward
Room (1937). Raymond Chandler was an excellent choice to do
the screenplays for Double Indemnity (1944) and The Blue
Dahlia (1946), as both films were derived from the "tough
guy" school of literature, for which he exhibited a bril
liant aptitude in his Philip Marlow stories in previous
years. In these instances a certain kind of film had been
assigned to a writer who had been successful with that same
kind of story, or who had made a specialty of a field of
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8 2
literary endeavor and who knew more about it and could bring
more authenticity to it. But there was the possibility,
which in a majority of cases seemed to have been actualized,
that the frequent casting of writers in this manner produced
a great many cliches and stereotypes in the script— a syn
drome which seemed to be operative in not only the rather
superficial and one-dimensional scripts of Frank Wead, but
also in the superb, substantial films written by a John Lee
Mahin (q.v., Wife Versus Secretary, Love on the Run, Too Hot
to Handle) or a Frank S. Nugent (q.v., Fort Apache, 194 8;
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, 1949; Wagonmaster, 1950).
Another way in which a writer was often limited in
his productivity within the studio system was in the
restriction of some individuals to specific functions during
the preparation of a script. Some writers established them
selves as expert in performing certain creative jobs in
regard to the form or structure of the screenplay; such as
providing the original story, or being proficient as an
adaptor of a play or novel, or being adept as a kind of lit
erary troubleshooter or polisher, a constructionist, a dia
logue specialist. For example, there were some writers who
developed reputations for turning out good original stories.
Herbert Clyde Lewis became known for his original screen
ideas, for every film with which he was connected, from
Fisherman's Wharf (1939) to Free for All (1950)— including
an Academy nomination for best Original Story for It Hap
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8 3
pened on Fifth Avenue (1947)— he did not receive one screen
play credit, even though he might have desired to perform as
scenarist.
When a novel or play is bought by a movie company,
it usually must be adapted before its screenplay can be
written. Certain writers have acquired reputations as being
excellent for this type of work. Sheridan Gibney, a former
playwright (The Wiser They Are, 1931), impressed producers
with his adroit adaptation of Hervey Allen's sprawling his
torical novel, Anthony Adverse (book, 1933; film, 1936). He
has been in demand as an adaptor of novels every since:
Disputed Passage (1939), from the novel by Lloyd C. Douglas;
Cheers for Miss Bishop (1939) , from the novel by Bess
Streeter Aldrich; Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944), from
the book by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough.
Perhaps the most celebrated adaptor of stage come
dies to the screen was Donald Ogden Stewart. Merely a sam
ple of his work reveals his unmatched accomplishment in this
area: Philip Barry's Holiday (1938) and The Philadelphia
Story (1940), Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's Life with
Father (19 47). The novels he adapted include: The Prisoner
of Zenda (1937), Kitty Foyle (1940) , Keeper of the Flame
(19 42), Cass Timerlane (1947). Gary Carey comments on the
approach and the nature of Stewart's adapting:
His adaptations, particularly of plays, are notable
for both their fidelity and sensitivity to the original
material. When Stewart does change a line or add an
additional scene, it is with an uncanny gift for writing
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in the precise style of the playwright. He was, then, a
kind of play doctor, shaping and pruning other people's
work, but guarding carefully the illusion that it is
they who were speaking.1 *2
He did his work well; he did little else.
The dialogue and script polishers go to work after a
screenplay is finished and their job is to give the dialogue
and situations "touches" and "twists" which will make for a
brighter, more intelligent, less hackneyed film. They were
among the highest paid writers and included such authors as
Erskine Caldwell and William Faulkner, who would take on a
"polish job" for two or three weeks at several thousand
dollars a week, and who did not care about getting credit
for their work on the screen, although in most cases their
contributions would not be large enough to justify credit
anyway.
While Faulkner did manage to receive a half-dozen
screen credits over the course of several stints in Holly
wood, the majority of his effort was expended in polishing
and carpentry work. The following are some of his uncredit
ed film contributions: Gunga Din (1939) , Drums Along the
Mohawk (1939), Air Force (1943; his many collaborations with
director Howard Hawks in this capacity are well known),
Background to Danger (1943) , Northern Pursuit (1943) , Escape
in the Desert (1945), God Is My Co-Pilot (1945), Mildred
Pierce (1945).43 Caldwell's only screen credit is as con
tributor to the treatment of Mission to Moscow (1943), but
his employment as a much-used polisher and "doctor" of
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8 5
scripts has been highly valued.1 *4
Again, the practice of utilizing script polishers is
not being questioned— only that this procedure thwarted the
possibility of superior work of a higher level by writers of
talent exiled to this stratum of productivity. We can only
speculate on the quality of work which might have resulted
if any of the typecasted writers were given freedom to
explore different forms of film expression; but there seems
to be no question of the debauchment of authority and artis
tic judgment in the assignment of William Faulkner to an
Errol Flynn opus like Northern Pursuit or a second-rate
melodrama like Escape in the Desert. It was the aberrant
misuse of the superb talents of a Faulkner which was most
indictable about the system. Just as actors frequently
object to being typed, and would like the opportunity of
playing roles which are different from their usual ones, so
writers resented being typed. Most of them wanted a chance
to show their versatility, instead of being straight-
jacketed.
The Writer Contract
The writer who worked for a studio wrote nothing
solely to please himself, and when he was done, he owned
nothing except his salary. All of the restrictions and
infringements of writer control over his creations were
spelled out in the contract he was compelled to sign. This
was an interesting and frightening document; and, while its
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86
myriad provisions are too complex and legalistic for mean
ingful discussion here, it deserves some brief comment.
The typical contract bound the writer to the studio
for five years, but bound the company for only six months.
It made it clear that all the writer produced belonged to
the "partnership, firm, or corporation" employing him. It
provided that his "employment shall include (but not be
limited to) the writing, composing, and preparation of orig
inal stories, treatments, adaptations, continuities, screen
plays, polishing jobs, gags, and/or incidental dialogue for
and in connection with (but not limited to) the picture ten
tatively entitled ____________________________ ." The contract
also told the writer that all his work "shall automatically
become our property, and for this purpose, we shall be
deemed to be the author thereof." Thus the studio created a
sort of "corporate author," who owned not only the work of
the writer, but also the copyright of anything that may
arise from his activities.45 James M. Cain particularly
bristles under this last provision. He explains how, under
the "check-back" clause of the contract, the writer must
give an option in perpetuity on any original work he pro
duced during the life of his contract. So, when a writer
had written a novel or a play, even during a "lay-off" peri
od, the studio had "first call" on his work. If they did
not accept it at his price, and he then got an offer some
where else, unless the new offer is greater than the amount
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8 7
he asked of them, he was compelled to give his home studio
48 hours to meet the new bid, and sell to them if they met
it. This meant that the studio ..could withhold their bids
until the last minute, or never bid at all. It meant that
the writer had to quote a price before he had any idea of
how the novel or play would do when offered to the public—
while the studio could refrain from bidding until the market
disclosed itself. As Cain put it: "In no branch of the
business can you have a picture until you have a script, and
yet, in a business that manufactures glory as a baker manu
factures bread, there is none so poor as will weave a
writer's chaplet, or even put a dandelion in his button-
hold." 4 6
On a personal, humorous level, British novelist
R. J. Minney (who was brought to Hollywood to adapt his
novel Clive to the screen, which resulted in his sole film
credit: Clive of India, 1935) tells of his first confronta
tion with a Hollywood contract:
He handed me my contract. The clauses danced before
my eyes, but one of them steadied itself and glared at
me relentlessly. It informed me that the contract was
liable to instant cancellation if I should happen to go
out of my mind.
Apparently, such a consequence is natural in Holly
wood. My wonder was how they would be able to distin
guish me from the rest. But perhaps it was a sort of
trade union precaution to prevent there being more than
a limited number of lunatics in employment.
The man shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the
dotted line.
I signed it.47
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Directorial Credit for
Writer Contributions
In an ironic shift in artistic status, the position
of the Hollywood screenwriter is the same as the director of
a Braodway play, from the point of view of critical atten
tion and audience recognition. These men have found them
selves regarded as secondary entities in their respective
artistic arenas, in an amazing reversal of authority: the
director of a play has been subordinate to the playwright;
the screenwriter has always deferred to the director of the
film. Each has been chronically unhappy over the manner in
which his work has been treated by critics, and, worse, the
way in which certain felicities of his invention are
ascribed to his playwright/film director collaborator.
In an article on stage directors, drama critic
Walter Kerr discusses the difficulty that the critic faces
in knowing just how much of what he sees onstage was
actually inspired by the director. Since he has not read
the play's manuscript in advance, he is in a poor position
to say what the director has done to it. Since the critic
has not attended the rehearsals, he has no way of knowing
how much of an electrifying moment is the result of the
actor's inspiration, the playwright's prescribed action, or
how much the result of the director's guidance.48
In the case of the screenwriter, the critics and the
public have been inclined to credit the director rather than
the writer with an effective piece of business, an ingenious
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8 9
way of bridging time, or even a dialogue scene. In the
instance of close collaboration the director may have been
responsible, but how are we to know? Former film critic for
the New York Herald-Tribune, Thornton Delehanty, says that
there is only one way to tell for sure:
In order to write a minutely fair piece of criticism
from the standpoint of this credit business a critic
would have to sit in on story conferences and watch
every step of the picture's evolution, including front-
office huddles; and not even then without the aid of
numerous and strategically-placed dictaphones could he
be anywhere near sure he was on firm ground.49
In Cavalcade (1933) two newlyweds stand on the deck
of an ocean liner, dreaming of the many years they are to
spend together. As they go inside, the girl lifts her shawl
from the rail, disclosing a life buoy that had been hidden
behind it, and we read: "S. S. Titanic." In fact, neither
the director Frank Lloyd nor the screenwriters, Reginald
Berkeley or Sonya Levien, were responsible for this moment;
it was contained in the original play written by Noel
Coward.
In the case of Cavalcade, the original play is
available for verification, but for most films this sort of
documentation is missing. In This Thing Called Love (1941),
for example, George Seaton (who wrote the screenplay, along
with Ken Englund and P. J. Wolfson) claims he was respon
sible for a visual device to show that a married couple were
always quarreling. He showed the end of a squabble, and as
the husband stormed out of the room, the wife threw a shoe
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9 0
at him. As it hit the closed door, the camera moved in to
show us the scars of other heels. Director Alexander Hall
was credited by the critics for "a Lubitsch touch."50
Other examples of screenwriter contributions being
overlooked or unconsidered, in the critics' haste to canon
ize the director, are to be found in writer Carl Mayer's
influence on the films of F. W. Murnau. Mayer's scripts
were meticulously detailed; they indicated every shot. Karl
Freund, cinematographer for The Last Laugh (1924), said that
Mayer was responsible for the great amount of camera move
ment in the film. Mayer was also responsible for the fact
that in The Last Laugh the lips of the players, with one
exception, do not move. (The exception is when the hotel
manager shouts the order dismissing the doorman from his
post.) Mayer's script for Monsieur Tartuffe (1925) speci
fied the reactions, as well as the actions, of all the char
acters; and, according to Freund, it was Mayer's idea to use
different lenses for the framing story, which was realis
tically photographed, than for the baroque comedy, which had
a soft texture. For Sunrise (192 7) Mayer changed the ending
of the original story, in which the protagonist dies, to
having him redeemed by his wife's love. He described the
complete physical setting of the film; the cottage, farm,
village, railroad, town, fairgrounds. Through the specific
ity of his scripts he became, in all but name, a co
director. 51
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9 1
Dudley Nichols was one of the best known and re
spected screenwriters, but with the modern passion for idol
izing directors, he has been made to be subservient to his
famous collaborators, such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Jean
Renoir, Fritz Lang. Yet his scripts were uncommonly
detailed, and possessed an integrity of action and emotion
that invariably imprinted itself on the final film. For
example, his script for Sister Kenny (19 46) prescribes every
camera angle. This is a scene of Elizabeth Kenny's farewell
to her childhood sweetheart at the railway station in
Toowomba where she has her first training as a nurse:
(Sc. 66) Exterior of street. Camera is outside a
millinery story. It is sundown. We see Liz coming
along toward the camera in the state of mind in which
Kervin's departure has left her. She is utterly dissat
isfied with herself. Irritated and dejected by turns.
A mirror in the millinery shop catches her eye and she
stops and looks. (Sc. 67) Shooting past Liz into the
window we see her inspecting her image in the mirror
which is set up at one side in a display of fine hats.
Liz looks at herself with dismay. She is wearing her
old bush's uniform spattered with dust from her long
drive. She tries to set her nurse's cap at a smart
angle but it is no use. Then her discouraged gaze moves
to (Sc. 68), close shot of a chic hat. (Sc. 69) Close
shot of Liz's face . . . she is sorely tempted.52
In general, the difficulty in ascribing responsibil
ity for a film's niceties remains essentially unresolved.
Even the testimony of the screenwriter himself often does
not lift the mystery. For example, there is a striking
scene in Scarface (1932), directed by Howard Hawks, in which
Paul Muni as Scarface shoots Gaffney (Boris Karloff) as he
rolls a ball down a lane in a bowling alley. The sound of
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9 2
gunfire tells us he has been killed, and then as the shot
continues we watch the progress of the bowling ball until it
knocks over the pins— with one final, expressive pin contin
uing to wobble after the rest have fallen, until it too
falls in symbolic punctuation of Gaffney's death. When
asked whether he or the director were responsible for this
touch, John Lee Mahin, who shared the writing credits on the
film, replied, "We both were!"53
While the problem of isolating artistic contribu
tions is a persistent one, the difficulty does not close the
subject, or rule out the possibility of trying for a fair
estimate of what the screenwriter (in this case) has infused
in the film. There are some evaluations and inferences that
one can make, after viewing the work of several film makers
over the years. More often than not, when a fine film is
signed by a mediocre director, the film's distinctive quali
ties can be traced to the screenwriter. It seems to be a
fairly reasonable assertion that the recurring sense of
romantic grace and comedic charm possessed by Bachelor
Mother (1939), The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), and Dear
Ruth (19 47) are more attributable to the screenplays of
Norman Krasna, than to the disparate talents of directors
Garson Kanin, Sam Wood, and William D. Russell, respective
ly.
Within the framework of a series of films (the
American Dietrich pictures) directed by the same man (Josef
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von Sternberg), there is a discernible difference between
those which had screenplays by Jules Furthman— Morocco
(1930), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde V-nus (1932)— and
those that did not— Dishonored (1931), The Scarlet Empress
(1934), The Devil Is a Woman (1935). The structure of the
latter is dreamlike, almost formless. There is little sense
of unity; characterization is conveyed through unconnected
anecdotes, while progression of narrative is often achieved
through screen titles. The Furthman films are characterized
by a sense of logic, strong indications of carefully prear
ranged scenarios. They contain a tightness, a strict delin
eation of character, an integrity of progression which the
first three lack. All of the films enjoy the unification of
von Sternberg's glittering visual style, but the Furthman
films bear his signature almost as forcefully.51*
Perhaps the importance and the obviousness of the
screenwriter's contribution to the films of a director are
no more clearly underscored than in the pictures of director
Mitchell Leisen. His best films— and perhaps the pinnacle
of Paramount's comedy magic of the 1930's— were Easy Living
(1937) and Remember the Night (1940) , with two screenplays
by Preston Sturges; and Midnight (1939) , written by Billy
Wilder and Charles Brackett. Here was achieved the sublime
marriage of trenchant comic literature and Leisen's omni
scient direction.
But while these films show Leisen to be an expert
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94
interpreter of the material, they are all three what would
have to be called writer1s cinema. To a far greater extent
than is true in most directorial careers, Leisen's filmogra
phy can be dichotomized into the films dominated by strong
scripts and those dominated by directorial personality. The
first group falls generally in the 1930's— with the Sturges,
Wilder, and Brackett entries— fortified by Cradle Song
(1933, Marc Connelly screenplay), Death Takes a Holiday
(1934, Maxwell Anderson), Four Hours to Kill (1935, Norman
Krasna). These films were a mellow integration of author's
conception with directorial control. Leisen actualized
potentials in the scripts with a fertile invention that con
firmed the efficacy of his functioning around a strong nar
rative locus. The 1930's films thus enjoyed a scriptual and
directorial harmony, but, paradoxically, the indigenous
Leisen picture did not occur until circumstances denied him
the screenplays which made for the wholeness of the early
triumphs. With perhaps only one or two exceptions— Hands
Across the Table (1935) and the overrated Swing High, Swing
Low (1937)— the era of the Leisen picture was the decade of
the 1940's.
The Story Conference
The producer . . .
I can recall a few bright ones among them, and fifty
nitwits. The pain of having to collaborate with such
dullards and to submit myself to their approvals was
always acute. Years of experience failed to help. I
never became reconciled to taking literary orders from
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9 5
them. I often prepared myself for a producer conference
by swallowing two sleeping pills in advance.
I have always considered that half of the large sum
paid me for writing a movie script was in payment for
listening to the producer and obeying him. I am not
being facetious. The movies pay as much for obedience
as for creative work. An able writer is paid a larger
sum than a man of small talent. But he is paid this
added money not to use his superior talents.55
These are the words of Ben Hecht, who, over the course of
writing 70 feature films, has had more combat experience
than most writers in fighting the literary battle with pro
ducers across the conference table. A Hectian recounting of
a typical story conference is, therefore, a particularly
enlightening document:
PRODUCER: I want to say first I think you've writ
ten a fine, brilliant, powerful piece of work, Ben. I
think it's a real movie masterpiece.
MYSELF: Thanks. (This is obviously going to be one
of the tough ones.)
PRODUCER: I hope you don't mind a few little criti
cisms I want to offer.
MYSELF: Dying to hear them.
(A jewelry salesman is ushered into the producer's
sanctum. The purchase of a diamond ring for the pro
ducer's wife takes twenty minutes. It is, alas, nearly
always the producer's wife who gets the diamonds and fur
coats. The largesse enables the producer to consort
with his mistress with a lessened guilt complex.)
PRODUCER:. Emmy's going to go nuts when I hand her
this ring.
MYSELF: It's a beauty, all right.
PRODUCER: I won't beat around the bush, Ben. I
don't care for the ending.
MYSELF: The last page?
PRODUCER: No— the whole last two or three reels.
It won't work. You can't have the girl untrue to her
soldier lover while he's fighting for his country— and
then—
(The talking desk beings: people from all over the
studio can talk openly to the producer without the han
dicap of a telephone. They press a button and talk
right out of the desk.)
VOICE: What time you going to the track?
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96
PRODUCER: I ain't going today.
VOICE: You ain't going? You sick?
PRODUCER: Wo. Tied up in a story conference.
VOICE: I'll drop in in a half hour.
PRODUCER: Bring a couple of new card decks.
VOICE: Okey-doke.
MYSELF: If she's faithful to her soldier, there's
no story.
PRODUCER: I disagree. I think we can "lick it" if
we both concentrate.
(It goes on. Other people enter the conversation.
The director doesn't like the beginning, the producer's
mistress doesn't care for the heroine's character at all
— and has some suggestions. I, the writer, have an
appointment to go sailing off Santa Monica in a fellow-
writer's new $50,000 schooner. I slide out as the pro
ducer starts playing gin.)56
Re-creations such as this of the story conference
have been frequently employed in both personal memoirs and
fictional literature,57 in order to dramatize the artistic
and ideological struggles of the writer vis-a-vis the pro
ducer. One of the best examples of this aspect of Hollywood
commentary is by Salka Viertel, a writer at M-G-M during the
flower of the studio system and a collaborator on most of
Garbo's sound pictures. The following concerns a story con
ference on one of her rare non-Garbo projects. (Actually,
she never received screen credit, as she was one of many
writers who worked on the script; see section of "multiple
authorship" below.)
I was assigned to the producer Sidney Franklin, to
collaborate on the screenplay of Marie Curie (sic).
[Madame Curie, 1943] There were four, sometimes five of
us discussing the story, an international set up:
Jacques Th£ry, a Frenchman, who did not give a damn; Mr.
Harris, an American on loan from Fox, author of the
Alexander Graham Bell film; the Austrian novelist George
Froeschel, who alternated with another German refugee,
Hans Rameau; Claudine West, British . . . and myself.
No one was writing yet because we had not agreed on the
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9 7
"story line." Franklin's secretary was supposed to
record all suggestions but only took down what Franklin
dictated.
The conferences began at ten in the morning with the
producer appearing last, changing into a jacket and
stretching out on the couch, while we grouped ourselves
around him. Invariably he would begin with: "Well,
guys, last night, after dinner, I talked to Mrs. Frank
lin about the story and she agreed with me: no pretty
girl would ever study chemistry or physics."
My colleagues waited until I automatically pro
tested: photographs showed that Marie Curie was lovely
in her youth. I argued, Miss West smiled enigmatically,
Th^ry gossiped about Madame Curie's love life, Froeschel
and Rameau made abstract and noncommittal suggestions.
After two hours Franklin would admit that some pretty
girls might study chemistry but not many.
Having settled that, we began the search for "moti
vation." At six p.m. we left the studio, certain that
tomorrow's conference would again begin with "Last night
after dinner . . ."5 8
Mrs. Viertel demonstrated a rare resistance to the
will of the producer; no matter how banal or fatuous the
vision of the producer might have been, the available
accounts of the story conferences (typical examples being in
Ruth McKinney's non-fiction Love Story (1938), or the Graham
Brothers' Queer People) depict the writer as passive, sub
missive to the desires of his "superior."59 Often the
writer seems to have been in awe of the system, which is
seen in such objectionable terms that to battle against it
is useless; improvement is impossible. All victories were
short-lived:
I often won my battle with producers. I was able to
convince them that their suggestions were too stale or
too infantile. But I won such battles only as long as I
remained on the grounds. The minute I left the studio
my victory vanished. Every sour syllable of producer
invention went back into the script and every limping
foot of it appeared on the screen.60
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98
The sense of futility that the writer feels when he
is confronted with such a nihilistic forum is expressed by
Raymond Chandler:
It makes very little difference how a writer feels
towards his producer as a man; the fact that the pro
ducer can change and destroy and disregard his work can
only operate to diminish that work in its conception and
to make it mechanical and indifferent in execution.
. . . That which is born in loneliness and from the
heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a com
mittee of sycophants. . . . There is little magic of
work or emotion or situation which can remain alive
after the incessant bonescraping revisions imposed on
the Hollywood writer by the process of rule by decree.61
Monroe Stahr, Scott Fitzgerald's otherwise sympathe
tic embodiment of such a Hollywood production head, Irving
Thalberg, says in The Last Tycoon: "I never thought I had
more brains than a writer has. But I always thought that
his brains belonged to me— because I know how to use them.
Like the Romans— I've heard that they never invented things,
but they knew what to do with them."62
How did the Eastern writer, an immigrant to Holly
wood who was understandably troubled by this unique producer
interference in the creative process, stand all those story
conferences? When William Faulkner was asked this question,
he replied: "I just keep saying to myself. 'They're gonna
pay me Saturday, they're gonna pay me Saturday."'63
Multiple Authorship
A practice which the writers found particularly dis
tasteful, invented by Irving Thalberg (alluded to by Carl
Foreman above), was the mass-production of scripts— the sys
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tem of assigning multiple writers to work on the same
screenplay, most often without each other's knowledge.
Fitzgerald described how this worked in The Last Tycoon:
"We have all sorts of people— disappointed poets,
one-hit playwrights— college girls— we put them on an
idea in pairs, and if it slows down, we put two more
writers working behind them. I've had as many as three
pairs working independently on the same idea."
"Do they like that?"
"Not if they know about it. They're not geniuses—
none of them could make as much any other way."61*
This production procedure manifested itself in some
rather corpulent credits. The studio period was replete
with examples which sometimes only hinted at the total num
ber of writers who were involved on any one project. Thal-
berg's personally supervised Marie Antoinette (1938) cred
ited three writers with the screenplay:
Claudine West
Donald Ogden Stewart
Ernest Vajda
From (in part) a book by Stefan Zweig.
A Universal picture, Smash Up— The Story of a Woman (1947),
utilized several excellent writers:
John Howard Lawson, screenplay
Dorothy Parker, screen story
Frank Cavett, screen story
Lionel Wiggam, additional dialogue
San Quentin (1937), from Warner Brothers, received contrib
utions from an even larger number:
Peter Milne, screenplay
Humphrey Cobb, screenplay
Robert Tasker, screen story
John Bright, screen story
Charles Belden, contributor to treatment
Tom Reed, contributor to treatment
Seton Miller, contributor to treatment
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100
Laird Doyle, additional dialogue
But Forever and a Day (1944), albeit an omnibus film,
extended multiple authorship almost to the point of collab
orative exhaustion, utilizing a plethora of famous writers
in fashioning the screenplay:
Charles Bennett
C. S. Forrester
Lawrence Hazard
Michael Hogan
W. P. Lipscomb
Alice Duer Miller
John Van Druten
Alan Campbell
Peter Godfrey
S. M. Herzig
Christopher Isherwood
Novelist Mildred Cram, brought to Hollywood in the
early 1930's, tells of the time she met the adaptor of a
story of hers on the Metro lot. The film had had a good
response at a preview held in Santa Monica, and Cram thanked
him for what she had heard was a skillful piece of work.
"That's all right," he interrupted. "It was a good
story. A swell story! Why, do you know, every little
while, when I was writing it, I'd go back to your orig
inal, and almost every time I'd find the idea I was
looking for. The start . . . the stepoff! I used a
lot of your stuff!"65
One of the underlying problems which precipitated
the multiple authorship practice was the basic lack of tech
nical knowledge on the part of the Eastern writers. Herman
Mankiewica, one of the earliest of the sound-era Eastern
writers to become assimilated into the system, asserted that
the writer was "not in an artistic pursuit but in a very
hard-boiled business, which pays well. A picture might have
Gene Lockhart
R. C. Sherriff
Claudine West
Norman Corwin
Jack Hartfield
James Hilton
Emmett Lavery
Frederick Lonsdale
Donald Ogden Stewart
Keith Winter
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101
more literary integrity, more unity, if only one writer
worked on it all the way and followed it through production
— although very few men really know enough about pictures to
be able to handle a job alone."65
In other words, the same hesitancy or refusal or
inability to learn the technical apparatus of movie story
telling which plagued the earlier "Eminent Authors" seemed
to have blighted the later writers as well. Raymond Chand
ler insisted that it really was not the writer's fault. It
was almost impossible to learn the technical side, said
Chandler, because there was no one to do the teaching.
Incredibly, the studies very seldom made provisions to edu
cate writers from foreign literary media in the new format.
As a result, the average writer knew hardly anything about
the technical problems of the director, or the potentials of
a skilled editor; he ended up writing shots that could not
be made, writing dialogue which could not be spoken, at
tempting nuances of mood and emotion which the camera could
not reproduce. The writer was told to look at feature pic
tures previously produced, which, said Chandler, is like
trying to learn architecture by staring at a house.67
In any event, the practice was widely implemented,
and William de Mille tells of the consequence:
As a result, the writer naturally lost his sense of
artistic responsibility. Constantly rewriting the work
of others and knowing that his own work, in turn, would
be changed and changed again, he simply did the best he
could and took comfort in his salary. Even today the
system of multiple authorship continues, which means
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102
that in working for the screen, the author as a rule has
nothing to gain but money.6 8
For the Eastern writer, accustomed to controlling
the artistic destiny of his literary work, the Hollywood
system was a bleak, distressing experience: at the studios
he served his time— at $60,000 per year.
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1 0 3
NOTES
1 Rosen, Hollywood, p. 313.
2Quoted in the Hollywood Reporter, January 9, 1941,
p. 3. -------------------
3Hecht, A Child of the Century, p. 442.
‘ ‘Howard, "The Story Gets a Treatment," pp. 32-52.
Several ensuring paragraphs in the text are distilled from
this essay.
5Ibid., pp. 33-34.
sCarl Foreman, "Confessions of a Frustrated Screen
writer," Film Comment, Winter 1970-71, p. 22.
7Howard, "The Story Gets a Treatment," pp. 37, 42.
8Foreman, "Confessions of a Frustrated Screen
writer," p. 24. The practice of "multiple authorship" is
discussed more fully below.
9Howard, "The Story Gets a Treatment," p. 44.
Based on her Hollywood experience, novelist Jessamy West
gives aher analysis of this peculiar writer-producer collab
orative relationship: "I have decided that the script
writer's relationship to a producer-director is that of an
architect to a client. The client is not going to build
until he gets the blueprint he wants, and the architect had
as well recognize the fact. The architect can do his best
to persuade his client not to add that cupola, exclude this
window; and he may succeed. But the architect's only real
assurance of being permitted to produce something that is
his own is to pick out the right client in the first place—
a man who sees eye to eye with him as to what constitutes a
good house. So script writer and producer-director had bet
ter more or less agree as to what constitutes a good pic
ture. Of course, the chances for that are enhanced when the
producer has already elected to make a picture based on the
script-writer1s book." (To See the Dream, p. 229.)
1“Quoted in Macgowan, Behind the Screen, p. 383.
1 1Hecht, A Child of the Century, p. 443 .
1 2Howard, "The Story Gets a Treatment," p. 46.
1“Sidney Sheldon, "The Truth About Roger Broom," The
Spice of Variety, ed. by Abel Green (New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 19 52) , pp. 236-241.
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1 0 4
1‘ ‘Quoted in Macgowan, Behind the Screen, pp. 387-
388. ------------------
15Rosten, Hollywood, p. 379.
16Schulberg, "The Writer and Hollywood," Harper's
Magazine, October, 1959, p. 135.
17Raymond Chandler, "Letter to Alfred A. Knopf,
January.12, 1946," Raymond Chandler Speaking, ed. by Dorothy
Gardiner and Kathrin'e Sorley Walker (Boston: Houghton Miff
lin, 1962), pp. 126-129.
1 8Christopher Isherwood, Prater Violet (New York: A
Random House Modern Library Paperback, 1945), p. 88.
19Quoted in John Mason Brown, The Worlds of Robert
E. Sherwood: Mirror to His Times 1896-1939 (New York:
Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965), p. 178.
20Sherwood, "Hollywood: The Blessed and the Cursed,"
in America As Americans See It, ed. by Fred J. Ringel (New
York: The Literary Guild, 1932), p. 72.
This final reference by Sherwood, the speculation
as to how successful or how effectively the literary skills
of a by-gone writer would have been utilized in Hollywood,
has reoccurred on occasion. Mildred Cram in "Author in
Hollywood," p. 178, makes this assumption: "Joseph Conrad
would have had no sympathy in Hollywood. They would have
ushered him down an echoing, carpetless corridor, past doors
labelled neatly: Ben Hecht. Charles MacArthur. Anita
Loos. William Faulkner. And they would have said: 'If
such as these can, you can!' Conrad, if I know him would
have galloped back to the sea."
21Quoted in Clifford Howard, "Jabberwocky," Close
Up, March, 1932, p. 55.
22Quoted in Macgowan, Behind the Screen, p. 379.
23Harry Kurnitz, "Push Button Marked 'Dialogue,'"
The Screen Writer, August, 1948; Ray Bradbury, "Thoughts
While Sleeping at My Machine," Daily Variety, November 4,
1958; Leonard Spigelgass, "After Lunch," The Screen Writer,
September, 1948; Fred Allen, "A Fable," The Hollywood
Reporter, November 5, 1945; Richard Connell, "Punch a la
Hollywood," Hollywood Reporter, October 4, 1937— in Hello,
Hollywood! ed. by Allen Rivkin and Laura Kerr (New York:
Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1962); Ben Hecht, article in PM
in The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood, ed. by Max Wilk (New
YorkT: Atheneum, 19 71) ; Hecht, "The Missing Idol," in his A
Book of Miracles (Garden City, N.Y. : The Sun Dial Press, —
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1 0 5
1941); Al and Sherwood Schwartz, "Comedian's Blood Royal,"
in The Spice of Variety; S. J. Perelman, "And Did You Once
See Irving Plain?1 ' in The Most of S. J. Perelman (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1958) .
In addition, there are some excellent short sto
ries which would have to be scrutinized in any serious con
sideration of the Hollywood literature of the studio period,
even though a few extend beyond the special focus of screen
writer as protagonist. Among the best are: F. Scott Fitz
gerald, "Crazy Sunday"; William Faulkner, "Golden Land"; Ben
Hecht, "Concerning a Woman of Sin"; Irwin Shaw, "The City
Was in Total Darkness"; Ring Lardner, "The Love Nest"—
(These stories are anthologized in Concerning a Woman of
Sin, ed. by Daniel Talbot (New York: Fawcett World Library,
1960); Budd Schulberg, "The Legend That Walks Like a Man"
and "A Table at Ciro's" in his Some Faces in the Crowd (New
York: Random House, 1955); Daniel Fuchs, "Twilight in
Southern California" and "The Golden West" in Stories (New
York: The Noonday Press, 1966); and, of course, the Pat
Hobby stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
24In addition to the dissertations by Carolyn See
and Virgil Lokke (cited above: Chapter III, Note 9), other
excellent analyses of the many focuses of the Hollywood
novel are: Stephen Longstreet, "Books: Two Novels about
Hollywood," The Screen Writer, November, 1947, pp. 37-38;
Carolyn See, "The Hollywood Novel: The American Dream
Cheat," in Tough Guy Writers of the Thirties, ed. by David
Madden (CarB'ondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1968), pp. 199-217; Budd Schulberg, "Literature of
the Film," Films, Spring, 1940, pp. 68-78; Franklin Walker,
"Hollywood m Fiction," The Pacific Spectator, Spring, 1948,
pp. 127-133.
25Walker, "Hollywood in Fiction," p. 13 0.
26Quoted in See, "The Hollywood Novel" (disserta
tion) , p. 323 .
2 7Ibid.
28See, "The American Dream Cheat," p. 2 02.
29Hecht, A Child of the Century, p. 449.
30Edwin Gilbert, The Squirrel Cage (New York:
Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1947), p. 12.
31 Ibid., p. 235.
3 2Ibid., p. 256.
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1 0 6
33Liam O'Flaherty, Hollywood Cemetery (London:
Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1935) , p. J J ~ .
34Ibid., p. 78.
35Longstreet, "Two Novels About Hollywood," p. 38.
35Quoted in See, "The Hollywood Novel," p. 308.
37Schulberg, "Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood," The
New Republic, March 3, 1941, pp. 311-312. Of course, Schul-
berg^s novel, The Disenchanted (1950), takes this incident
as its central focus.
3 8Hecht, A Child of the Century, pp. 446-447.
390tis Ferguson, Film Criticism, ed. by Robert Wil
son (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1971), p. 443.
"Established writers are, as a rule, represented
by agents, expert contact-men who maintain offices both in
New York and in Hollywood. These agents are supposed to be
familiar with the story requirements of every studio. They
know when a 'Chatterton' is wanted. When there is a crying
need for a 'Barrymore.' Who wants a comedy. Who is ready
to buy a 'gangster' or a 'war1 or a 'comedy-drama.' The
agent, for a consideration, makes the necessary moves and
brings his client's story to the right producer at the right
moment— if he can!
"This system is ardently supported by some,
despised and reviled by others. There has recently been
talk, in Hollywood, of doing away altogether with authors'
representatives, and establishing a central bureau, very
like the Central Casting Bureau, to handle authors without
benefit of agent. This would work out something like this:
"Paramount Studio calling:
"'We want a blonde authoress, weight one hundred
and twenty-five pounds, to report Wednesday at nine a.m., to
write Scene 198 into Script 900. Price ten dollars."1
(Cram, "Author in Hollywood," pp. 189-190.)
1,0Ferguson, Film Criticism, p. 444.
1,1 Andre Senwald, "A Spotlight for the Film Writers,"
New York Times, March 10, 1935.
“ t2Gary Carey, "The Many Voices of Donald Ogden
Stewart," Film Comment, Winter 1970-71, p. 77.
93Joseph Blotner, "Faulkner in Hollywood," in Man
and the Movies, ed. by W. R. Robinson (Baltimore: Penguin
Books, 1969), pp. 277-293.
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1 0 7
^Martin Field, "Type Casting Screen Writers," The
Screen Writer, June-July, 19 48, p. 20.
lt5Quoted in Macgowan, Behind the Screen, pp. 3 78-
379 .
46James M. Cain, "An American Author's Authority,"
The Screen Writer, July, 1946, p. 5.
4 7R. J. Minney, Hollywood by Starlight (London:
Chapman & Hall Ltd., 193S), pp. 51-52.
48Walter Kerr, "Directors," in The Passionate Play
goer, ed. by George Oppenheimer (New York: The Viking
Press, 1963), pp. 320-324.
‘ ‘“Thornton Delehanty, "Let Them Become Directors!"
The Screen Writer, June, 1946, p. 33.
Delehanty continues: "There is no question that
directors have ranked higher in prestige with the New York
critics than have writers— or actors, for that matter. I
think this influence has extended from silent films where
directors were the real creators and writers non-entities.
The cult of the director became firmly established with the
advent of Russian, German and French pictures, and this
attitude of the critics was later substantiated by Hollywood
producers who quickly began importing foreign directors.
"It was good fun, too. Hollywood directors would
go to New York (before their pictures opened) and sit around
Bleeck's and buy the boys drinks and discuss the art of the
movies. So how can you wonder if the boys on seeing the
pictures were reminded of scenes and touches which they had
previously been told about and were thus able to remark on
authoritatively? If there is anything a critic likes to
exercise, it is authority based on inside information.
"Why didn't writers go to New York and sit around
Bleeck's and discuss the scenes they had written? Well, for
one thing I suspect it was because they had just left New
York and didn't have the nerve to return with a pocketful of
money and buy drinks for people who might now be just a lit
tle envious (and therefore contemptuous) of them." (pp. 33-
34.)
5“Macgowan, Behind the Screen, p. 3 86.
Screenwriters Budd Schulberg and Ring Lardner,
Jr., supplied the final scene for A Star is Born (1937) in
which Vicki Lester (Janet Gaynor) modestly identifies her
self as "Mrs. Norman Maine." (Kenneth Geist, "The Films of
Ring Lardner Jr.," Film Comment, Winter 1970-71, p. 45.)
Dalton Trumbo asserted that he wrote a very
explicit script for Spartacus (1960), specifying most of the
physical set-ups of the scenes— including a remarkably
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1 0 8
powerful demonstration of the callousness and contempt for
life of the Romans: the camera solemnly moves back and
forth from the faces of Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode as
they wait under the arena to go and do battle with each
other, while the sound track carries the frivolous chatter
of the Romans eagerly anticipating the sport of duel to the
death. (Dalton Trumbo, in response to questions by the
author, the Los Angeles County Art Museum, December 2,
1972.)
51 Herbert G. Luft, "Carl Mayer," Films in Review,
November, 1972, pp. 513-526.
52Quoted in What's Happening in Hollywood, No. 22,
February 16, 1946, published by the Motion Picture Associa
tion of America.
5 interview of John Lee Mahin by Leonard Spigelgass,
the Los Angeles County Art Museum, November 25, 1972.
5I*Richard Koszarski, "Jules Furthman," Film Comment,
Winter 1970-71, pp. 26-29.
55Hecht, A Child of the Century, p. 444.
For those who wish to pursue other formal, satiri
cal pieces on perhaps the most widely criticized figure from
the writer's point of view, Alan Rivkin's "Portrait of a
Producer" (originally published in the Hollywood Reporter,
1936; reprinted in Wilk, Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood,
pp. 168-171) is representative. Here are brief excerpts
from Rivkin's assessment:
"Although he has a beautiful library— thanks to
his wife— he never reads. He knows that twelve Pulitzer
Prize authors have inscribed books to him, but what's in
them, he doesn't know, and doesn't care. He can't be
bothered.
"He never reads, perhaps, because he's had such
brutal luck with writers. He's hired the best in the world
and only gotten back affronteries for his gold; and yet he
often feels that the nature of screen writing lies in the
colleges— and he orders his executives to start a junior
writing department at once. It never pans out because no
supervisor on the lot will pay any attention to 'the kids,'
but he never knows that; he hasn't got time to investigate."
56Hecht, "Elegy for Wonderland," Esquire, March,
1959, p. 60.
57For example, writer-director Richard Brooks
relates a particularly cogent personal encounter with a pro
ducer in Paul Mayersberg's Hollywood the Haunted House (New
York: Ballantine Books, 1967), pp. 122-124. Fictional
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1 0 9
counterparts are to be found in Gilbert, The Squirrel Cage,
pp. 58, 201-202; Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run? p. 65;
Graham, Queer People, p. 51.
58Viertel, The Kindness of Strangers, pp. 226-227.
59See, "The Hollywood Novel," p. 326.
50Hecht, A Child of the Century, p. 444.
“ Chandler, "Writers in Hollywood," The Atlantic
Monthly, November, 1945, p. 52.
"Even the vaunted vulgarity of the movie moguls
worked in favor of the director at the expense of the
writer. A producer was more likely to tamper with a story
line than with a visual style. Producers, like most people,
understood plots in literary rather than cinematic terms.
The so-called 'big' pictures were particularly vulnerable to
front-office interference, and that is why the relatively
conventional genres offer such a high percentage of sleep
ers. The culturally ambitious producer usually disdained
genre films, and the fancy dude writers from the East were
seldomwasted on such enterprises." (Andrew Sarris, The
American Cinema [New York; E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc.,
1968] , p. 31.)
“ Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon, pp. 150-151.
63Blotner, "Faulkner in Hollywood," p. 287.
6 “ *Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon, p. 71.
Sarris, The American Cinema, p. 30, illuminates
more of the subject; "The vulgar but vital producer-entre-
preneur was the sun king in these sagas, and sensitive lit
erary types were left out in the shade. In retrospect, how
ever, the studio system victimized the screenwriter more
than the director. It was not merely a question of too many
scribes spoiling the script, although most studios deliber
ately assigned more than one writer to a film to eliminate
personal idiosyncracies, whereas the director almost
invariably received sole credit for direction regardless of
the studio influences behind the scenes."
6SCram, "Author in Hollywood," pp. 188-189.
“ Quoted in Morton Eustis, "'Additional Dialogue':
Scribblers in Hollywood," Theatre Arts Monthly, June, 1937,
p. 452.
“ Chandler, "Writers in Hollywood," pp. 53-54.
68de Mille, The Hollywood Saga, p. 285.
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CHAPTER V
ALIENATION AND CONFORMITY:
THE INTELLECTUAL CONFRONTS FINANCIAL SUCCESS
"He had two hits running
on Broadway at the same time.
Even Nathan liked 'em. Popu
lar 'n satirical. Like Barry,
only better. The critics kept
waiting for him to write that
great American play."
"What happened to him?"
"Hollywood.1 1
— Budd Schulberg,
The Disenchanted
Hollywood has been a recipient of criticism from the
followers of various literary careers, because the motion
picture industry has been an intimate participant in an
artistic crisis which has plagued intellectuals from the
first instant that creative ideas began to have monetary
value.
There is an enduring notion that financial and mate
rial success tends to corrupt the talent of the intellectual
and subtly erode his will and spirit to continue the produc
tive and inventive work which earned him success in the
first place. Given a very specific context, "the Eastern
writer in Hollywood" has been often considered the archetype
110
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I l l
of the American artist as a success: a betrayer of his
talent for the cheap rewards of society. It was this kind
of image that Ernest Hemingway made reference to in "The
Snows of Kilimanjaro": "He had destroyed his talent by not
using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in,
by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his percep
tions, by laziness, by sloth and by snobbery, by pride and
by prejudice, by hook and by crook. . . . It was a talent
all right but instead of using it he had traded on it."1
(Ironically, Hemingway himself has been cited on
occasion as a writer who lost direction after he had
achieved commercial success, when he had become a public
figure and something of a legend. The Sun Also Rises (1926)
and A Farewell to Arms (1929) were followed by a marked
decline. None of his subsequent novels measured up to the
high standard his work of the 1920's had set. Colin Wilson
in The Outsider (1956) refers to Hemingway's "susceptibility
to success" by stating: "In none of the novels after 1929
do we feel ourselves in the hands of Hemingway the supremely
great artist. And Hemingway the thinker, who had so far
sifted and selected his material to form a pattern of
belief, has disappeared almost entirely."2)
In any event, there are several career examples
which support the argument that Hollywood was a corrupter of
literary talent. The career of writer Lynn Riggs is useful
as an initial illustration, because it serves to underscore,
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112
primarily, the general "problems-of-success" syndrome for
the artist, and, second, the intervention of Hollywood and
its utilization of Riggs in the fashion that is invoked by
the opponents of the system as indicative of the typical
profligacy with which Hollywood has handled its salaried
intellectuals. Nevertheless, the following career patterns,
on the surface at least, tend to reinforce the detractors'
position.
Playwright and poet Lynn Riggs registered an early
critical success with his Green Grow the Lilacs (1930), a
fresh and appealing folk drama, which Burns Mantle picked as
one of the ten best plays of 1930-31. Drawing liberally
from the Oklahoma background where he was born and raised,
Riggs had extended his focus in the folk drama genre from
two previously produced plays which were set in this geo
graphical area: Big Lake (1927) and Roadside (1930).
Riggs' artistic pattern seemed to be on the verge of frui
tion, and Burns Mantle's 1930 evaluation contained this
sentence: "Riggs is 32 years old, aims to write many more
plays and will later try a novel."3
He produced neither play nor novel, however, for six
years: possibly ensnared in a creatively barren period
which often plagues first-hit playwrights. Or possibly it
was Hollywood. In the early 1930's Riggs began a phase as
screenwriter which lasted almost ten years and which had
some fascinating, and perhaps depressing, convolutions. He
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1 1 3
entered the film medium with an adaptation of some E. W.
Hornung stories in Stingaree (1934) , and followed this with
very commendable screenplays for Selznick's The Garden of
Allah (1936), with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer and
The Plainsman (1937), a Cecil B. DeMille epic, starring Gary
Cooper.
Riggs managed a return to Broadway with Russet
Mantle (1936) and The Cherokee Night (1936) to tepid criti
cal reception; The Cream of the Well closed in 1941 after a
few performances. Chastened in his attempt to return to the
New York stage after his six-year hiatus, the Hollywood
involvement and the lucrative salaries being eyed with sus
picion by the accusatory Eastern critics, he evidently felt
forced to return to the more financially productive West
coast. It was at this point that the monitors of Riggs'
career found particularly rich grounds for attacking Holly
wood's misuse of writing talent. The creator of the sensi
tive, bucolic charms of Green Grow the Lilacs was reduced to
expending his energies on second-rate spy melodrama:
Destination Unknown and Madame Spy, and a couple of early
entries in the interesting, but decidedly undemanding and
low budget Sherlock Holmes series: Sherlock Holmes and the
Voice of Terror and Sherlock Holmes in Washington (all
1942) .
Returning to financial security via Hollywood
employment, Riggs had reached the nadir of artistic regres
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1 1 4
sion in his career to that time. Dramatist and screenwriter
Leonard Spigelgass, who helped Riggs on the adaptation of
Stingaree, called Riggs "the perfect example of an author
who loved the luxury of life in Hollywood, but hated the
work."1 * Riggs obviously was partially motivated by monetary
considerations, for it seems unlikely that he executed those
Sherlock Holmes scripts for the creative challenge involved.
Like many writers who were unable to find economic stability
in other areas, Riggs was evidently willing to accept
assignments which mocked his literary capabilities, because
of the various comforts which the film money could provide.
But the second phase of Riggs' "success" syndrome
was the result of an amazing turn of events, the fortuitous
translation by Rodgers and Hammerstein of his Green Grow the
Lilacs into the phenomenal hit musical Oklahoma (1943). He
rode this theatrical event to massive financial returns,
retired to New Mexico, and regrettably was unable or unwill
ing to produce further literary works for several years.
Economic independence often tends to mute the author's
desire or the energizing quality which sparked his former
work; Riggs, at age 44, had few reasons external to the
intrinsic drives of art itself to stimulate him to future
creative endeavors. When his play Borned in Texas appeared
in 1950, George Jean Nathan scornfully dismissed it as a
"Damned if you ain't, you old turkey buzzard"5 literary
style. Riggs was reportedly at work on a novel at the time
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115
of his death in 1954.
Perhaps an even more cogent illustration of prized
literary talent disappearing in the shadows of Hollywood is
the case of Daniel Fuchs, whose career pattern has received
so much scrutiny by anti-Hollywood critics that he has
become thought of as the almost classic example of the
writer who "sold out." The ashes of Fuchs' early artistic
decisions were being sifted as recently as John Updike's
Bech: A Book (1970), a fictional, non-Hollywood work, in
which this reference is made: "his favorite Jewish writer
was the one who turned his back on his three beautiful
Brooklyn novels and went into the desert to write scripts
for Doris Day."6
What the Updike novel is referring to is a fascin
ating portrait of a writer who produced three excellent
novels in the 1930's: Summer in Williamsburg (1934), Homage
to Blenholt (1936), and Low Company (1937) . All dealt with
Jewish slum life on New York's Lower East Side with such
sensitivity and insight that Fuchs was compared to Nelson
Algren, James T. Farrell, and Saul Bellow. Critic Robert
Gorham Davis praised Fuchs' work in these novels for "its
own distinct individuality and particularly its own brand of
humor."7
But the books were commercial failures; they sold
400, 400, and 1200 copies respectively, and, as Fuchs
writes, they "became odious to me."8 Needing money to sur-
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1 1 6
vive, he decided to try the popular magazine market, such as
the Saturday Evening Post, and promptly had his first short
story accepted for the staggering sum of six hundred
dollars. This windfall convinced Fuchs to alter his artis
tic approach: "I decided to become rich. I was in the mid
dle of a fourth novel but broke it up and swiftly turned it
into three or four short stories. I worked away all spring,
one story after the other--perhaps a dozen or fifteen in
all."9 ; He was very successful in placing the stories, and
when they began to appear in the various popular journals,
he heard the first angry cries from the literary prigs and
the wounded purists. "Promptly a barrage fell upon me,
friends and strangers and wellwishers, wondering what had
become of me, why I had sold out, and so on."10 These reac
tions demonstrate that members of the literary realm are
also accused of being influenced by money, that the grada
tions of literary effort are called into question by disap
proving elitist critics. The people who probably never
bought Fuchs' "more legitimate" novels to begin with were
the first to be offended by his attempts to earn a living
from his writing.
Moreover, if these observers were chagrined at the
prospect of Fuchs writing for the mass literary outlets,
they must have been sent into a demoniacal rage when he went
to Hollywood. However, as it developed, the moans of
remorse proved to be more or less justified, because from
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1 1 7
1937 to the present Fuchs has written little (a few short
stories) except motion picture screenplays.11 His one sub
sequent novel, West of the Rockies (1971), can only serve to
substantiate the traditional attitudes that long-term Holly
wood employment has a deleterious effect on literary abili
ties. The novel, unfortunately, is a pedestrian, quirkish,
unengaging study of the neurosis of an aging Hollywood
actress. There seems to be little left of the comic-tragic
perception of compassion and human potential which he mani
fested many years ago in his compelling Brooklyn-tenement
trilogy.
Fuchs, on one occasion, has said this about writing
for motion pictures: "The popular notions about the movies
aren't true. It takes a good deal of energy and hard sense
to write stories over an extended period of time, and it
would be foolish to expect writers not to want to be paid a
livelihood for what they do."12 And in "Writing for the
Movies" in Commentary1 3 he went into considerable detail
describing and analyzing the rare and manifold talents
required in a screenwriter. But, despite the apologia,
Daniel Fuchs remains as an example of a writer who forsook
the autonomy of independent literary creation for the spe
cial kind of collaborative mechanism of film production.
For some, this is a tragedy.
The theme of the misuse and corruption of the East-
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1 1 8
ern writer by Hollywood, in the fashion of Lynn Riggs and
Daniel Fuchs, has been explored in numerous literary works.
In Once in a Lifetime by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman
(both of whom have had periods as Hollywood screenwriters),
the character Lawrence Vail is presented as the typical
Eastern writer from New York City imported impersonally to
Hollywood: "He was one of a shipment of sixteen play
wrights,"1 who is eventually crushed by the fatuity of the
system. Enveloped by creative sterility and on the edge of
insanity, he has "a kind of breakdown. Underwork." Vail is
nursed back to sufficient will power to enable him to leave
Hollywood through therapy at a specially designed sanitari
um, which he discusses: "Fellow named Jenkins runs it.
Playwright. Seems he came out here under contract, but he
couldn't stand the gaff. Went mad in the eighth month. So
he started this place. Doesn't take anything but play
wrights .1 11 5
Playwright George Axelrod, also one of the best
Hollywood screenwriters, met this problem of success head on
with his aptly entitled play Will Success Spoil Rock
Hunter? In this comic-Mephistophelian story about a man who
sells his soul to the devil for, among other things, great
success as a screenwriter, the general attitude toward
writers is summed up by Harry Kaye, the typical Hollywood
studio head, who expects a certain amount of creative pro
duct per week— as if the writer were a machinist, punching
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1 1 9
out parts on an assembly line: "Don't tell me art. For
thirty-two years in this industry I had every great writer
working for me. Aldous Huxley. Maxwell Anderson. Edgar
Rice Burroughs. And from every one of them— ten pages a
week— like clockwork— 1,1 5
Working in this environment under Kaye is playwright
Michael Freeman, who, consistent with the usual pattern, was
brought to Hollywood after an initial smash play opened on
Broadway. Freeman, however, is becoming perfidious to his
own name, as he slowly, willingly allows the Hollywood lux
ury take hold of him, and is not about to go back to the
struggling existence he had as a writer in New York: "One
hit play and . . . I am suddenly and magically the hottest
thing that ever happened. . . . I have discovered I like be
ing a success. I like making five grand a week in pictures.
1 lj-ke taking Rita Marlowe to lunch. I like having twenty-
seven goddamn stitches to the inch in my shoes. I should
write a new play and louse this all up!"17 Later, in a less
ebullient mood, Freeman is grumbling about the desiccated
surroundings and working conditions, and begins to wistfully
long for the ambience of New York. Why, he is asked,
doesn1t he go back to where he came from? He replies:
"Because . . . back there is Reality. Snow, elevator men,
producers clamoring for your unwritten second play. Here—
we sit in the glorious sunshine dreaming dreams of collap
sible independent companies, set up for capital gains stir-
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120
ring only to present each other with golden statues for
achievement in set dressing— black and white."18
Gene Fowler, who worked off and on as a screenwriter
for almost 20 years, but who did not let his independent
writing suffer as a result, nevertheless must have felt suf
ficient guilt over his $250 0 a week movie employment to
write this:
"Hollywood Horst Wessel"
The boys are not speaking to Fowler
Since he's taken the wine of the rich.
The boys are not speaking to Fowler—
That plutocrat son of a bitch.
For decades he stood with the bourgeois,
And starved as he fumbled his pen.
He lived on the cheapest of liquor,
And, aye, was the humblest of men.
And even though women forswore him
And laughed when he fell into pails,
He went over big on the Bow'ry—
The toast of the vagabond males.
The wrinkles were deep in his belly,
The meat on his thighbones was lean.
Malaria spotted his features;
The stones that he slept on were mean.
Then Midas sneaked up to the gutter
Where old Peasant Fowler lay flat.
And the King of Gilt ticked the victim,
Who rose with a solid gold pratt.
Gone, gone was the fervor for justice,
And fled was the soul of his man,
This once fearless child of the shanty
Was cursed with an 18-K can.
He hankered for costlier raiment
And butlers who'd served the elite.
He tore down the old family privy
And purchased a Haviland seat.
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121
0 God, how his parvenu strutted,
And smoked only dollar cigars.
His jock-straps were lined with chinchilla,
His drawers were the envy of stars.
0, where was this once valiant spokesman,
Who gave not a care nor a damn?
Alas, when they scaled his gray matter
It weighed hardly one epigram.
The boys are not nodding to Fowler
Since he rose from the alms-asking ditch.
The boys will not cotton to Fowler,
That sybarite son of a bitch!19
Ideologically opposed to the economically-oriented
values of the "success ethic," the intellectual has criti
cized his antagonist (in this instance, Hollywood) and him
self without hesitation or self-consciousness. But the
problem has always been more complex than he realized.
Because Hollywood employed the intellectual to further its
economic ends, he was forced to confront the same material
temptations he had so easily resisted in theory. Prior to
his Hollywood employment the writer had no doubt felt a
self-righteous superiority to the materialistic values of
society. However, once his material needs were handily
accommodated by the hefty studio paycheck, he began to find
it difficult to muster the creative energy to pursue his
former literary urgings. The integrity of almost every
writer involved was challenged in a way which was fairly
close to the following pattern, summarized by Richard Hof-
stadter, who, in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
(1962), reviews the entire problem of the intellectual's
place in modern American society:
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122
An insistent new note has crept into the writing of
the past two decades: one hears more and more that the
intellectual who has won a measure of freedom and oppor
tunity, and a new access to influence, is thereby subtly
corrupted; that, having won recognition, he has lost his
independence, even his identity as an intellectual.
Success of a kind is sold to him at what is held to be
an unbearable price. He becomes comfortable, perhaps
even moderately prosperous, as he takes a position in a
university or in government or working for the mass
media, but he then tailores himself to the requirements
of these institutions. He loses that precious tincture
of rage so necessary to first-rate creativity in a
writer, that capacity for negation and rebellion that is
necessary to the candid social critic, that initiative
and independence of aim required for distinguished work
in science. It appears, then, to be the fate of intel
lectuals either to berate their exclusion from wealth,
success, and reputation, or to be seized by guilt when
they overcome this exclusion.20
Arrowsmith (192 5) by Sinclair Lewis is an example of
a novel which deals with the temptation of the artist or the
intellectual. In this work bacteriology is a symbol for art
and Martin Arrowsmith is the embattled artist. As Arrow
smith moves from obscurity to international fame, he learns
that his continued success is assured if he will renounce
the principle of pure research (the search for the truth of
the world around him) and capitalize on his name. Society
tends to contribute to the "corruption" process by showering
acclaim on the successful artist. But Arrowsmith, signifi
cantly, decides to resist the temptations which initially
triggered his entry into science (fame, money, and the love
of women), to return to isolation and the search for truth.
In another example of this so-called "literature of
seduction,"21 Tender Is the Night (1934), F. Scott Fitz
gerald presents the perfect type in this pattern, a charac-
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1 2 3
ter which symbolizes Fitzgerald himself. Together with The
Crack-Up (1931-1945), the novel creates Fitzgerald's version
of the popular legend: the American artist, supposedly
ruined by success, worn out at thirty, a life with "no sec
ond act," unable to duplicate his early triumps or to attain
maturity for more profound undertakings. Tender Is the
Night, in effect, is a fictionalized account of Fitzgerald's
own decline: his sudden rise to the top, the wasting of his
talent, his steady alcoholic atrophy, the final years in
Hollywood.
As in Arrowsmith, however, science again serves as a
guise for the dilemma confronting the artist, the American
writer unable to endure success. Dick Diver begins his
career as an idealist, but he meets Nicole Warren and by
marrying her inherits both her wealth and the problem of her
scnizophrenia. The energy and intelligence which once had
made him a promising research psychoanalyst are slowly
drained away; Nicole, in recovering from her disease, has
somehow infected Dick. He will die in obscurity searching
for his vanished youth. Early in the novel, Nicole asks why
it is that only Americans dissipate. Fitzgerald's answer in
The Crack Up was no different from Dick Diver's: "material
success means the end of idealism and the death of art."22
In The Disenchanted, working with the fictionalized
biography of Fitzgerald, Budd Schulberg makes the specific
connection of the artistic dilemma to the writer. Signifi
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1 2 4
cantly, Hollywood is the nexus between the writer and his
artistic challenge.
"Why must Hollywood always take the rap? Why didn't
Bane have enough guts to stay with his plays?"
"Temptation," Manley said. "That's writers in
America. . . . Your high mortality on writers, that goes
on all the time in America. Y'know why? . . . American
idea of success. Nothing fails like success. Write one
bestseller, one hit play, Big Success. Do one thing,
get rich 'n famous. Writers get caught up in American
system. Ballyhoo. Cocktail parties. Bestseller list.
Worship of Success."23
The writer finds himself accepting money and fame, instead
of the only proper reward for his talent— art itself:
"Reason's economic all right. But more complicated.
Writer starts as a rebel. Hits out at his own roots.
Spoon River. Sauk Center. Pottsville country club—
wherever it is. Book's a success--writer's like a race
horse— moves up in class. Gets money— goes away— New
York— Europe— starts writing things he doesn't know—
shoulda stayed home. Stayed put. Shoulda stood in bed.
That's trouble with 'merican writers. Most of 'em.
Success uproots 'em. Europe, a book is a book, a leaf
o' literature. America, a book's a commodity, even the
honest book, if it clicks, if it goes over big."2L> .
A particularly pernicious aspect of this "failure of
success" pattern as it applied to the Eastern writer in
Hollywood was that the movie work was often looked on as
only a temporary fund-raising exercise: "this was merely a
stop-over on the way back to positive work."25 The writer
planned that as soon as he made enough money back to the
maple-shadowed New England farmhouse he would go and write
as his own man once again. The attitude seems to be
expressed by screenwriter Robert Law, a character in the
Spewacks' Boy Meets Girl, who came to Hollywood "to make a
little money"— but who has remained for five years: "For
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1 2 5
two cents . . .I'd take the next train back to Vermont.
. . . I'd write— really write. My God, I wrote once. I
wrote a book. A darn good book. I was a promising young
novelist. O'Brien reprinted three of my stories. 1928-
1929-1930. And in 1935 I'm writing dialogue for a horse!"26
In Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? narrator Al
Manheim visits a poet acquaintance, Henry Powell Turner, who
back in their college days had written a "book-length poem
on the history of New England . . . which had been awarded
the Pulitzer prize."27 Now, after years in Hollywood,
almost always in a state of "drooling intoxication," he is
still dreaming of a return to his own independent writing:
"he reached the final stage full of teary nostalgia for the
glories of his youth and eloquent resolutions to return to
New England and his Muse, 'as soon as I finish the Mac-
Donald-Eddy script I have to do when I get back from my
vacation.'"2 8
Schulberg continues this image in his novel The
Harder They Fall(19 47) with the cahracter of David Stempel,
who had generally been regarded in the Ivy League days of
narrator Eddie Lewis as "one of the bright young hopes of my
generation."29 In a scene almost identical to the one
above, Stempel tells Eddie: "'All I need is jus' one good
credit, an' some o' this gold. I need more gold, Eddie, and
then I'll— go to Mexico, six months, maybe a year, rediscov
er my soul, Eddie.'"30 This vision of the debilitated
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126
Hollywood writer ("His blond hair was going prematurely gray
and thin and something had gone out of his eyes"31) was a
painful one for Eddie: "The author of The Locomotive Dream
. . . was employed by the studio that specialized in blood-
and-thunder Westerns. For me it was almost like discovering
that the writing credit on The Lone Ranger was Thomas
Mann."3 2
Edwin Gilbert in The Squirrel Cage has his hero,
Tony Willard, experience an equally lugubrious emotion when
he learns that a chronically drunk writer around the studio
is actually the once-famous Max Gibbs: "Tony was shocked by
the revelation. For years he had been a reverent reader of
Gibbs's. He was one of the foremost delineators of the
folkways of America's poor whites and Negroes. . . . He was
suddenly bogged down by an overwhelming depression."33
Another character, Ben Carnes, heightens his commitment to
Hollywood by signing another 40-week contract:
"I just need one more year out here. Then I pull
out for Connecticut and go to work."
"One year?" Eli said it skeptically.
"Well"— Carnes hesitated— "maybe two years. At the
outside, three. Soon as I can pay for that retaining
wall. . . . Believe me, I wouldn't be out here writing
pictures if I didn't have to keep paying for that
retaining wall."31*
Writers like Carnes, of "Eastern" pedigree or not,
live in fear that they may fall into disfavor with the front
office. These are usually men of questionable writing abil
ity, who would never survive if they were forced back into
the arena of pristine literary endeavor. Thus, they cling
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1 2 7
tenaciously to their studio jobs. The following poem by
John Motley deals with these currently affluent but insecure
writers:
"Portrait of an Individualist"
"An artist of integrity, truly wedded to the brightly
written page,
Must treasure isolation. Then will his Guild
Be a mere creative symbol. The words 'minimum wage'
Would have evoked a snicker from Flaubert, who filled
The rich soil of his imagination, refusing to discuss
With literary hacks the economic worth of Pegasus."
"Such a man am I," he states, harpooning an imported
anchovy.
"The talented are infinitely secure; only the failure
tags himself an 'employee.'"
His phone rings. He leaves. I nibble cheese soaked in
mild tokay,
Study the Braque above the mantelpiece. He returns,
chooses from the tray
A salted almond. "The Philistines have shelved my
story.
I offered cinematic necter to men who feed on offal. I
glory
In their ignorance." He studies me, amused. "Do not
commiserate.
Theirs is the loss. Four studios want me. But they'll
wait
Until I write my play--a modern 'Les Bourgeois Gentil-
hommes,'"
I nod and search for one last palatable crumb
Of conversation. But he is silent now. For suddenly he
senses
I see the fright crouching behind his contact lenses.
In 1934 Kaufman and Hart devoted an entire play,
Merrily We Roll Along, to the problem of a playwright with
great literary potential selling out to easy materialistic
gain. Unlike their previous collaboration, this Kaufman-
Hart work was a serious drama which depicted the disintegra
tion of writer Richard Niles, who was diverted from more
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1 2 8
"legitimate" plays by his continued production of light
comedies which were smash hits. Interestingly, the evil
quality which contaminates Niles is shown to be a perversion
of his own literary career, and not an external, alien force
(like Hollywood) distorting his artistic judgment. This
play indicts the writer who popularizes, who aims his work
at the mass audience to insure its financial success. The
critics who indict Richard Niles do so in the spirit of
those who criticized Daniel Fuchs for making money from the
stories he wrote for the mass audience of the Saturday Eve
ning Post; these critics are the same ones who would chas
tize Hemingway for the increased public preference for For
Whom the Bell Tolls over earlier novels, which had a more
limited, perhaps more intellectual audience. The critic, in
short, pictures himself as an intelectual, an elitist, who
is separated from the mass of common readers or viewers.
Niles is constantly surrounded by "friends" who are contemp
tuous of his success: "You'd sell your soul to get a hit.
Fashionable playwright! Fashionable prostitute— that's what
you are!"36 Niles had a viable, "artistic" beginning to a
career with a play about a disaster in a coal mine (which
was evidently a literary triumph, but which played only two
weeks at the Provincetown Playhouse). He is accused of
abandoning this promising start.
Jonathan Crale, Niles' "conscience," is always jib
ing him: "I used to come into the studio and find you
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1 2 9
bubbling over with ideas— good, juicy ones. And in the past
year all I've heard you talk about is how much the play
grossed, and what you got for the movie rights, and you met
Noel Coward."37 A chief point seems to be that serious art
must have some socially significant theme (like a coal mine
catastrophe), of somber intention, with a minimum of public
accessibility or enjoyment. The comedies, or by implication
any play which does not have a recondite, tendentious theme,
such as those of Niles or Noel Coward, are looked on as
frivolous, decadent, meretricious.
George Jean Nathan is the prototype of the critic
described above as disdainful of the socially irrelevant but
highly lucrative comedy. In a chapter in his The Entertain
ment of a Nation (1942) called "The Business of Laughter,"
he scornfully rebukes those playwrights who resorted to
lightweight material to make money:
Lynn Riggs was pretty hungry until he gave audiences
Russet Mantle.
Clare Boothe started out with an Ibsen frown in
Abide with Me, failed to make a cent, and then turned to
laugh shows and became rich. . . .
S. N. Behrman has prospered most greatly when he has
been waggiest; certain of his purely witty, or what are
called "smile," plays have not got nearly so far with
the public.
Philip Barry hasn't made a dime on such sober
attempts as John, Hotel Universe and Bright Star but has
gone big when he has peddled comic stuff to the crowd.
George Abbot lived in a dingy two-by-four hole in
the West Fifties when he put on such exhibits as Those
We Love, Four Walls, Heat Lightning, and Lilly Turner
and was able to move to the St. Regis only when he put
on Three Men on a Horse, Boy Meets Girl, Room Service,
Brother Rat and What a~Life.38
Nathan asserts that money is incompatible with artistic
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1 3 0
integrity, that writers who manage to win approval from the
mass audience are selling their talent down the river for a
fast buck. He prefers the struggling, impecunious play
wright who still possesses his conscience and his soul, but
little else: "I am on the side of any writer, good or bad,
who values his independence and integrity above the beckon
ing finger of potential mauve motor-cars, marble dunking
pools, English butlers, and seven-dollar neckties."39
Merrily We Roll Along, although one of the few flops
in the history of the Kaufman-Hart partnership, could be
taken as a dramatization of the critical attitudes of
observers like Nathan. But, as Clifton Fadiman said in his
review of the play, the corruption of a literary talent is
more complicated than portrayed in this work. It is not
only facile and naive to reduce an intricate process to the
"failure of success" explanation; it is also a bit amusing.
Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, a brilliant mind who was
generally thought to have had neither the desire nor the
discipline to withstand the money of Hollywood in order to
pursue artistic goals, saw Merrily We Roll Along during its
brief run in New York. The irony must have struck him that
he was watching an almost biographical tract of his own
career decisions in the persona of Richard Niles. But Man
kiewicz was not one to accept the basic conflict of the
play. When asked for a description of the work when he
returned to Hollywood, he whimsically explained:
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It's a problem play. It's about this playwright who
writes a play, and it's a big success, and then he
writes another play, and that one is a big success, all
his plays are big successes, and all the actresses in
them are in love with him, all these beautiful women are
in love with him, and he has a yacht, and a beautiful
home in the country and a penthouse in town, and a
beautiful wife and two beautiful children, and he makes
a million dollars. Now, the problem posed by George and
Moss is simply this: How did the poor son-of-a-bitch
ever get himself into this situation?**0
Again, behind these elements which Mankiewicz is
satirizing is the assumption that art can be produced only
in economic adversity and that success saps the will to
create. If certain Eastern writers in Hollywood are to be
believed, a profession as screenwriter is strangulation of
art and death to the soul. A screenwriter gives a typical
account of his problem: "I just couldn't stand it, you
know? I had so much money. . . . I'd wake up in the morning
with a hangover, but I didn't have to go to work so it
didn't matter. I'd go for a swim and lay by the pool to get
a tan. . . . In the afternoon my agent would call and tell
me the royalties I was earning, and what stock I should
invest in. I just couldn't stand it, you know?"1 *1
This discontent would seem to come from an ingrained
feeling that one cannot write very well unless one writes
all night, like Balzac, with feet in ice water, or with a
wife dying of tuberculosis in a corner, like Dostoevski's.
If a writer was not starving, he was considered either a bad
writer or a compromised one. A writer must be misunder
stood in order to be creative; if he were understood, he was
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1 3 2
necessarily stupid. Samuel Johnson remarked that life gives
us more to endure than to enjoy, and when Hollywood un-did
this tradition, showering writers with more to enjoy than to
endure, it is not surprising that their reaction ranged from
consternation to hatred, instead of gracious acquiescence.
The critics' allegations are not, of course, without
some basis. The nature of creativity is such that it is
defeated if anything is substituted for its goal. If an
artist in expressing himself succeeds also in giving form to
the inarticulate dreams or needs of many people, and is
later rewarded with a million dollars, that need not affect
him, if his creative drive is strong. But if he works on
something he does not believe in or respect, in order to
make a million, then he and his work deteriorate. It is the
change of goals which is important. Anthropologist Hortense
Powdermaker, who made an intensive study of the artist in
the movie capital in her Hollywood, The Dream Factory, sub
stantiates this point:
It is a very different matter for either artist or
scientist deliberately to lower his standard in order to
make a lot of money. Corruption of both work and man is
inevitable, and if it extends over any length of time
there is no going back. The artist who thinks he can
beat the game, stay in Hollywood and clean up his
million, and then return to his own creative works, is
usually fooled. There are well-known examples of
writers who finally shook the dust of many years of
Hollywood from their typewriters, only to turn out
mediocre plays and novels which resemble far more the
movie scripts on which they had made their million, than
their pre-Hollywood work.1 *
Powdermaker, unfortunately, never tells us who those
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"well-known examples" are. Like a previous scientific
investigation of the film industry (Leo Rost^^'^ a ^ A ^ood:
the Movie Colony, 1941), her book maintains a maddening
anonymity (under the disclaimer of preserving confidential
disclosures) in the presentation of her analytical findings.
The mention of a few names would have given us great insight
into the quality and the extent of whatever destruction of
talent had taken place. We, of course, can supply examples
of writers who are encompassed by Powdermaker1s description
— a Samuel Hoffenstein, a Donald Ogden Stewart, a George
Oppenheimer, and, certainly, a Daniel Fuchs— but we also
must remain suspicious of the names she might have offered.
The skepticism is founded in our assertion that the large
majority of Eastern writers who never produced works of lit
erary value after their Hollywood employment were minor
talents in non-cinematic fields to begin with (but many
turned out to be top-notch screenwriters). Major writers
like Maxwell Anderson, Robert E. Sherwood, William Faulkner,
Lillian Heilman, John O'Hara, et al., remained fertile dur
ing and after their stints as screenwriters; while the likes
of Arthur Richman, Gilbert Emery, Bartlett Cormack, Dan
Totheroh, John Wexley, et al., were more typical of the
writers whose literary sterility seemed to correlate with
their firm commitments to Hollywood screenwriting. Writers
with indifferent or prosaic beginnings as dramatists or
novelists, like Robert Riskin, Sidney Buchman, or Talbot
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Jennings, found the film medium ideally suited to their tal
ents and quickly moved to the top of the field. Thus, we
must scrutinize carefully every name which is submitted for
inclusion in the "sell out" category, to accurately measure
what it means in terms of ascribing cause, effect, culpabil
ity, or credit to the principals involved.
Many writers, such as Thomas Wolfe or James T.
Farrell (discussed below), saw in Hollywood's utilization of
literary talent a clear-cut moral opposition between the
vice of non-writing and the virtue of writing. For the
individuals involved, the talents which enabled them to be
successful novelists, dramatists, short story writers,
poets, copy writers, or journalists also presented them with
a profound, almost religious dilemma. The observers feel
that if the person is decent and honorable he will accept
the challenge and do his own writing. As a reward for his
virtue, it is perceived, the right girl will turn up, his
mother will love him, old friends will no longer accuse him
of prostitution, and he will find peace within himself.
But the careers of most of the best writers who went
to Hollywood cogently testify that corruption of literary
talent will not necessarily and inexorably occur as the
result of employment in a mass culture medium. The tempta
tion instantly and ignorantly to ascribe blame to one factor
must be met by a reasoned and scrupulous examination of the
aspects of each career pattern. Edward Shils in his "Mass
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Society and Its Culture" maintains:
The mere existence of the opportunity will not seduce a
man of strongly impelled creative capacities, once he
has found his direction. And if he does accept the op
portunity, are his creative talents inevitably stunted?
Is there no chance at all that they will find expression
in the mass medium to which he is drawn? The very fact
that here and there in the mass media, on television and
in the film, work of superior quality is to be seen,
seems to be evident that genuine talent is not inevit
ably squandered once it leaves the traditional refined
media. . . . There is no reason why gifted intellectuals
should lose their powers because they write for audi
ences unable to comprehend their ordinary level of
analysis and exposition.^3
Literary history gives us many examples of writers who were
able to reconcile success with artistic achievement.
Michael Blankfort, as former president of the Writers Guild
of America, is very eager to offer a few historical prece
dents: "Success and ownership of land did not water down
Shakespeare. Tolstoy was unhappy about serfdom, not about
his great estates. T. S. Eliot wrote his considerable
poetry despite the fact that, as history tells it, he ate
well." **l f
If there is a lesson in any of this, it is that one
should be wary of simplistic labels and stereotypes as means
of categorizing individuals, especially artists and intel
lectuals. As Blankfort says: "There is no 'image' of a
screen or television writer which, in my view, has any truth
in it. There are only writers, each of whom makes his own
wars or his own peace; some despise themselves for winning,
some despise themselves for losing; some take their work
seriously, some say they are overpaid and live in fear of
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1 3 6
the day when they will be found out. No one of us can speak
for the other."1 *5
The side of the Eastern-writer-in-Hollywood phenome
non that is often neglected is the fact that the American
cinema benefited greatly from the impact of such talented
men. It was suggested earlier that the writer movement to
Hollywood was the re-direction of artistic energy from one
field to another, and, once the awkwardness and rigidity of
early sound-film techniques were smoothed over, this energy
re-shaped the American film into an unprecedentedly gratify
ing integration of pictures and words, of literature and
cinematic art. Some writers may have temporarily gone on
holiday from traditional writing to take a trip West, but
they transformed the 2 0th-century's newest art form in the
process. The Eastern publishing houses may have had to wait
an additional six months or year for some novels or a volume
of short stories, but in the interim, motion pictures were
enjoying the polished dialogue of Samuel Hoffenstein, Zoe
Akins, or S. N. Behrman; the assured, brilliant construction
of Ben Hecht, William Faulkner, Edwin Justus Mayer; the
sense of comedic style and rhythm of John Van Druten, Moss
Hart, Arthur Kober; the feel for human drama and sophisti
cated perspective of Dorothy Parker, Maxwell Anderson, Marc
Connelly, Lillian Heilman; the inventiveness and imagination
of Vincent Lawrence, Herman J. Mankiewicz; the intelligence
in translating literary works into film of Sidney Howard,
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137
Robert E. Sherwood, Donald Ogden Stewart. For those who
love those special films of the 1930's and 1940's which
these authors wrote, the trip they made to Hollywood will
always be considered a most salubrious journey. When Daniel
Fuchs made the trip, the Eastern establishment mourned his
loss. But those who are interested in the development of
filmic art are grateful for his superb contributions to some
very substantial films: The Hard Way (1942) , Between Two
Worlds (1944) , The Gangster (1947, based on his own novel
Low Company), Panic in the Streets (1950, for which he won a
Screen Writers Guild nomination), and Love Me or Leave Me
(19 55, for which he won an Academy Award).
Some of these writers may have experienced Hollywood
as prostitution of their talents, and though many fell in
love with the movies and thus suffered from personal frus
tration, as Pauline Kael writes, "they nonetheless as a
group were responsible for that sustained feat of careless
magic we call 'thirties comedy.'"146 Hollywood may have
destroyed some of them, but they did wonders for the movies.
Kael observes that "the recurrence of the names of that
group of writers, not just on rather obscure remembered
films but on almost all the films that are generally cited
as proof of the vision and style of the most highly ac
claimed directors of that period, suggest that the writers—
and a particular group of them, at that— may for a brief
period, a little more than a decade, have given American
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138
talkies their character."* 7
A literary/cinematic dichotomy existed in the Holly
wood of the 1930's; and one is ambivalent whether to mourn
whatever loss to traditional literature which may have
occurred, or to rejoice at the windfall motion picture
received as a result. It would seem to depend on one's
artistic orientations; but, fascinatingly enough, as Kael
records in summation of the entire phenomenon, the writers
were ambivalent themselves;
They were ambivalent about Hollywood, which they
savaged and satirized whenever possible. Hollywood paid
them so much more money than they had ever earned be
fore, and the movies reached so many more people than
they had ever reached before, that they were contemptu
ous of those who hadn't made it on their scale at the
same time that they hated themselves for selling out.
They had gone to Hollywood as a paid vacation from their
playwriting or journalism, and screenwriting became
their only writing. The vacation became an extended
drunken party, and while they were in the debris of the
long morning after, American letters passed them by.
They were never to catch up; nor were American movies
ever again to have in their midst a whole school of the
richest talents of a generation.48
Involvement and Survival
It seems appropriate at this point to begin discuss
ing the nature of the involvement of individual writers with
Hollywood. Each author's experience in the movie milieu
was, of course, unique. There were varying degrees of suc
cess (financial, cinematic) and failure (literary, cinema
tic) , usually depending upon the individual's length of stay
and the extent of his artistic and philosophical assimila
tion into the "system." But there were at least three broad
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divisions of the multitude of writers who confronted, or had
to come to terms with, the Hollywood phenomenon. There were
(1) those who, after an initial exposure, refused any
involvement in screenwriting, or else departed almost imme
diately; (2) those who stayed and virtually stopped writing
for magazine $nd book publishers; and (3) those who managed
to do work of their own while accepting occasional jobs with
Hollywood studios.
Every writer, regardless of the intensity of his
commitment to his adopted medium, had to be concerned with
how to cope, how to survive the adversities which lay in
wait for all intellectuals. It is significant that the
writers who found it easiest to adjust to Hollywood were
(1) writers who had served as writer-employees before coming
to Hollywood (newspapermen, advertising writers, publi
cists) , (2) writers who have written only for the screen.
These men did not invest too much self-esteem in their work;
they did not feel personally rebuffed by either the criti
cism or the manners of producers. They indulged in few
illusions about their artistic prerogatives. They accepted
the conditions of screenwriting as well as the weekly
checks, and recognized the necessary conjunction of the two.
(There is an interesting fictional illustration of this in
Eastern writer Jimmy Doyle, in J. P. McEvoy's Hollywood Girl
(1929). Ex-newspaperman Doyle is not particularly worried
about his literary integrity or its possible loss due to his
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Hollywood employment. His primary virtue is not creative
imagination but common sense. He does not apply a set of
foreign standards to the movie industry or his place in it.)
The experiences of most writers seem to suggest that
a person was better off being hardboiled about his work,
perhaps a bit cynical about his artistic status. The fol
lowing are some attitudes and approaches which helped to
shield the writer from the more virulent aspects of screen
employment.
Writing in 1929, Clifford Howard anticipated the
1930's sound-era difficulties for the prospective screen
writer and gave him some sharp-edged, coldly practical
advice:
. . . let him at once abandon all thought of being
lionised or accorded the attention and amenities that
attach to authorship in the cloistered realm of litera
ture. Hollywood knows nothing about suhh traditional
niceties, and cares less. Its manners and outlook are
those of the frontier— practical, utilitarian, demo
cratic, self-assured, aggressive. A writer here is
merely "one o' them writin1 fellers." He simply has his
place in picture-making along with the electrician and
the make-up man. If he cannot tolerate this, cannot
adapt himself to it, let him take warning in time and
remain at home. Hollywood will not miss him.1 *9
Novelist Eric Knight (You Play the Black and the Red
Comes Up, 1938; The Flying Yorkshireman, 1936; This Above
All, 1941) was perspicacious enough to foresee the problems
inherent in a job as screenwriter, and for years he refused
to be drawn to Hollywood. In 1933, while still a holdout,
he outlined the conditions for his employment:
Here is the only way to make a film for Hollywood.
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If a producer will have courage, say to me: "Here is
fifty thousand dollars and one hundred thousand feet of
film. Go out of here with a cameraman and equipment.
Come back one year from now with a completed film.
Write your own ticket, conceive your own story, find
your own material— shoot in mills, factories, farms,
slaughterhouses, slums, oilfields— anywhere you want.
But bring me back a film at the end of that time?" If
that was proposed to me, I'd go.50
This, of course, was exuberant naivete, and a little more
than a year later Knight had accepted a Hollywood assign
ment. In a letter inscribed "On the train to California,
September 5, 1934," he wrote: "After much wrestling with
myself and agonised arguments between subjective and objec
tive egos, I write this on the train. I'm on my way to
Hollywood. I'm afraid— wishing I'd never started the whole
business; but there it is."51
Knight experienced the misfortune of many another
imported writer in not being recognized in the studio for a
long period of time. He poured out his frustration to film
maker and critic Paul Rotha: "GOOD GOD, ROTHA, THEY DON'T
EVEN KNOW I WORK HERE! . . . I would go home as a final ges
ture except I won't be licked by damned idiocy. I shall now
stay here and rot in my beautiful office. My cadaver shall
begin to smell. They will think it is just the normal smell
of a completed film somewhere. Then, years later, another
writer shall be given my office. He'll find my skeleton
here, sitting amid a welter of pay checks I shall never
cash." 52
In the ensuing months Knight did much more than sit
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back and collect his pay checks. He did an astounding
amount of work, including adaptations of scripts and several
original film stories, but the only screen credits he re
ceived in roughly a two-year stay at Fox Studios were Under
the Pampas Moon and Daring Young Man (both 1935, his effort
listed as "contributor to treatment"). He eventually
decided that "there is no hope here," and finally made his
break. "To think that I should have imagined, as I did,
that I could do what Stiller, Murnau, Pommer and dozens of
far better men than I am, couldn't do. I had no more chance
of changing Hollywood or stabbing one decent idea into its
head than I have of moving these mountains around me by
whistling them to come to heel!"53
Knight is a logical candidate for our first arbi
trary category of those writers who had some contact with
the studio system but departed comparatively soon there
after. He had begun his literary career as a film critic
for the Philadelphia Public Ledger and later for the Evening
Ledger, and had completed his first two books about concur
rently with his screenwriting period: Invitation to Life
(1934) and Song on Your Bugles (1936). Hollywood did not
seem to have retarded his literary growth in the slightest,
and in one instance, at least, actually may have been a
positive influence in the richly sardonic humor and "tough
guy" style of You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up
(193 8) . As evidence of his literary productivity, the fol-
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lowing works were written after his Hollywood experiences:
1938 - The Flying Yorkshireman
1940 - The Happy Land
Now Pray We for Our Country
Lassie Come Home
1941 - This Above All
1942 - Sam Small Flies Again
As Paul Rotha writes: "Out of his hopeless battle against
the movie mentality came his freedom as a creative
writer."51* Knight was killed during World War II, on Janu
ary 21, 1943.
We were speaking of survival for the writer, and
Raymond Chandler, writer of some of the best gritty, hard-
boiled, quasi-film noir pictures of the 1940's (Double
Indemnity, 1944; The Blue Dahlia, 1946) and Alfred Hitch
cock's Strangers on a Train (1951), gives his formula:
The wise screenwriter is he who wears his second-best
suit, artistically speaking, and doesn't take things too
much to heart. He should have a touch of cynicism, but
only a touch. The complete cynic is as useless to
Hollywood as he is to himself. He should do the best he
can without straining at it. He should be scrupulously
honest about his work, but he should not expect scrupu
lous honesty in return. He won't get it. And when he
has had enough, he should say goodbye with a smile,
because for all he knows he may want to go back.55
The letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald reveal an aspect
of his survival kit in Hollywood, which allowed him time to
work on his own literary efforts during his screenwriting
days. Note the fascinating references to other Eastern
writers, some of whom disdained or declined the Hollywood
offers, but most of whom eventually came West.
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144
The only real holdout against Hollywood is Ernest.
O'Neill, etc., are so damn rich that they don't count.
Dos Passos has nibbled and Erskine Caldwell, whom I ad
mire a lot, seems to have gone in. It's a pretty un
satisfactory business— I'm trying a special stunt to
beat the game. I'm getting up at six and working till
nine on my own stuff which I did before under similar
circumstances when I was young. . . . The boys who try
to write creatively at night after a day in the studio
or on Saturdays after work there are gypped from the
start; also those who write "on vacations." Nobody's
ever gotten out that way and I'm not going to perish
before one more book.56
During this period Fitzgerald wrote 17 Pat Hobby short
stories and what potentially might have been his finest
novel, The Last Tycoon.
But in the long run all the moans of anguish and
the cursing of the darkness of Philistine Hollywood might
be reduced to the incisive statement of survival by Norman
Mailer: "A novelist or playwright sells his work to Holly
wood not in order that the work shall survive the transla
tion, but to purchase time for himself, so all belly-aching
including my own, smacks too much of sniffing the armpit
and wrestler's moans."5^
It is difficult at best to shoehorn writers of dif
fering artistic patterns into specific categories. But be
cause the number of Eastern writers who came to Hollywood
at one time or another is so large, some sort of organi
zation is necessary so that an orderly discussion of them
is possible. The chart in Appendix A is an attempt to
place the selected writers in a meaningful context, sugges-
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145
tive of the involvement and ramifications of their motion
picture employment.
Of the many writers who had only a brief involvement
in Hollywood screenwriting, a few experiences are illustra
tive, and their comments are colorful enough to broaden
understanding of what it was like. (Those writers who
expended considerably more effort and time to film activi
ties will be discussed in subsequent chapters.)
For example, playwright A. E. Thomas (What the Doc
tor Ordered, 1911; No More Ladies, 1934) whom the New York
Times called "the brightest wit among our writers for the
stage in the second and third decades of this century," had
a short and undistinguished stint in Hollywood. Novelist
Mildred Cram, another Eastern writer who was trying out the
Hollywood scene about the same time as Thomas, tells of his
frustration:
A. E. Thomas came. A sheaf of stage successes to his
credit. A first-rate wit. A technician. Th y gave him
an office. They paid him every Saturday morning: such
a nice, round check. But they neglected to explain the
mystery . . . what is a screenplay and why. "Here is a
story," they said. "A fine, successful story by a fam
ous novelist. We own it. We paid fifty thousand
dollars for it. It won't do for the screen. Re-write
it."
So he did. They said, "Thank you very much," and
gave him another story, which he re-wrote, with great
care and decreasing enthusiasm. No one spoke to him.
No one read what he wrote. No one in the studio seemed
to have the slightest interest in him, or in the mount
ing pages of manuscript on his desk. They gave him a
third story, reminding him that it needed "treatment."
Then, abruptly, recognizing the peril of his situation,
he fled to the healing sanity of Rhode Island. Just in
time. As Dana Burnet fled from a submarine story, all
the way to France. I. A. R. Wylie. Louis Bromfield.
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Van Druten. P. G. Wodehouse. Locke. Dozens and dozens
of others . . .5 8
Thomas received credit on three feature films: Trouble for
Two and Everybody's Old Man, both 193 6, and The Good Old
Soak, 1937.
Novelist James T. Farrell (Studs Lonigan) decided he
wanted no part of Hollywood after his brief exposure to it.
He was not successful as a screenwriter, but he claims this
was because he refused to compromise his personal integrity.
He rejected the lucrative movie work for the freedom of lit
erary endeavors, and seemed secure in his decision over the
years: "I am proud not to be rich because I gave myself and
my time to creative struggle."59 In an essay in his The
League of Frightened Philistines (1945) Farrell was able to
expand a little more his negative feelings concerning film
writing:
A large proportion of the literary talent of America
is now diverted to Hollywood. . . . Such talent, instead
of returning honest work for the social labor that made
its development possible, is used up, burned out, in
scenario writing. This is a positive and incalculable
social loss. And there can be little doubt of the fact
that a correlation exists between the success of this
commercial culture and the loss of esthetic and moral
vigor in so much contemporary writing. This must be the
result when talent is fettered and sold as a commodity,
when audiences are doped, and when tastes are confused,
and even depraved.60
In an autobiographical short story, "$1,000 a Week," Farrell
dramatizes the misery of the screenwriter. The story, which
in its thematic structure is a miniature replica of Edwin
Gilbert's novel The Squirrel Cage, has an identical ending
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1 4 7
to the novel, in that the writer-hero takes flight back East
(as Farrell did) from his stultifying studio job: "He was
anxious to be gone. Heretofore, he had felt a certain
regret in almost all departures. Once he came to a place,
he disliked leaving it. Now he was making a departure with
out regret."61
Of America's five Nobel Prize-winning novelists—
Sinclair Lewis, Pearl Buck, William Faulkner, Ernest Heming
way, John Steinbeck— only two spent what could be considered
significant time at screenwriting. Since the Hollywood work
of William Faulkner and John Steinbeck was of exceptional
quality and was accomplished with absolutely no impairment
of their literary faculties, these writers will be discussed
in an appropriate later chapter. Buck, Lewis, and Hemingway
never energentically pursued the Hollywood route.
Pearl Buck helped produce a film in Japan from one
of her stories, but otherwise has stuck to books.
Sinclair Lewis stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel for
a month in 1939 to write a film version of his play Angela
Is 22 for Lester Cowan. He became upset with Hays Office
regulations, including the suggestion that he substitute
'nance" for "fairy." He finished the script, but it was
never produced. In 1943, Lewis returned to Hollywood to
collaborate with Dore Schary on Storm in the West. It was
based on Schary1s idea to do a western that would be an
allegory about Hitler and the Nazis. Louis B. Mayer refused
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1 4 8
to film the project, and Schary stormed out of MGM because
of it. Once more, in 1947, Lewis was back in Hollywood to
write Adam and Eve, a satire Leo McCarey wanted to film with
Ingrid Bergman and James Stewart. Again, the movie was
never made.6 2
Hemingway abhorred Hollywood. Many of his novels
and short stories were adapted to the screen, but never by
him. Eric Knight writes that the only reason Hemingway sold
the wights to his works was that Hollywood was pirating the
material anyway, and at least this way he could get some
money out of it. John Ford had directed and written a film
called Men Without Women, 192 9, which was the title of a
successful collection of short stories which Hemingway had
published in 1927. In 1931 William Dieterle directed The
Last Flight, which was ostensibly based on a novel by John
Monk Saunders called Single Lady; but, in its piercing evo
cation of the disillusionment of the post-World War I "lost
generation," was strikingly similar to Hemingway's The Sun
Also Rises. Hemingway wrote his lawyer: "Hey, can't we
stop those bastards from stealing my stuff. They stole my
Sun Also Rises . . . — now they're swiping my goddamn
titles."63 Hemingway received a nominal sum for the title
theft, and while he was at it sold the rights to A Farewell
to Arms.
Frank Borzage directed the original A Farewell to
Arms in 1933. When David 0. Selznick was producing the
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1 4 9
remake (1957), he made a grand gesture toward the author.
Although Hemingway had long before sold away his rights,
Selznick agreed to pay him a percentage of the profits:
"You can refuse it, or give it away, or do what you please
with it, but you are going to get it anyway."64 The author
shot back a message doubting any profits would accrue, espe
cially in light of the overage casting of the leading lady,
Jennifer Jones (Mrs. Selznick).
Hemingway had advice for anyone who was considering
writing for films:
First you write it, then you get into a Stutz Bear
cat and drive west. When you get to Arizona, you stop
the car and throw the script out. No, you wait until
they throw the money in, then you throw it out. Then
you head north, south or east but for chrissakes don't
go west to Hollywood.65
However, he broke his own rule one time and became involved
with the filming of The Old Man and the Sea (1958), which
proved to be a very unhappy experience for him. Hemingway
reflected, "When I was giving advice . . . I should have
listened."6 6
George S. Kaufman was very much aware of Hollywood's
reputation for ill-treatment of writers, and, consequently,
scornfully rejected most offers for screenwriting employ
ment. As Howard Teichmann, his biographer, writes: "he was
fearful of the lemon trees and the tennis courts in the
backyards of Beverly Hills."67 Nevertheless, he shared the
Original Story credit with Robert E. Sherwood on Samuel
Goldwyn's Roman Scandals (1933), starring Eddie Cantor.
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1 5 0
Rightfully suspicious of Cantor's interference, Kaufman
insisted that a clause be written into his contract stipu
lating that he would not have to meet with or listen to
Cantor's view of the story. When this clause was violated,
Kaufman left the studio and later successfully sued Goldwyn
for the remainder of the money due him for services ren
dered.
Steadfastly refusing ever to return to Hollywood
after this uncomfortable experience, Kaufman relented when
Irving Thalberg offered him $100,000 to write a single pic
ture, A Night at the Opera (193 5), perhaps the Marx Bro
thers' greatest success. He did not return to California
professionally until 1947, and then it was to direct The
Senator was Indiscreet. He never worked in Hollywood again,
for "in reality, it wasn't his kind of town, it wasn't his
kind of work, it wasn't his kind of craft."68
One of the most prolific novelists, Hugh Walpole was
brought to Hollywood by David 0. Selznick to adapt David
Copperfield (1935) to the screen. He was complimented by
Selznick for his work: "Walpole did a fine job in re
creating even the actual Dickensian type of phrasing."69
And during this period Walpole seemed to enjoy moments of
peace: "I think why I am really happy is that here I am
free for the first time from all the English jealousy that
I've suffered from for years."70 He then proceeded to
render a very skillful screenplay from his own novel (Van-
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1 5 1
essa, 1933) for a film entitled Vanessa, Her Love Story
(1935), also for Selznick.
However, by 1936 with his work on Little Lord
Fauntleroy (his first sole screenplay credit), he was a bit
disillusioned: "It is all most pleasant, kindly, agreeable,
but, more than last year, completely unreal. There is more
actual positive reality in one square inch of the beach at
Scarborough than in the whole extent of Hollywood."71 Wal
pole had written well for his three Selznick pictures, but
after a few more months had passed he was getting restless
to leave:
This place is making me lazier and lazier. It isn't
a good sort of laziness in which you recuperate, but a
bad sort in which your character becomes weaker and
weaker and you care less and less whether you do any
thing properly or not. I've just been telling John
Collier [another Eastern writer] that he'll be com
pletely and utterly damned, body and soul, if he stays
here much longer, but he tells me that he wants to be
damned and is longing to know what it's like.72
He left Hollywood, but he deed not be ashamed of his own
literary productivity while he was working for the movies.
Like Thomas, Farrell, Kaufman, and others of brief involve
ment, like the majority of significant writers who often
returned to Hollywood, Walpole retained and exercised his
creative energies. During his Hollywood period he wrote the
following books:
1934 - Captain Nicholas
Extracts from a Diary
The Inquisitor
A Prayer for My Son
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1 5 2
1937 - John Cornelius
The Cathedral (A Play in Three Acts)
In the years following the screenwriting jobs, until his
death in 1941, he wrote eight additional works. He may have
written films for Hollywood, but the work which he wrote for
himself flourished.
Novelist Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward, Angel, 1929)
declined a screenwriting job offer from Irving Thalberg,
even though he could have earned more in a year ($40,000)
than he had made from all his books. But he later remarked
that he would have been willing to sell his novels to the
movies: "I am not only willing but eager for the seducers
to make their first dastardly proposal. In fact, my posi
tion in the matter is very much like that of the Belgium
virgin the night the Germans took the town: 'When do the
atrocities start?1"73 Wolfe elaborated on why he had
refused the studio job: "I wanted to write; I had work to
do. I had writing, and still have, and I think I will
always have, that I wanted to get done. It meant more to me
than anything else I could do. And I think that is the rea
son I am a writer."71*
Briefly, there were many other important writers who
spent minimal time in Hollywood, but whose literary credits
far exceed their film credits. For them Hollywood was an
exciting, provocative, or frustrating experience, but it
seemed to have negligible impact on their literary viabil
ity. Among this notable group are: Stephen Vincent Bendt,
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1 5 3
Paul Green, Louis Bromfield, Elmer Rice, John Dos Passos,
J. B. Priestly, P. G. Wodehouse, Don Marquis, Thornton
Wilder, Faith Baldwin, Philip Dunning, Fannie Hurst, Ogden
Nash, John O'Hara, Damon Runyan, Irving Stone, Liam
O'Flaherty, Ayn Rand, Bertolt Brecht. (See appendix for
film credits.)
Stephen Vincent Ben£t, for example, was a bit frus
trated by the movie-making process during his first venture,
collaboration with D. W. Griffith on Abraham Lincoln (1930),
In his letters Benet wrote:
I have worked in advertising and with W. A. Brady
Sr. But nowhere have I seen such shining waste, stupid
ity and conceit as in the business and managing end of
this industry. Whoopee!
Since arriving, I have written 4 versions of Abraham
Lincoln, including a good one, playable in their
required time. That, of course, is out. Seven people,
including myself, are now working in conferences on the
5th one which promises hopefully to be the worst yet.
If I don't get out of here soon I am going crazy. Per
haps I am crazy now. I wouldn't be surprised.
At any rate, don't be surprised if you get a wire
from me that I have broken my contract, bombed the
studio, or been arrested for public gibbering. Don't be
surprised at all.75
He went on to write many literary successes, including The
Devil and Daniel Webster (1937), which he translated into a
screenplay for the film version (1941).
Paul Green's is a fascinating career. He is known
for plays set for the most part in North Carolina: Lonesome
Road: Six Plays for Negro Theater (192 6); The Field God and
In Abraham's Bosom, both of which appeared on Broadway in
1927, the latter winning the Pulitzer Prize; The House of
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1 5 4
Connelly (1931); Roll Sweet Chariot (Potter's Field, 1934);
Native Son (with Richard Wright, 1941). 1930's he lived and
worked for a time in Hollywood, writing the screenplay for,
among others, State Fair (1933), for which he won an Academy
Award nomination. But he found the work unrewarding, and
Green departed for North Carolina State University to teach
dramatic art and philosophy. In later years he became more
interested in writing what he calls "plays derived from the
people's history, their legends, folk-customs and beliefs,
their hopes and ideals, and producing them in hillside am
phitheatres built for that purpose."76 Among these pieces,
which he calls "symphonic dramas," are: The Lost Colony
(1937) , The Common Glory (1947) , Faith of Our Fathers (1950).
The Hollywood of the 1930's was a battlefield for
the personal honor and literary integrity of the Eastern
writer. The imported intellectual, hoping to come to terms
with the most demanding and persuasive ideological invention
yet conceived, entered the lists in company with the best
literary minds of his generation. And for this first cate
gory of authors at least, they demonstrated, as critic Otis
Ferguson said, "that it is . . . possible to live in Holly
wood quietly, sanely, and pleasantly occupied with whatever
it is you do."77 The Hollywood of the 1930's was a place of
irony, a galvanic quality which even the lapidary cynic,
like Ben Hecht, describes as "the more inscrutable irony
that out of this wedding of Jabberwock and the Muses called
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Hollywood a most astonishing
emerges, full of beauty, wit
1 5 5
lot of worthy enterprise
and high purpose."78
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1 5 6
N O T E S
Ernest Hemingway, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," The
Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1966), p. 11.
2Colin Wilson, The Outsider (New York: Dell Pub
lishing Co., 1956), p. 38.
3Burns Mantle, The Best Plays of 1930-31 (New York:
Dodd, Mead and Company, 1931), p. 39 4.
l+Leonard Spigelgass, Letter to Author, October 11,
1972.
sGeorge Jean Nathan, The Theatre Book of the Year
1950-1951 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), pp. 23-24.
6John Updike, Bech: A Book (New York: Fawcett
Publications, Inc., 1970), p. 18.
7"Daniel Fuchs," The Reader's Encyclopedia of
American Literature, ed. by Max J. Herzberg (New York:
Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969), p. 365.
8Daniel Fuchs, "Author's Preface," Three Novels
(New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1961), p. vii~
9 Ibid.
1°Ibid., p . viii.
11 See note 23, Chapter IV, for the Fuchs short
stories cited.
12Fuchs, "Preface," p. viii.
1 3Fuchs, "Writing for the Movies," Commentary,
February, 1962, pp. 104-116.
14George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, Once in a Life
time (New York: Random House, 1942) , II.
15Ibid., III, ii.
16George Axelrod, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
(New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1955), II.
1 ?ibid -/ I •
1 8lbid-/ 1 1 1/ i-
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1 5 7
19Gene Fowler, "Hollywood Horst Wessel," in Hello,
Hollywood, pp. 63-64.
2“Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in Ameri
can Life (New York: Random House, 1963), p. 416.
21 See Jonas Spatz, Hollywood in Fiction (The Hague:
Mouton & Company, 1969), pp. 81-110, for an excellent review
of what he calls the "literature of alienation and seduc
tion ."
22Ibid., pp. 87-88.
23Schulberg, The Disenchanted, p. 180. Italics not
in original.
21>Ibid., pp. 183-184.
2 5Ibid., p. 30.
2“Bella and Samuel Spewack, Boy Meets Girl, in Six
teen Famous American Plays, ed. by Bennett A. Cerf and Van
H. Cartwell (New York: Random House, 1941), I.
27Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run? (New York:
Bantam Books, 1961), p. 44.
2“ibid., p . 46.
2“Schulberg, The Harder They Fall (New York: Signet
Books, 1968), p. 126.
3“ibid., p. 131.
31 Ibid. , p. 126.
32Ibid.
33Gilbert, The Squirrel Cage, p. 60.
31fIbid., p. 61.
35John Motley, "Portrait of an Individualist," The
Screen Writer, May, 1947, p. 29.
3“Kaufman and Hart, Merrily We Roll Along (New York:
Random House, 1942), I, i.
37George Jean Nathan, The Entertainment of a Nation
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942), pp. 84-85 .
Nathan can be maddeningly contradictory in his
pontificating, however, and the following seems to recognize
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1 5 8
the value of comedy written solely for the purpose of light
entertainment:
Some of the best comedies the modern theater has
disclosed have been written bymmen of no especial
cerebral voltage. . . . They have duly appreciated the
fact and have contented themselves with the achievement
of merely very brilliant light entertainment. (Nathan,
The Theatre Book of the Year 1942-1943 [New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1943], p. 125.)
39Nathan, Entertainment of a Nation, p. 86.
4“Quoted in Max Wilk, The Wit and Wisdom of Holly
wood (New York: Atheneum, 197TT7~pTTiT;
4Carolyn See, "Will Excess Spoil the Hollywood
Writer?" Los Angeles Times West Magazine, March 26, 1967,
p . 34.
lt2Hortense Powdermaker, Hollywood: The Dream Fac
tory (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1950), pp. 291-292.
43Edward Shils, "Mass Society and Its Culture,"
Daedalus, Spring, 1960, pp. 305-306.
1,4 Michael Blankfort, "Editorial," Point of View,
August, 1964, p. 2.
**5Ibid.
4“Pauline Kael, "Raising Kane— I," The New Yorker,
February 20, 1971, p. 48.
4 7Ibid., pp. 51-52.
* * “ibid., p . 60.
‘ ‘“Clifford Howard, "Author and Talkies," Close Up,
September, 1929, p. 224.
5“"Letter from Eric Knight to Paul Rotha, April 25,
1933," Portrait of a Flying Yorkshireman, ed. by Paul Rotha
(London:~ Chapman & Hall, 1952), p. 18.
51 Ibid., September 5, 1934, p. 65.
52Ibid., n.d., 1934, p. 70.
5 3Ibid., June 14, 1936, p. 101.
5 • / P • x•
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1 5 9
55Raymond Chandler, "Letter to Hamish Hamilton,
November 10, 1950," Raymond Chandler Speaking, p. 136.
56F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Letter to Corey Ford, July,
1937," in The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. by Andrew
Turnbull (New York: Bantam Books, 1971), p. 557.
57Norman Mailer, "The Writer and Hollywood," Film
Heritage, Fall, 1966, p. 23.
58Gram, "Author in Hollywood," p. 176.
59Quoted in Rick Dubrow, "Studs Lonigan Writer Dis
cusses His Works," Hollywood Citizen News, August 12, 1960.
60James T. Farrell, The League of Frightened Phili
stines (New York: The Vanguard Press, 1945), p . 182.
61Farrell, "$1,000 A Week," $1,000 A Week and Other
Stories (Garden City, New York: The Sun Dial Press, 1943)
p. 20.
62Bob Thomas, Variety, January 7, 19 70, p. 36.
63Quoted in "Letter from Eric Knight to Paul Rotha,
May 6, 1933," Flying Yorkshireman, p. 23.
6 "Letter from David O. Selznick to Ernest Heming
way, August 14, 1957," in Memo from David 0. Selznick, ed.
by Rudy Behlmer (New York: The Viking Press, 1972), p. 440.
65Graham, The Garden of Allah, p. 179.
66Ibid.
67Howard Teichmann, "The Man Who Hated Hollywood,"
New York Times, April 30, 1972, Section D, p. 11.
6 8Ibid., p. 18.
69Selznick to Sidney Howard, January 7, 1937," Memo,
p. 146. ----
7“Quoted in Rupert Hart-Davis, Hugh Walpole (London:
Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1952), p. 350.
71 Ibid., p. 360.
72Ibid., p. 369.
7“Thomas, Variety, p. 36.
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160
7 ^Ibid.
75Selected Letters of Stephen Vincent Benet, ed. by
Charles A. Fenton (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960),
quoted in Wilk, Wit and Wisdom, pp. 93-94.
76,lPaul Green," Reader's Encyclopedia, p. 407.
7 70tis Ferguson, Film Criticism, p. 427.
78Quoted in "Ben Hecht: A Sampler," ed. by Stephen
Fuller, Film Comment, Winter, 1970-71, p. 36.
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C H A P T E R V I
THE DRAMATISTS
In the beginning of the 1920's new talents and new
ideas appeared and flourished in all the theater arts. It
was at this time that Eugene O'Neill came to prominence, and
many other playwrights followed: Maxwell Anderson, Sidney
Howard, Philip Barry, Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman, Marc
Connelly, George Kelly, S. N. Behrman, John Howard Lawson,
John van Druten, Anita Loos, George Abbott, Philip Dunning,
Kenyon Nicholson, Hatcher Hughes, John Colton, Paul Green,
Vincent Lawrence, Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, Elmer Rice.
In the next few years came Moss Hart, Preston Sturges, John
Wexley, Lynn Riggs, Rose Franken, Sidney Kingsley, Lillian
Heilman, Russel Crouse, Samson Raphaelson, Clifford Odets.
Even this inadequate list of the numerous dramatists
who began to make themselves felt at the time suggests that
there was enough brilliance and even genius to have produced
a golden age. When this did not occur many observers were
inclined to ask whatever happened to it? The answer which
many Broadway critics came up with was the talking pictures,
or, as Robert Sherwood put it, "the fearful devouring of
talent by the insatiable studios."1
161
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1 6 2
It is true that with the major exception of Eugene
O'Neill, almost every playwright of established reputation
as well as beginners of exceptional promise became involved
in the Hollywood experience. The pattern extended to the
frenzied purchase of smash Broadway hits by the studios for
adaptation to the movie screen. The early sound period
eagerly consumed stage vehicles such as Interference,
Coquette, Show Boat, The Trial of Mary Dugan, Anna Christie,
Broadway, The Barker, The Front Page, Street Scene, Strange
Interlude, The Green Pastures, Death Takes a Holiday,
Strictly Dishonorable. These so-called "raids on Broadway"
were probably inspired by the belief that the talking pic
ture was no more than a photographic recording of a stage
play. During the incipient years of the sound film, this
attitude would indeed send many productions into a static
relapse and retard momentarily the refinement of the cine
ma's inherent formal qualities. But quickly artistic imagi
nation kept pace with technological improvements, and the
dimension of sound significantly enhanced the motion pic
ture's capability for dynamic story telling.
The initial period of clumsiness and narrative inep
titude can well be explained in terms of the indigenous
Hollywood writers who did not understand how to produce
spoken dialogue, and a similar lack of understanding on the
part of the "bright boys" from Broadway who were ignorant of
the art of expression with pictures that moved. But it did
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163
not take long for the Ben Hechts, the Preston Sturgeses,
the Edwin Justus Mayers, the S. N. Behrmans, the Donald
Ogden Stewarts--all of whom had achieved notable success in
the theater— to rarefy the sound film into the most exciting
art form of the 1930's.
Of course, there were the young dramatists of shim
mering potential who "were whisked to Hollywood and never
heard from again," as Sherwood charged. But were they not
their own free agents in opting for screenwriting over the
stage? By whose standards, by what objective criteria do
these monitors of the American theater bemoan the so-called
abortion of a "golden age" of playwriting, while refusing to
herald a commensurate golden age of film achievement? When
Maurine Watkins, Vincent Lawrence, John Wexley, Robert Ris-
kin, or Laurence Stallings left the Broadway arena for a
Hollywood writing cubicle, they were functioning as ration
al, independent artists seeking some sort of personal or
social, financial or artistic fulfillment. There is some
thing elitist, artificial, scapegoatish, and slightly hypo
critical about those critics who accuse Hollywood for the
failure of predictions of lofty artistic achievements in the
theater. Rarely is any critic satisfied that any art form
is contemporaneously fulfilling its potential, but Hollywood
has always (from the very beginning to the present day) been
a tangible, plastic force which could be conveniently blamed
for a literary medium's periodic sterility, especially when
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1 6 4
that medium's prized writers have found Hollywood tempo
rarily (in whatever way) more satisfying.
Moreover, there is a lamentably small amount of
unqualified art produced in any medium in any age. Very few
dramatists (to use this one example) have been able to
achieve consistently top-level playwriting form throughout
their careers, Hollywood influence or not. Fluctuations in
the quality of art, cycles of higher and lower accomplish
ment in the various fields are concomitants of art itself.
Thus, we find Robert Sherwood, in the same article which
cites Hollywood for the weakening of 1930's theater, bewail
ing the prospects for substantial playwriting of the 1950's:
"I cannot pretend that I feel particularly optimistic about
the future of a theatre in which everything is likely to be
excellent except the quality of the new plays." With no
Hollywood to blame this time, he finds that he cannot really
explain why this paucity exists; but he does render this:
"Perhaps the trouble is that writers no longer can summon
enthusiasm for a medium which depends upon make-believe."2
Perhaps. But this mercurial pattern might also be the
nature of creativity itself. Nevertheless, we must now look
to some of the ways in which Hollywood was intimately
involved with the Broadway theater in the 1930's.
Without qualification the most vociferous indicter
of the corrupting influence of Hollywood on the American
theater was the reppected critic George Jean Nathan. He
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1 6 5
found it difficult to mention the motion picture industry
(to consider it as an art form was out of the question)
without referring to some way in which it had tainted or
perverted the chaste texture of the New York stage. We
might, therefore, use Nathan as the avatar of the fashion
able critical attitude which perceives Hollywood as the
seducer of all that is fine and noble in the American
theater.
Consider this rather long, but quite typical quota
tion from Nathan:
More than any other force, more than any other ten
forces all compact, have the moving pictures in the last
half dozen years succeeded brilliantly in reducing fur
ther the taste, the sense and the general culture of the
American nation. . . . They have bought literature and
converted it, by their own peculiar and esoteric magic,
into rubbish. They have bought imaginative actors and
converted them into facemakers and mechanical dolls.
They have bought reputable authors and dramatists and
have converted them into shamefaced hacks. They have
elected for their editors and writers the most obscure
and talentless failures of journalism and the tawdry
periodicals. They have enlisted as their directors,
with a few reputable exceptions, an imposing array of
ex-stage butlers, assistant stage managers of tank town
troupes, discharged pantaloons, and the riff-raff of
Broadway street corners. And presently they sweep their
wet tongue across the American theatre. . . . leave the
theatre alone. Go on with your deaf and dumb art; go on
corrupting the boobery; go on making your millions; go
on with your traffic in magnificent cowboys and hiproll-
ing vampies and bouncing golden curls— but leave what is
left of the American theatre.3
This suggests the tone of Nathan's general comments regard
ing Hollywood and the theater. But as early as 1921, even
before the massive drain of drama writing talent which was
to occur late in the decade, Nathan was adumbrating what was
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1 6 6
to become a persistent theme in his writing: the corruption
of individual artists by success. Nathan played the chorus
and conscience of many a writer he saw deviating from the
almost preternaturally narrow path of artistic idealism.
Thus, as a representative case, he was acutely sensitive to
a subtle nod to popular taste which he found in Zoe Akins'
Ddclassde,- a compromise in dramatic intensity from her
superlative Papa earlier the same year (1919). This was, of
course, years before Akins would depart for Hollywood and a
screenwriting contract in 1930 (she would be regularly
denounced in Nathan's columns), but even at this early stage
he was worried about the slightest chink in her artistic
armor:
Let this Akins girl remain the independent artist of
Papa, the artist uncontaminated by the devastating boll-
weevils of Broadway, and she will produce work of a
quality uncommon to our stage. Let her become inflamed
with the success of Declassde and pursue the more popu
lar species of writing— I begin . . . to detect unmis
takable symptoms of the diabetes— and she will ruin as
engaging a potentiality as the curtain of an American
stage has lifted upon.
The other major complaint from the observers of the
Broadway scene in the 1930's was that the Hollywood studios
were providing financial backing for certain shows with the
idea of making them into pictures later. This, they claim,
tended to lower the standards of the legitimate theater.
(This contention, however, does not seem borne out by the
facts, since some of the best Broadway shows had film money
as subsidy. Ironically, Nathan himself would defend the
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1 6 7
movies in this regard.)
With the sound film came the Depression, a time of
great economic adversity for the Broadway stage. Hollywood
provided jobs for unemployed stage players, either as actors
or teaching "silent" personalities how to talk, when their
native field could not accommodate them. The movies pro
vided social relief to the legitimate drama long before the
Federal Theater project was initiated: by taking over play
houses on Broadway and in key cities the film industry pro
tected the stage from the full effects of the slump. There
was a confusion of cause and effect: the trek to Hollywood
did not bring about the moribund condition in the theater;
the moribund condition brought about the trek to Hollywood.5
George Jean Nathan was surprisingly appreciative of
the financial support provided by the Hollywood studios for
the theater season 1935-1936. While recognizing that the
studios did subsidize some inferior projects (The Body
Beautiful, by Robert Rossen; Play, Genius, Play, by Judith
Kandel; among others), the number is insignificant compared
with a far greater number of equally wretched productions
which "were put on with pure and holy theatrical money that
was not in the least tainted with the fingerprints of
Louis B. Mayer, Sam Goldwyn, the Warner brothers, or any
other such low lens swine."6 In fact, Nathan becomes quite
expansive, as is characteristic of his inflated, verbose
style, in asserting his preference for Darryl Zanuck's or
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168
Joseph Schenck's money rather than that of some Wall Street
broker whose wife wants to bask in an arty atmosphere; he
would sooner take the backing of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
Twentieth Century-Fox, or Columbia than that of gangsters,
such as Waxey Gordon, who was involved in several enter
prises on Broadway.
And in a conciliatory mood which was so rare and
contradictory as to be almost chimerical, Nathan concedes
that work in the Hollywood studios evidently had no ill
effect on playwrights Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, and
Bella and Samuel Spewack, judging from their respective
critical successes of the 1935-1936 season: Winterset, End
of Summer, and Boy Meets Girl. And, in general, Nathan
insisted:
So long as Hollywood is willing to pay out to reputable
theatrical producers annual sums running into hundreds
of thousands of dollars for the mere screen rights to
such plays as Dead End, Pride and Prejudice, Winterset,
Ethan Frome, Parnell, Russet Mantle [all of which Nathan
critically approvedj and the like, and through such pay
ment encourage, however obliquely, the production of
better-grade drama, just so long will Hollywood money be
hardly a dose of poison but rather a veritable godsend
to the theatre.
So let us stop listening to all the nonsense about
Hollywood's rape of the stage.7
But the fact remained that large numbers of the
playwrights of the 1930's left the stage (even if tempo
rarily) and made the trip West to Hollywood. Harold Clur-
man, one of the founders of the famous Group Theatre, wit
nessed the attraction which the movie industry had for the
dramatist:
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169
From success or failure the playwright's escape is
Hollywood. . . . The theatre is in the very heart of the
marketplace, where a feverish and fabulous exchange of
goods seems the essential drama. The playwright cannot
but be affected by it. If he has had some success, why
not more? If he has had little success, and greater
rewards for his efforts are open to him in Hollywood,
why not take advantage of the situation?8
We must now turn our attention to some selected
examples of those dramatists who departed the proscenium
arch for the slightly less ornate writers' buildings at the
Hollywood studios. Again, it will be useful for us to dis
cuss them in terms of the fertilization or neglect of their
independent writing careers, i.e., within categories of
those who continued to produce plays and other works of lit
erature while employed by Hollywood, and those who virtually
abandoned an interest and involvement in non-movie writing.
Dramatists Who Became Substantially Involved
with Hollywood--Wrote Few or No
Subsequent Works of Their Own
The dramatists proposed for discussion in this sec
tion are those which have been thought to validly represent
a much larger group of writers who have been variously con
sidered as "victims" of their Hollywood experiences. By
"victims" is meant that their own independent work suffered,
either because the standards for screenwriting are so
inferior to those of traditional literature that a writer
eventually deteriorated to a point where he was no longer
able to distinguish art from kitsch, or because he found
screenwriting so easy and lucrative that he never or seldom
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1 7 0
undertook the real "labors" of dramatic writing again.
Attention must be paid to these men, because much literary
talent diminished or was cut off in such a way that at least
a chronological pattern of decline seemed to square with
Hollywood's intervention.
But these chronological contiguities must not be
absorbed in wholesale fashion as confirmation of Hollywood's
total culpability in the matter, without consideration of
two major factors: (1) Almost without exception the writers
who were forced to carry the epithet "burnt out in Holly
wood" (this includes all the categories of involved authors,
novelists, poets, as well as dramatists) were what would
have to be evaluated as minor talents--compared to the
extraordinary artistry represented by men who were unaf
fected by Hollywood: Eugene O'Neill, William Faulkner, Max
well Anderson, Thomas Wolfe, John Dos Passos, Robert E.
Sherwood, Ernest Hemingway, Lillian Heilman, S. N. Behrman,
Marc Connelly, and others (most of whom will be discussed in
subsequent sections). Writers such as Vincent Lawrence,
Edwin Justus Mayer, Maurine Watkins, George O'Neil, drama
tists who perhaps enjoyed the highest critical standing of
those whose work decreased or disappeared during their
Hollywood years, were of questionable artistic longevity in
the first place; and their eclipse may be just as logically
explained in terms of the normal exhaustion or expiration of
their creative fertility: in the case of the dramatist what
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1 7 1
Nathan calls the swamps of the "one-play man" legend.
(2) Many dramatists had talents better suited for the cinema
than for the stage. There is no need to mourn the loss to
traditional literature of the playwriting skills of Robert
Riskin, Talbot Jennings, Sidney Buchman, Norman Reilly
Raine, Howard Koch, Jane Murfin, or Joseph Swerling, all of
whom departed inauspicious stage beginnings for careers of
exceptionally high achievement as screenwriters.
Robert Riskin left a rather undistinguished two-play
collaboration with Edith Fitzgerald, Bless You, Sister
(1927) and Many a Slip (1930), for a string of major screen
play accomplishments, including his most famous films for
Frank Capra: Platinum Blonde (19 31), American Madness
(1932), Lady for a Day (1933), It Happened One Night (1934),
Mr♦ Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You
Can't Take It with You (1938), Meet John Doe (1941), Here
Comes the Groom (1951). Riskin found an arena, the Holly
wood comedy of the 1930's, which was perfectly compatible
with his ability to cast protagonists of amazing verisimili
tude: high-pressure bankers (American Madness), newspaper
men (Platinum Blonde and It Happened One Night), Broadway
sharpies (Lady for a Day), and racetrack touts (Broadway
Bill). Riskin has undoubtedly made more of an imprint on
the texture of American popular arts through his finely
etched rendering of such exotica as the Walls of Jericho,
Mr. Deeds, and John Doe than through the tepid 24 perfor-
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172
mances of his play, Bless You, Sister.
The only play by Talbot Jennings was No More Fron
tier (1931), a rather awkward and implausible story which
traces three generations of the Flint Bailey family, from an
early interest in Idaho cattle raising around 1875, to the
grandchildren's aspirations to get in touch with Mars. For
tunately Jennings sublimated his theatrical perspective of
historical sweep to the motion picture screen. For a medium
which could adequately accommodate the grandeur of his
vision, he wrote Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, Academy nomina
tion) , The Good Earth (1937) , Marie Antoinette (1938) ,
Northwest Passage (1940), Anna and the King of Siam (1946,
Academy nomination) , Knights of the Round Table (1953). His
screenplay for the superb but curiously overlooked So Ends
Our Night (1941, an intense translation of Eric Remarque's
Flotsam) is a summation of Talbot's pictorially rich and
thematically ornate concentration on individual valor and
personal integrity sustaining themselves in the face of
moral and physical adversity.
Norman Reilly Raine contributed little to dramatic
theater with his single play, a collaboration with Frank
Butler, Hangman's Whip (1933, 11 performances). He wisely
forgot about playwriting and channeled his energies into the
screenplays for The Life of Emile Zola (1937), The Adven
tures of Robin Hood (1938), Each Dawn I Die (1939) , The Pri
vate Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), A Bell for Adano
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1 7 3
( 1 9 4 5 ) .
Howard Koch is much more gratefully remembered for
his supremely intelligent and witty screenplays for Ser
geant York (19 41) , Casablanca (1942, Academy Award best
screenplay), Mission to Moscow (1943), Letter from an Un
known Woman (1948) than for his disastrous single attempt
for theatrical success with the mawkish Give Us This Day
(1933, 3 performances).
Both Jane Murfin and Joseph Swerling had slightly
more success in their respective individual efforts as
beginning playwrights. Nevertheless, Murfin wrote plays in
collaboration with actress Jane Cowl, as starring vehicles
for the latter, which became progressively less astute as
drama and inexorably less potent as box office: from the
rather vibrant debut of Lilac Time (1917, 176 performances),
to Daybreak (1917, 71 performances), to Information Please
(1918, 46 performances), to a final solo effort, Stripped
(1929), an inept melodrama which closed after 24 perfor
mances. Miss Murfin's considerable sensitivity to the
nuances of social interchange, her ear for the astringent
textures of glittering dialogue, and her ability to balance
the comic surfaces with a powerful dramatic undertone are
used to exceedingly more effectiveness in her watershed
script for What Price Hollywood? (1932), the germinal proto
type for the subsequent versions of A Star Is Born; and in
her four monumental screenplay-adaptations of Alice Adams
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1 7 4
(1935), Pride and Prejudice (1940)— these easily defendable
as masterpieces of cinematic translation from the original
novels that are among Hollywood's highest attainment of
charm and graceful humor— The Women (1939) , and Dragon Seed
(1944) .
Conversely, the three plays written by Joseph Swerl-
ing worked in a commercially more successful pattern: from
his fizzled debut collaboration with Jack Lait, One of Us
(1918, 24 performances), to The New Yorkers (1927, 52 per
formances; book and lyrics with Henry Myers) , to the popular
Kibitzer (1929, 120 performances), which he wrote with actor
Edward G. Robinson. In spite of its popular appeal, the
dramatic construction and thematic devices of Kibitzer sug
gested that the ends of stage and film art would be better
served if both Swerling and Robinson turned to the motion
picture for future endeavors. Robinson himself played the
lead, a cigar store owner named Lazarus, who is chief
adviser on all matters to the neighborhood. When he at-
temps to maintain his self-image as a big operator in the
stock market, the play's conflict arises through his mis
taken belief that his failure to sell the stock at its high
point results in great financial loss. Through some start
tling deus ex machina it is revealed that a daffy cousin
gave the order to sell when the stock was at its peak.
Swerling found more felicitous outlets for his insight into
psychological stress (in both comic and dramatic situations)
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1 7 5
through his early Frank Capra pictures (Ladies of Leisure,
1930; Dirigible. 1931; Miracle Woman, 1931); John Ford's The
Whole Town's Talking (1935), a comic reunion with Edward G.
Robinson which exceeds Kibitzer in its employment of the
mistaken action/mistaken identity motif; The Westerner
(1940); Lifeboat (1944); Leave Her to Heaven (1945) , It1 s a
Wonderful Life (1946). Swerling was able to assert a long-
deferred facility in the dramatic arena— and significantly
underscore the fact that the long period of Hollywood em
ployment had not deleteriously affected his artistic skills
— with a resounding critical and commercial success Guys and
Dolls (1950), his musical play collaboration with Abe Bur
rows .
Preston Sturges wrote only one successful play, but
it was an uncommonly fine and polished comedy: Strictly
Dishonorable (1929) , picked by Burns Mantle as one of the
ten best plays of that year. None of his other dramatic
efforts have the resonances of this one, but The Guinea Pig
(1929) is an early articulation of the exploratory experi
ence of vice and virtue that Sturges would reshape into one
of his most mature and complex films, Sullivan's Travels
(1941); and the intricacies of the marital relationship,
particularly in the strategies of post-divor.ce rendezvous
and the compelling nature of economic certitude (a la Cow
ard's Private Lives) as found in his woeful failure Recap
ture (1930, only 24 performances), would occupy the major
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1 7 6
thematic pivot of his The Palm Beach Story (1942) , an ingra
tiating film from his rich Paramount period. in light of
Sturges's eminently brilliant and bizarre burst of creation
in the cinema of the 1930's and 1940's, from The Power and
the Glory (1933) to Unfaithfully Yours (1948) , there is
every compensation to the world of the theater, which lost
the talent of Strictly Dishonorable, but which rewarded a
larger audience with a more dynamic forum for his ritualis
tic slapstick and sophistication.
The above rather long diversion which focuses on
appropriate examples of writers who were more artistically
tailored to the cinema than the dramatic stage, is necessary
to balance the popular notion that any author who rejects a
genre of traditional literature for film is necessarily evil
and self-indulgent. Sometimes different is better. Also,
before examining those authors who can quite properly be
considered as having abdicated the world of literature (a
withdrawal that seemed to be coincidental with Hollywood
employment) , we must give some scrutiny to some dramatists
who were characteristic of a large group (larger than might
iriitially be supposed) which, after a period of admittedly
self-imposed sterility, returned to some form of authorship.
It seems important to distinguish these intermittent writers
(of whom Joseph Swerling might serve as an initial example)
from those who withdrew from all aspects of literary expres
sion entirely. The writers sometimes jumped literary forms,
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1 7 7
from the drama to the novel to personal memoirs to critical
studies, but this evidence personal authorship should sub
stantially mitigate the charge that their literary faculties
completely atrophied in Hollywood. Functioning as exemplars
of this "spasmodic" sub-group of Eastern writers would be
Laurence Stallings, George Sklar, John Howard Lawson, Paul
Osborn, and Dan Totheroh.
Much of the early life of Laurence Stallings is
related in his novel Plumes (1924), which tells its hero's
experiences at a college called Woodland (really Wake Forest
College), where he falls in love with a professor's daught
er. He joins the marines, has embittering experiences in
World War I, and loses a leg after being wounded at Belleau
Wood— exactly as Stallings had done. Stallings put his war
experience to use again in What Price Glory? (1924), done in
collaboration with Maxwell Anderson, with whom he also wrote
First Flight (1925, a play about Andrew Jackson in his
youth) and The Buccaneer (1925, about Sir Henry Morgan).
It was at this point, against the background of
stage success, that Stallings began his Hollywood involve
ment. This was earlier than the others who made the trip,
still in the pre-sound era, but his initial effort was a
milestone in motion picture history: the classic The Big
Parade (1925), directed by King Vidor. And the rest of his
movie participation in the silent period suggested an equal
lack of compromise in artistic merit, as he wrote the story
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and the treatment for two celebrated films: Old Ironsides
(1926, directed by James Cruze) and Show People (1928,
directed by King Vidor).
This rather distinguished skein of films impressed
even the acid and vitriolic George Jean Nathan, whose per
sistent rapier slashings against Hollywood's corruption of
American dramatists had become practically a leit motif,9
who was nevertheless quite complimentary to Stallings: "Of
all the playwrights, American and foreign, who have been
imported to Hollywood, only one, Stallings, has shown the
slightest sign of appreciating the difference between the
screen and the stage and, by that mark, he is the only one
of the lot who has been at all spectacularly successful."10
However, Nathan felt in subsequent years that there
had been "a very visible and sad decline" in Stallings'
work, as his commitment to motion pictures continued. But
in a discussion of Stallings, along with fellow playwrights
Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht, Nathan still recognized
qualities of integrity and artistic stature:
All three have proved themselves superior to the muck
worm spirit of the Hollywood factories and overlords;
all three have retained a basic contempt (whatever their
public face) for those factories and overlords; all
three have in the last two or three years insisted upon
doing their movie jobs in the neighborhood of New York,
three thousand miles safely removed from Beverly Hills
Spanish-Yiddish villas, illuminated swimming pools and
purple and orange Rolls-Royces; and all three have been
pretty frank in admitting that they haven't the intense
aversion to mere money as money that most of the pure
writing artists of Hollywood loudly proclaim they have.11
Furthermore, Nathan said that he respected Stall-
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179
ings' honesty and modest attitude regarding any non-movie
work. Nathan had asked Stallings (this was 1936) why he
did not give up films long enough to produce another play of
the calibre of What Price Glory? Stallings very candidly
answered: "I'll tell you why. I've written everything I
had to say and I'm not going to write anything when I
haven't got anything more to say. I'm different from some
fellows that way."12
But in spite of whatever reservations Nathan might
have had, Stallings sustained a moderate productivity during
his screenwriting years. He was one of the first to use
jazz in an operatic production, Deep River (1926), with New
Orleans as a background. Rainbow (with Oscar Hammerstein,
1928), was another opera, set in the far West; and Virginia
(with Owen Davis, 1938) was an astute, intelligent, and
cleverly conceived musical play prototype of the latter-day
1776. Set in Virginia in 1775, using the Revolution as
background, the play charmingly centers on the first company
of professional English actors coming to America with Drury
Lane. The stage trappings and historical theme seem well-
suited. In 1930 Stallings made a dramatic version of Hem
ingway's A Farewell to Arms, and the war figured again in a
photographic, anti-war account of The First World War
(1933), which became a best seller.
This seems to be a fairly respectable output in the
other literary and theatrical media, while Stallings was
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1 8 0
maintaining a fruitful and artistic development in the world
of motion pictures: he fascinatingly enough became an
expert in the compilation and editing of newsreel footage,
and demonstrated pioneer expertise in the embryonic art of
the documentary; he wrote, among others, King Vidor's early
wide-screen experiment, Billy the Kid (1930), So Red the
Rose (19 35) , a cinematic reteaming with Maxwell Anderson,
Northwest Passage (1940, again with director Vidor, a most
felicitous combination), three important films by John Ford:
Three Godfathers (1949) , She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949),
The Sun Shines Bright (19 54) .
George Sklar and John Howard Lawson seem to ade
quately represent both those dramatists in the arbitrarily
assigned category of periodic fertility, and those generally
considered in the Depression era as "Marxist." This latter
group, whose literary and theatrical focus strongly
reflected the social and economic theories of Marxist ideol
ogy— and impinged sharply on the school of "proletarian"
writers of the 1930's13— included, in addition to Sklar and
Lawson, such dramatists as, very broadly considered, Clif
ford Odets, Paul Sifton, Samuel Ornitz, John Wexley, Albert
Bein, Kyle S. Crichton, Paul Peters, Albert Maltz. Iron
ically, in spite of strong anti-capitalistic attitudes
expressed in their plays, most of these writers turned to
Hollywood in the 1930's for substantial economic remunera
tion. As Nathan whimsically noted the contradiction: "They
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181
seem . . . to be unable to make up their minds whether it is
better for them to go to Moscow, serve Stalin, make fifteen
dollars a week, and freeze to death, or to go to Hollywood,
serve Irving Thalberg, make five hundred a week, and bask in
the warm sun."1 1 1 And John Howard Lawson came under special
attack from Nathan:
It is . . . pretty hard to reconcile the eloquently
expressed conviction of the young radical playwright,
John Howard Lawson, that the one thing that will save
the world is a strict practice of the doctrines of Karl
Marx with Mr. Lawson's own apparently happy and vastly
contented surrender to the money moguls of Hollywood,
to whom he is perfectly willing to dedicate himself at a
fat and comfortable weekly salary.15
For our purposes, the political views of these men
are less important than the fact that they did indeed leave
the dramatic stage for Hollywood. George Sklar left behind
a dramatic collaboration with Albert Maltz called Merry-Go-
Round (19 32) and five other plays, mostly in a vigorous pro
letarian genre typical of the Depression period. The best
of these was Stevedore (with Paul Peters, 1934), an indict
ment of racial bias. From Life and Death of an American
(1939) to 1947, however, was an admittedly barren period,
spent in Hollywood where he failed to produce anything of
importance: receiving only one credit for First Comes Cour
age (1943), a not unengaging wartime story directed by
Dorothy Arzner. But the important point to be made is that
his over-long Hollywood experiment failed to permanently
divert his energies from other literary work. He broke his
dry spell with his first novel, Two Worlds of Johnny Truro
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1 8 2
(1947), the story of a seventeen-year-old's emotional awak
ening during his love affair with a sophisticated older
woman. Significantly, other novels followed: The Promising
Young Man (19 51), which dissects the character of a "tennis
bum"; The Housewarming (19 53), a creative polemic which is
strikingly analogous to a similar statement which fellow-
"proletarian" Clifford Odets felt compelled to make in The
Big Knife (1948): concentration on a man who sells his soul
for success only to find disillusion; and Identity (1961).
Still drawing on socially relevant themes, Sklar wrote And
People All Around in 1967, a play which deals with student
and racial unrest.
John Howard Lawson has been concurrently a dramatist
and a screenwriter from practically the very beginning of
his literary career. It is interesting to note, however,
that the two formats alternate with works of disparate qual
ity, depending on the intensity of his interest in them. In
the early part of his career, for example, his playwrighting
enjoyed the cynosure of his passion, and he turned out two
fine expressionistic pieces: Roger Bloomer (1923) and Pro
cessional (1925). The latter, especially, found critical
favor in its externalization of the inner emotions of a West
Virginian town in the grip of martial law during a coal
strike. The characters are satiric versions of vaudeville
racial and social types, and the Ku Klux Klan is the butt of
many jokes. They play had a definite leftist attitude, but
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1 8 3
the mood was on the whole humorous. In his later plays Law
son developed a theme of a kind of Marxian denunciation of
American decadence: Loud Speaker (192 7) , The International
(1928), Success Story (1932), The Pure in Heart (1934) ,
Gentlewoman (1934) , Marching Song (1937) .
Lawson's screenwriting during this period, from
Dream of Love (1928) through Party Wire (1935), was conspic
uously inconsequential. But beginning with the controver
sial Blockade (1938), in perfect correspondence with a com
mensurate cessation of production of plays or other literary
works, the screenplays take on solid, tangible dimension.
As his energies and cinematic verve are poured into the
scripts, some of the best feature films of the war period
result: Algiers (1938), Four Sons (1940), Action in the
North Atlantic (1943), Sahara (1943), Counterattack (1945),
and Smash Up— The Story of a Woman (1947). This was to be
his last film, as his early and persistent Marxist beliefs
were to get him blacklisted, and he was to become one of the
famous "Hollywood 10" who were sent to jail for refusing to
testify before the Un-American Activities Committee investi
gating the motion picture industry.
Again his focus and his energies were realigned.
With absolutely no sign that his literary faculties were
other than temporarily relaxed, though certainly the ten-
year hiatus (1937-1947) carved a precious chunk out of his
fertile years, he turned with great aptitude to non-fiction.
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1 8 4
He authored The Theory and Technique of Playwriting and
Screenwriting (1949), perhaps still the best work on the
subject; The Hidden Heritage (1950), a book about the cul
tural history of the United States; and Film in the Battle
of Ideas (1953). In Film: the Creative Process (1964) , an
extremely well-written and insightful, if a bit biased, look
to the historical backgrounds to film, Lawson sums up his
Hollywood motivation: "I regarded [Hollywood] as a means of
gaining cinematic knowledge which could be invaluable for
future work either in drama or film. . . . With all the
obstacles that Hollywood placed in the way of artistic
expression, it gave me an insight into filmmaking wihich
challenged my craftsmanship as a writer and deepened by
approach to creative problems."16
Paul Osborn had a career pattern similar to Lawson's
in that he turned to film or drama with equal dexterity. He
came to prominence in the theater in 1930 (having written
two previous plays: Hotbed, 192 8; A Lodge, 1929), when
actress Mary Boland scored a considerable success in his
comedy called The Vinegar Tree. Another entry intervened
(Oliver Oliver, 1934), but it was with On Borrowed Time
(1938) and Morning's at Seven (1939)--both selected as one
of the ten best plays of their respective seasons— that
brought Osborn to maturity as a portrayer of highly sensi
tized and incisively human character.
Osborn had written his first film in 193 8 (The Young
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1 8 5
in Heart), achieving a rare distinction for a first-time
screenwriter in his completion of the screenplay without
collaboration. But in a Sturges-like burst of screenwriting
artistry, he punctuated his most prolific Hollywood period
(1942-1960) with an almost unrelenting string of powerfully
written motion pictures. His films, most of which he wrote
alon^, circumscribe a universal human integrity played
against protean backgrounds of cultural conflict:
1943 - Madame Curie 1955 - East of Eden
1944 - Cry Havoc 1957 - Sayonara
1946 - The Yearling 1958 - South Pacific
1948 - The Homecoming 1960 - Wild River
Portrait of Jennie
Again, like Sklar and Lawson, Osborn's independent
compositions slackened in frequency during the Hollywood
days, but two factors ameliorate this statement: the qual
ity of the films written in their stead; the fact that he
did write at least two plays of commendable stature— The
Innocent Voyage (1943), which George Jean Nathan said "man
ages to project . . . considerable charm, tenderness and
humor . . . contains the stuff of gentle, ironic, fresh
entertainment";17 and The World of Suzie Wong (1957). If
Osborn's non-Hollywood work is to be considered "spasmodic,"
the totality of his writing effort (both literature and
film) completes a picture of versatile and unified artistry.
Wild Birds (1922), by dramatist Dan Totheroh, was
first produced by the University of California where
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186
Totheroh was a director of dramatic performances, had a
brief run in New York and established him as a playwright of
power. The story of an orphan girl and a reform school boy
who came to a tragic end reflected the concern of the 1920's
with psychology and psychoanalysis. Burns Mantle picked it
as one of the best plays of the season, saying "there was an
unmistakable quality of charm in that play, a gentle, wist
ful pathetic note that sounded through the imaginative text.
. . . Totheroh represents a definite section of the onrush-
ing generation of young playwrights, and his friends are
supremely hopeful of his future."1 8
The substratum of Totheroh's work has always flowed
through Western themes, with a deep sensitivity for the farm
country and farm people, which he combined with a study of
psychopathology. "The sort of poetic excitement I try to
achieve springs only from the soil, not from pavements,"
Totheroh has said.19 Distant Drums (1932) tells the story
of a neurotic woman in a wagon caravan moving toward Oregon.
Moor Born (19 34) treats a whole group of neurotics— the
famous Bronte family. Mother Lode (1934), written with
George O'Neil, deals with life in early California. Live
Life Again (1945) retells— not very successfully— Hamlet in
terms of life on a Nebraska farm: again the psychopathology
within a rural scene, but this was unfortunately a fabri
cated duplicate made of cardboard and tinsel.
The 1930's were decidedly Totheroh's most fertile
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1 8 7
period, for, in addition to the above play productivity, he
wrote The Dawn Patrol (1930) for Howard Hawks; a charming
comedy, Zoo in Budapest (1933); the classic The Count of
Monte Cristo (1934), the best version, with Robert Donat,
which most faithfully captures the spirit and texture of the
Dumas novel; All That Money Can Buy (1941, with Stephen
Vincent Benet), which was selected by John Gassner and
Dudley Nichols as one of the 20 best screenplays of the
sound era.2 0
Totheroh probably cannot be thought of as having
fulfilled the hopes expressed by his friends around the time
of the success of Wild Birds. Like many other playwrights,
many of whom are discussed on these pages, he was unable to
completely actualize the potential suggested by an early
flame of dramatic force. But he was viable to the extent
that he did assert whatever writing skills he had, and in a
chronological pattern which tends to exculpate Hollywood
from responsibility in any lack of subsequent fruition.
Totheroh had a period of seven years (1922-1929) to pay off
on the hopes and dreams he precipitated with Wild Birds,
before Hollywood came on the scene. And even then he pur
sued his rather naturalistic vision of bucolic America
through the 1930's with the noted series of rural-psycho
analytical plays, including Searching for the Sun (1936),
all written during the heart of his Hollywood period. In
deed, Totheroh also wrote several novels, among them Wild
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1 8 8
Orchard (1927) and Deep Valley (1942). And if Totheroh
failed to do much of a creative nature after 1942, this is
without question a great loss to both literature and film.
Vincent Lawrence can be thought of as head of the
dubious category of cramatists who virtually rejected all
forms of traditional literature for work in Hollywood. He
made the trip West in 1930, with a distinguished theatrical
background, and during the entire 14-year duration as a
screenwriter, until he died in 1946, he wrote only two plays
(the abortive Washington Heights, 1931, and the short-lived
The Overtons, 1945) . Before his fateful decision— in the
1920's when his plays like Sour Grapes, Among the Married,
Spring Fever, A Distant Drum, and Two Married Men garnered
critical praise--and after, he was being monitored by the
Demosthenes-conscience of all American playwrights, George
Jean Nathan:
Vincent Lawrence was, before the advent of S. N.
Behrman, by long odds the one younger American writer of
finished comedy who might someday be expected to figure
importantly in the records of native comedy. . . . He
disllosed what was generally agreed to be the sharpest
and truest ear for the kind of speech associated with
his various characters that we had engaged, up to his
time, in American comedy writing, along with an intelli
gence, a cutting light social philosophy and an orig
inality of viewpoint that we all too seldom had been
privileged on the local stage. . . . but he seems to
have vanished completely into the bog of Hollywood sur
render. Although a few months ago one read a rumor that
he was preparing a new play for the theatre, one may
pardonably finger one's ear in doubt, for all his old
pride and ambition seem to have deserted him and reports
have it that he has been devoting the larger part of his
time in the last year or two to thinking up bits and
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1 8 9
gags for various Paramount moving pictures, at so much
gold per week.21
Lawrence did good work in Hollywood, a quality of
irreverence and wit in his scripts that made him one of the
most highly prized screenwriters in Hollywood history. He
was known for his brilliant dialogue for Ernst Lubitsch's
Monte Carlo (1930); the sardonic humor he infused into one
of the best of the newspaper sagas, Scandal Sheet (1931);
definitive examples of the genre of American cinema which is
most directly attributable to the cynicism and sophisitica-
tion of the imported Eastern writers, "the Thirties
comedy"22; Hands Across the Table (1935), History Is Made
at Night (1937) , Test Pilot (1938) .
In an affectionate article on Lawrence, novelist
James M. Cain writes of Lawrence's uncanny gifts with a
script, how hard he worked, how completely deserving he was
of the prodigious sums of money the studios paid him. He
was the sculpture-perfect image of the Hollywood screenwrit
er, because at the heart of his artistic vision was the love
story. Each story, he insisted, had to have a "love rack,"
an episode on which we entered the tale. In it, he said,
not only the characters but the audience as well must feel
their discovery of each other, and the thing could not be
phoney. He would not have a manufactured love rack, or a
remembered love rack, or a stolen love rack. And he in
sisted on plausible development, a solid structure; an
Aristotelian beginning, middle, end. Cain feels that these
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1 9 0
standards are Lawrence's real contribution to motion pic
tures: "He was not, of course, the first to write love
stories, but he was the first out here, I think, to articu
late the philosophy of the love story into the intellectual
whole, so that now we know, or think we know, what we are
doing."23
Lawrence had written almost 30 films, but on the
literary front he had not produced a play in 14 years. When
his The Overtons hit the boards in 1945, George J. Nathan
was enraged about how long the Hollywood "bacilli" had had a
chance to work on his creative fiber. But, surprisingly
enough, Nathan found some things to like in it (Nathan had
written previously that he and most other drama critics in
New York "have it in" for Hollywood screenwriters who
attempt to write for the stage2' * ) z "Though he is far from
being the man he was before Hollywood took its toll of him,
it is gratifying to learn that, for all his decline, at
least some traces of his old seeing-eye still obstinately
inhere in him."25 Nathan actually expressed some regret
that other critics had not taken sufficient notice of the
many virtues to be found in the plays by Lawrence, when he
chose to write them, and bemoaned their failure to encourage
him toward fulfillment of his highest intentions. Alas,
these bad reviews had "driven him back once again, downcast
and discouraged, to Hollywood."26 Lawrence died the follow
ing year.
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Edwin Justus Mayer is mentioned by the Manley Halli-
day character in The Disenchanted as being a typical writer
from the old New York crowd: one who began his literary
career with the highest artistic intentions and fairly dis
dainful of the antithetical commercialism of Hollywood; but
who later succumbed to the charismatic rewards of the movie
industry.27 Mayer is pretty much of an archetypal figure.
His The Firebrand was produced in the same theatrical
season (1924-1925) as Stallings and Anderson's What Price
Glory? and Dan Totheroh1s Wild Birds, all being among the
ten best of the year. It was too early in the 1920's to
realize that this particularly rich season would yield so
many young talents (including Sidney Howard, Mary Kennedy,
George Abbott, Edmund Goulding from the same ten best list
ing) for future success in Hollywood.
Mayer sought historical backgrounds for every dra
matic effort, and The Firebrand is built upon an episode
from the life of Benvenuto Cellini, but perhaps more in
spirit than in fact. "Although I have endeavored to retain
the spirit of Cellini and his times, as revealed in his
autobiography," Mayer explains in his preface to the pub
lished play, "The Firebrand is inspirational rather than
documental."28 And if his first play was a salient critical
success, his next, Children of Darkness (1930) was its
equal, The Nation calling it "probably the best comedy ever
written by an American."29 It was to be his last produced
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192
play.30
Mayer found Hollywood— and he was never to leave.
HOwever, he became one of the best and highest-paid screen
writers in the industry. His forte was that special brand
of movie madness--the comedy— excelling in a Hollywood
league redolent with Eastern talent specializing in shimmer
ing confections of wit, urbanity, and social glitter.
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932) and Desire (1936) were only a
velvety prelude to his subsequent comic masterpeices Mid
night (1939) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). The story and
screenplay for Midnight now seem a model of its kind—
barbed, sly, irreverent, and constructed in such a way that
the narrative is always being propelled forward as one lie
gives way to another; it all seems extraordinarily fresh and
vivid. To Be Or Not To Be has one of the best screenplays
in film history, perfect from a dramaturgical standpoint,
possessing some of the most unified and hilarious screen d
dialogue ever written. It is director Ernst Lubitsch's best
film.
It is fascinating, and a bit paradoxical (because
Hollywood has been often blamed for the "destruction" of
Mayer's talent) to see how the neophyte skills at work in
The Firebrand were to develop to rich maturity in a film
like To Be Or Not To Be. In the earlier play, we delight in
the early traces of a true genius for comic dialogue:
THE DUCHESS (indignantly): Honor, indeed! Your
masculine metaphysics are enough to turn an honest
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1 9 3
woman's stomach. Honor! that shining name which men
use to cover their cowardice. Faugh! I am disappointed
in you.
CELLINI: What can I say that will atone?
THE DUCHESS: Nothing. Your first love was a chisel
and your last will be a hammer.
CELLINI: My Lady, you wrong me. I am capable of
great love.
THE DUCHESS: You? Never! It is the tragedy of
great ladies to discover that great men make poor
lovers. They do not love women; they use them. That is
why we generally marry half-wits.31
In the film To Be Or Not To Be, we rejoice as the facility
for comic situation and dialogue reach its hilarious destin
ation. Mayer in 19 42 was twelve years removed from the
Broadway stage, but he was still on the road to art:
Joseph Tura (Jack Benny), that "great, great" Polish
actor and patriot, is impersonating a Nazi spy and is
meeting for the first time Colonel Ehrhardt (Sig Ruman)
in Gestapo headquarters. Tura is playing the most
important scene of his life, and he must find some lever
with which to put his German adversary at a disadvan
tage. He finds it in Ehrhardt"s telling of a disre
spectful joke.
EHRHARDT
Now, Professor, what news do you
bring from London?
TURA (Stalling by any means for time)
Well, I have the key, and now all we
have to find is the lock. That's better
than having the lock and then have to find
the key! How does it sound?
EHRHARDT (Perplexed)
Promising . . . promising . . . but exactly
what information do you have?
TURA
Uhhh . . . Perhaps I will have a glass
of brandy.
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1 9 4
EHRHARDT
Of course, Professor! Brandy . . . That
reminds me of a funny story that's going
all around Warsaw. Let me see now, how
does it go again . . . Oh, yes! They named
a brandy after Napoleon, a herring after
Bismarck, and Hitler is going to end up as a
piece of cheese.
(Ehrhardt breaks into hysterical laughter . . .
then notices that Tura, who, of course, has
heard the story many times and is capitalizing
on Ehrhardt1s breach of idolatry toward Hitler,
is acting totally unamused and offended by
this joke at der Fuhrer's expense. Ehrhardt
stops laughing.)
What's the matter, Professor, don't you think
it's funny?
TURA (Standing up, outraged)
No. And neither would the Fuhrer.
And I don't think Adolf Hitler is going
to go down in history as a delicatessen.32
Mayer was to write only one more play, the published
but unproduced Sunrise in My Pocket or The Last Days of Davy
Crockett (1941), again returning to a historical focus for
his theme— and was the uncredited source for the entire
Alamo sequence in Walt Disney's Davy Crockett— King of the
Wild Frontier (1955) , including the names of the characters.
Like many of the unfortunate Eastern writers who found
Hollywood a barren spot for their independent writing, Mayer
was also planning a literary work which never materialized.
He was most specifically like a fellow inhabitant of the
Garden of Allah hotel, Robert Benchley, who was preparing a
book on Queen Anne (never written). Mayer's effort was to
be a book about Pitt the Elder, but like Dick Diver, the
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1 9 5
tragic figure of lost spirit and dissipated energy at the
end of Tender Is the Nighty he "always had a big stack of
papers on his desk that were known to be an important trea
tise . . . almost in process of completion."33
Maurine Watkins is one of those classic cases who
drops out of sight after a period of experimentation in dif
ferent media. Her period on the Broadway stage was short,
only one year (1926-1927); her Hollywood period considerably
longer, ten years (1930-1940)— but then . . . nothing!
She stormed into the American drama with a boister
ous satire, Chicago (1926) , which paved the way for other
newspaper comedy-melodramas like The Front Page (192 8), and
then quickly went to pieces after this first excellent
achievement, producing nothing thereafter that approached it
in quality. Hollywood certainly was not responsible for
Revelry (1927, 48 performances); this phase of her career
was not to occur until 193 0. Yet she was to produce nothing
of merit from then on. Nathan said that he read two of her
manuscripts, and that portions of them revealed "a mild echo
of her first promise— but the results on the whole are woe
fully defective."34
The films she wrote in Hollywood are rather undis
tinguished. The Story of Temple Drake (1933), based on the
William Faulkner novel, and Libeled Lady (1936) , a bright
comedy written with fellow Eastern writer George Oppenheim-
er, are perhaps her best efforts from a total of 12 films
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1 9 6
for which she received credit. Nathan quite accurately
summed up her literary career with his pithy precis: "Here
. . . was a young woman who appeared to have something very
real and very fine to contribute to the future stage of her
nation. What happened, alas, was just one play— then a poor
dramatization of a novel, then a misguided original manu
script that got nowhere, and then the California movie
lots."35
Actress Ruth Gordon made a charming success out of
George Oppenheimer1s Here Today (1932), a Private Lives-
reversal-of-mates story, amusingly directed by George S.
Kaufman, set in the Bahamas. It was an auspicious accom
plishment for the young Oppenheimer which made him an
attractive prospect for Hollywood. So many other Eastern
writers, especially dramatists, were experimenting with the
Hollywood muse (and enjoying the Hollywood money) that he
felt he could afford a brief fling. His first film, Roman
Scandals (1933), was a fascinating adventure because it
teamed him with some exciting Eastern writer colleagues:
George S. Kaufman, fresh from his Here Today association,
Robert E. Sherwood, and William Anthony McGuire— significant
dramatists all. This collaboration at Goldwyn Studios, com
bined with the shattering failure of his follow-up dramatic
piece on the New York stage, Another Love (1934, 16 perfor
mances), convinced him to stay with the movies.
In a 20-year period Oppenheimer has written over 30
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1 9 7
features, including some notable, if uninspired, films:
Libeled Lady (1936), A Day at the Races (1937), a moderately
funny Marx Brothers entry, A Yank at Oxford (1938), I Love
You Again (1940), Two-Faced Woman (1941), a chic comedy for
Greta Garbo, The War Against Mrs. Hadley (1942) , for which
he won an Academy Award nomination for best original screen
play. For 20 years, these were all he wrote: a career as a
dramatist, for good or for bad, had been supplanted.
In his aptly entitled autobiography, The View from
the Sixties: Memories of a Spent Life (1966) , Oppenheimer
looks back on his screenwriting career with nostalgia, and
wonders "what would have happened if, some thirty-three
years ago, I had not defected to the West."36 To Oppen-
heimer's credit, he makes no attempt at all to blame the
city, the system, or abstract concepts for the essentially
unfertile (from a literary standpoint) years he spent writ
ing films; he very candidly admits that he rationally chose
Hollywood because, quite simply, it was attractive, lucra
tive, and he liked it. For writers like Oppenheimer (the
majority), there was no arm-twisting, no coercion; there was
no daily self-flagellation because they had betrayed their
own consciences. They might have felt guilty if they were
not writing up to their potential, but the pragmatists like
Oppenheimer (and especially the big guns like William Faulk
ner, as we will see later) never lost sight of the fact that
they could leave _if they wanted to. In the early years, at
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1 9 8
least, Oppenheimer1s decision was easily, happily arrived
at: "It did not take me long to decide. I was enjoying the
life; I wanted to continue writing; and here was an oppor
tunity to learn the motion picture business from all angles.
. . . I had decided to remain in Hollywood."37
There were times when he became disillusioned and
debated whether or not to return to another literary arena,
but he freely, clearly rejected other approaches for the
values he came to desire and appreciate:
I was now convinced that . . . I might as well go
back to New York and be at liberty there. I consoled
myself with the thought that in New York I would be free
of the grinding fear and petty tyrannies. I would
become a free-lance writer, do plays, stories and books.
For a moment it sounded wonderful. Then I realized that
to go back would be an admission of failure. In addi
tion I wanted Hollywood with all its rewards and its
forfeits, its comfortable living and its mental discom
fort. I was hooked.3B
Significantly, when Oppenheimer became disenchanted
with Hollywood (the most proximate reason being the tyranni
cal investigations of the industry by the Un-American Activ
ities Committee in the early 1950's), he left it. He had
this comment: "Graustark is no more, its towers razed by
reality. Yet, despite its fears and follies, I shall always
be grateful to Hollywood. It gave me enough money to escape
from it."39
There were further examples of dramatists who came
into the theater in the 1920's and 1930's with what appeared
to be genuine gifts and a powerful potential for literary
longevity. But they seemed to be unable to build on the
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1 9 9
success of their early work, and eventually they disappeared
from contact with the medium of their first endeavors. That
Hollywood should carry full weight of responsibility for
their premature eclipse is a matter of conjecture, because
in many instances screenwriting would occupy only a small
portion of their subsequent careers, leaving ample opportun
ity for literary development in other areas. Nevertheless,
Hollywood did play a part in the career patterns of Arthur
Richman, Gilbert Emery, John Wexley, George O'Neil, and
Bartlett Cormack.
Ambush by Arthur Richman and The Hero by Gilbert
Emery were both chosen as two of the best plays of the 1921-
1922 season. This was to be just about the apogee of
critical accomplishment for each man, for the freakishness
of the theatrical arena would cooperate in a spiral of
decline which would end in a darkness of anonymity even
beyond the refuge of Hollywood.
Richman did follow up Ambush with The Awful Truth
(1922) , a moderate success on Broadway, but the source for
the subsequent film classic directed by Leo McCarey in 1937.
He wrote The Far Cry (1924) and All Dressed Up (1925) . sus
taining his prolific rhythm, but his next two efforts were
failures: A Proud Woman (1926, 7 performances), Heavy
Traffic (1928, 61 performances).
Thus, whatever the reason, discouragement with the
theater or the imperative for bread on the table, Richman
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200
helped write the screenplay and the dialogue for the second,
sound version of his The Awful Truth (1929), this one
directed by Marshall Neilan. (The very first version had
been a silent film, directed by Paul Powell, made in 1925
without any involvement by Richman.) But until 1935 Rich
man 's address was Hollywood, which Nathan called "the great
Chloroformia art center," earning six rather non-descript
screen credits.
He was to write only one more play, The Season
Changes (1935), a fiasco which closed after 8 performances.
Richman faded from view; he died in 1944, at the age of 59.
Gilbert Emery, who wrote The Hero, was previously
better known by his real name, Emery Pottle, by which he
issued a series of short stories. The play was an over
whelming critical success, if not a popular one, and tells
the story of two brothers— one a fighting hero, but a moral
degenerate, the other a plodding, mediocre type who, with
unconscious heroism, meets the everyday problems thrust upon
him and solves them to the best of his limited ability.
The Hero was Emery's first play; with his second,
Tarnish (1923) , he equalled the best play status of his
initial effort. Burns Mantle wrote that Tarnish "achieves
theatrical effectiveness without sacrifice of those funda
mental truths of character lacking which the best of drama
is but extravagant fiction told in dialogue."1 *0 From the
level of these early triumphs, the convolutions of his
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201
future plays carried him downward. Episode (1926) led to
Housewarming (1932) and Far-Away Horses (1933), terrible
defeats at the box-office of only four performances each.
Understandable exercising one of the few alternatives of the
moribund playwright in the 1930's, Emery went to Hollywood.
He has one screen credit: Gallant Lady (1934) . He
was never heard from again on either screen or stage, but in
light of his very brief residency in the movie capital, it
seems unlikely that his evanescence can be imputed to Holly
wood. Emery's literary talents of such early, bright light
faded into a glum, disconcerting, but probably nameless,
shadow.
John Wexley is noted for his treatment of social
problems on the stage. His first and best-known play, The
Last Mile (1930) , a strong plea for prison reform, was a
tragedy so tense, so stripped of theatrical artificialities,
and emotionally so moving that even calloused critics
admitted its disturbing and unsettling effect.41 It was
picked as one of the season's ten best, an accolade which,
after Steel (19 31), was repeated for They Shall Mot Die
(19 34). This latter play was deemed best of the three
propaganda plays produced during 1933-193 4 season (the
others as we have seen were George Sklar and Ablert Maltz's
Peace on Earth, a protest against war, and Sklar and Paul
Peter's Stevedore, an expos£ of a dock laborers' strike in
New Orleans). Wexley in his plays is utterly partisan and
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202
tendentious, which is characteristic of the so-called "Marx
ist" school of playwrights, but the very earnestness with
which he supports his convictions makes for exciting drama.
Hollywood, of course, continued its policy of
recruiting the latest hit dramatists, and in 1935 Wexley
found himself collaborating on his first film. That Wexley
should decide to make the trip to the big money/entertain
ment kingdom of Hollywood in light of the avowed Marxist
bias in his plays (and much to the ironic cynicism of George
Jean Nathan) is understandable; for, in spite of the criti
cal reception of They Shall Not Die, it ran for only 62 per
formances, and Steel before that was capsized after 14.
Even Marxists have to eat.
Wexley never returned to the stage again, but the
films that he wrote turned out to be, in large measure,
entertaining embodiments of the social consciousness he
exhibited on the stage: The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse
(1938), a curiously pleasant mixture of sociology and crim
inology, with Edward G. Robinson conducting scientific
research among the underworld; Angels with Dirty Faces
(1938), a sequel to Sidney Kingsley's Dead End, with a
lesser, but nevertheless pointed, focus on juvenile prob
lems in an urban environment; Confessions of a Nazi Spy
(1939), the first, controversial, semi-documentary treatment
of Nazi subversion in the United States; Hangmen Also Die
(1943), a topical war comment on the barbaric razing of
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2 0 3
Lidice, Czechoslovakia by the Nazis. (Wexley, who spoke
perfect German, worked with Bertolt Brecht and Fritz Lang on
the script.) Wexley also conceived and adapted one of the
best tough-guy melodramas in the post-war period: Cornered
(1946).
Neither George O'Neil nor Bartlett Cormack had a
prolific Broadway period, O'Neil writing two plays, Cormack
only one. What they did write, however, seemed to suggest
that there would be fecund dramatic careers for both. This
would never come to pass.
Bartlett Cormack was a Chicago newspaperman, and he
wrote The Racket (1927) , picked as one of the ten top plays
of the season, the year following Maurine Watkins' Chicago;
both drew their themes and characterizations from the then
notorious Chicago underworld scene. It received enthusias
tic adulation from both the public and the press. These
were impeccable credentials for the transition from New York
to Hollywood, and Cormack was soon at work adapting his play
to the screen. The screen version appeared the next year,
directed by Lewis Milestone. Broadway observers saw that
Cormack was caught in "the quicksands of Hollywood."
Cormack began a moderately long (12 years) and var
ied screenwriting period. Paramount wisely pitched to his
strength by having him do the screenplay for an early sound
feature, Gentlemen of the Press (192 9)— his The Racket drew
heavily on newspaper types and a specialized argot. His
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j ........................ ' ." .' . 204
dialogue for two movie adaptations of the S. S. Van Dine !
mystery novels, The Greene Murder Case (1929) and The Benson
Murder Case (1930), was the best thing about these otherwise
static films. His best films were probably the 1930-Gary j
Cooper version of The Spoilers; Cleopatra (1934), the
Cecil B. De Mille epic which has a surprising contemporane
ity about it; Fury (1936), an important film directed by
Fritz Lang which is a piercing document about mob rule.
Cormack disappeared after 1941.
George O'Neil departed for Hollywood in 1933, a. ter
his fascinating and compelling chronicle of three genera
tions of familial decadence, American Dream (1933), met with
favorable critical, but tepid audience response. He wrote
but eight films, the highlights perhaps being Magnificent
Obsession (1935) and Intermezzo (1939) , and was never heard ;
from again. It is disillusioning and perhaps a bit melan
choly to observe that the talents of O'Neil, like so many of
the other "minor" writers, failed to come to fruition in
either his native or adopted medium.
The American theater in the 1920's and 1930's was
such a rich arena for the generation of new talent, there !
were so many new writers of incipient artistry coming to
note, that any siphoning of the stock by Hollywood was
looked on as brutish destruction of potential genius. The j
writers discussed above form an initial list of this sort,
but there were others. The following are playwrights, all j
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i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ' .' .2 0 5;
Of whom eventually wound up in Hollywood, who triggered ini-j
tial raves of greatness from the critics (on the basis of j
their first play), but who faltered significantly with sub- :
Sequent efforts: Robert Ardrey, who was never able to equal
the critical success of his Star-Spangled (1935); Leopold
Atlas, whose Wednesday1s ChiId was one of the ten best of
1933, but who wrote nothing to compare with it since; Alan
Scott, who was unable to follow up Goodbye Again (1932);
Rachel Barton Butler, who wrote the best comedy of 1920,
Mamma's Affair, and never wrote another play; Harry Wagstaff
Gribble, who peaked early with March Hares (1921) and went
in a downward curve thereafter.
But lest this detumescence be ritualistically
attributed to Hollywood in every instance, it is necessary
to cite cases of subsequent failure in the theater when
Hollywood was not involved in any way: Robert Turney, who
failed to live up to the expectation generated by Daughters j
of Atreus (1936); Sophie Treadwell, writing the estimable
Machinal (1928), but nothing substantial from that point on;
Frederick Ballard, who in Young America (1915) suggested an
interesting future, but who had no future of note; Hugh
Stange, who promised so much with Veneer (1929), but sub
sided to a mediocre pattern; other dramatists who managed to
comple the imaginations of the critics with a beginning
work, but were decidedly pedestrian with ensuing efforts— i
William Jourdan Rapp, Daniel Rubin, Albert Bein, Mary Ken
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2 0 6
nedy, Rita Wellman, Julian Thompson. This seems to be a
phenomenon which is true even of the contemporary theater:
Edward Albee, as just one example of a modern playwright
completely outside Hollywood's sphere of influence, produced
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, one of the most important
plays in the last quarter-century of American drama, but has
been unable to even approach its power, emotional intensity,
or literateness in any work he has written since.
The ability to write one good play (or one literary
work, whatever the genre) demands talent. But the ability
to'write two, it seems, demands genius. After all, what are
the implications of the expression "playwrights with prom
ise?" Is "promise" a tangible commodity which Hollywood can
consume, leaving the writer bereft of hope, artistic skill,
or moral certitude? Should Hollywood always pick up the tab
for one-shot scriveners, who expended all their potential on
their first effort and then got out because they knew that
is all they had in them? Maybe the failure of playwrights
of "promise" has been too often cavalierly ascribed to
Hollywood, when, more often than not, Hollywood has repre
sented a salvational outlet for writers who would have been
too quickly exposed as theatrical misfits, if they had
remained in their original medium. It seems to be a vagary
of artistic undertaking that the earliest plays (or other
literary works) of men who finally amount to something often
show no promise at all, or at best very little. It is com
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monly the eventual second-rater whose first efforts suggest
whirlwind potentialities. Neither August Strindberg with
his The Wanderer nor Bjornstjerne Bjornson with his Between
the Battles were heralded as writers of genius when these
early works appeared. Dora Kremer by Hermann Heijermans
gave no clue to his later position, and Ibsen was so embar
rassed by his early Katilina that he issued it under a
pseudonym. Racine's earliest work, Amasie, is reputed to be
a terrible play, and Aetnaeans by Aeschylus is considered
the nadir of his dramatic output. In the twentieth century,
Eugene O'Neill's very earliest plays give very'little indi
cation of the heights he was to achieve later.1 *2 Hollywood
in the 1930's took and fed and paid outlandish amounts of
money to second-raters in the theater; many or most never
wrote for the theater in the same way again. Hollywood in
the 1930's also took and paid outlandish amounts of money to
the top-raters, the cream of the Broadway dramatists; they
survived.
Harold Clurman, one of the founders of the influen
tial Group Theatre (1931-1941) , gave a very lucid outline of
the situation of the dramatist in Hollywood, of the atti
tudes and the alternatives which he must consider in order
to come to terms with his art. He had brought the numbers
of his Group Theatre to Hollywood to work in pictures, but
after brief period of employment on different projects he
decided to go back to the New York stage. On the eve of his
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208
departure he spoke to a meeting of playwrights, numerous men
of different tastes and visions who had previously departed
theater for film. His remarks are rational and cogent:
"Like most theatre people . . . we in the Group the
atre have had a hard time making things go smoothly. It
would be much easier for all of us therefore to continue
here in pictures. But we want to go back to resume our
work in the theatre. We don't suffer here, we don't
feel the work here beneath our dignity, and we find as
many people to like out here as elsewhere. We think the
technique of pictures is interesting, and we know that
much can be learned from it. Yet we want to go back to
our theatre. We don't expect to make as much money as
we have made here, though we have nothing against making
as much as possible. Perhaps none of you can make quite
so much money in the theatre as you are making here.
Your writing for pictures, we find, is clever, expert,
and sometimes on a level that is not necessarily beneath
what you have written thus far for the stage. Honestly,
if you are satisfied with what you are doing now— and
from quite a number of standpoints there is no reason
why you shouldn't be— forget the theatre. . . .
"But if you feel there is something more, something
beyond, something essentially different that you want to
say . . .If you feel that not enough of your imagina
tion, invention, thought, or sentiments is being used in
pictures, you must write for the theatre."43
And then Clurman touches on the vital point to be considered
in any investigation into the probity of a writer's decision
to stay or not to stay in Hollywood--the individual's own
will and artistic sincerity.
"If your need is as strong in you as it has proved to be
in us, Hollywood will not tempt you; you will have to
return to work ever more actively in theatres of your
own choice."44
Clurman felt that a choice had to be made between either
writing for motion pictures or writing for the stage.
The superior dramatist could do both.
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2 0 9
Dramatists Who Took Periodic Employment
in Hollywood— Continued to Write
Subsequent Works of Their Own
For an initial indication that the major American
dramatists were generally unaffected by their periodic
involvements in Hollywood, we can look to the Pulitzer Prize
winners. Of the 39 Pulitzer Prizes awarded for Drama from
1917 to 1960 (no awards were given in 1918, 1941, 1943,
1946, 1950), 26 were won by writers who had various commit
ments to Hollywood screenwriting, and 16 of the awards were
clearly earned in periods which occurred after the individ
ual authors had spent time in the studios. The following is
the list of the award-winning dramatists and their plays,
with each post-Hollywood play marked with an asterisk (*):
Owen Davis: Icebound (1922)
Sidney Howard: They Knew What They Wanted (1924)
George Kelly: Craig1s Wife (1925)
Paul Green: In Abraham's Bosom (1926)
Elmer Rice: Street Scene* (1928)
Marc Connelly: The Green Pastures* (1929)
George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind: Of Thee I Sing
(Ira and George Gershwin) ("1931)
Maxwell Anderson: Both Your Houses* (1932)
Sidney Kingsley: Men in White (1933)
Zoe Akins: The Old Maid* (1934)
Robert E. Sherwood: Idiot's Delight* (1935)
Abe Lincoln in Illinois* (193 8)
There Shall Be No Night* (1940)
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210
Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman: You Can't Take It
With You* (1936)
Thornton Wilder: Our Town* (1937)
The Skin of Our Teeth* (1942)
William Saroyan: The Time of Your Life (1939)
Mary Chase: Harvey (1944)
Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse: State of the Union*
(T945)
Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof* (19 54)
William Inge: Picnic (1952)
John Patrick: The Teahouse of the August Moon* (1953)
Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett: The Diary of Ann
Frank* (1955)
Ketti Frings: Look Homeward, Angel* (1957)
George Abbott: Fiorello1 * (1959)
(Jerome Weidman,
Sheldon Harnick,
and jerry Bock)
These and several other dramatists of superior sta
ture demonstrate that Hollywood, or any other economic or
psychological diversion, need not deleteriously affect an
author!s artistic strength or potential— if that individual
writer is indeed committed to ultimate literary goals. The
following are dramatists of such literary integrity and
fortitude.
There existed, during the theatre season of 1935-
1936, a fear that the playwriting world had lost dramatist
Clifford Odets. He had, following the failure of Paradise
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211
Lost (1935), gone a little poutily to Hollywood and worked
on the screenplay for The General Died at Dawn (1936) with
enthusiasm. Back came reports that Odets was bad-mouthing
the stage, and there were indications that he was quite
through with Broadway and glad of it. George Kaufman and
Edna Ferber drew from the situation and slyly inserted a
radical playwright in Stage Door (19 36) who gave up his art
in a fit of pique and went Hollywood in a big way, return
ing East later in white tie and tails, brandishing scads of
money and flaunting a deep disgust of the idealists who
formerly were his pals.^
It was, of course, a personality sketch exaggerated
for its satiric value and in truth did not represent the
real Odets, save in the superficial sense that he frankly
turned to pictures for the capital necessary for his inde
pendent writing. Odets' main problem has been to live up
to the triumph of his early works. When he exploded onto
Broadway with Waiting for Lefty (1935) and Awake and Sing
(19 35), the description he was generally accorded was "the
most promising young American playwright." Ironically,
when he died almost three decades and many plays later, the
description had scarcely changed. The assessment in his
New York Times obituary was typical:
His failure to outgrow the adjective "promising" was
a constant source of chagrin to the writer. Subjected
for years to much harsh criticism from many friends as a
classic case of the artist who had "sold out" to Holly
wood, Mr. Odets periodically rebelled against his repu
tation. Scarcely a year went by without a promise of a
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212
new play, a new Broadway repertory company, a new film
that he would make his "personal" contribution to the
artistically developing movie industry.1+6
When the press reception to Paradise Lost waxed dis
appointment that it was less neat than Awake and Sing and
less bold than Waiting for Lefty, Odets wrote a rather
amusing and naive biographical piece:
The young writer comes out of obscurity with a play or
two. Suppose he won't accept the generous movie offers.
Why, that means he's holding out for more. Suppose he
accepts— an ingrate, rat/ renegade. If he won't wear
evening clothes, that's only because he's trying to be
different. But when he wears them, you may be sure he's
turned capitalist overnight.
If he's written two plays about the same kind of
people, everyone knows that that's all he can write
about. But when he writes about a different class, he
is told to go back where he came from and stick to his
cast (or caste).
He gets party invitations and when he won't accept,
he's too serious. But when you see him at a party or a
bar, you knew all the time he was a playboy.
Suppose he rapidly follows one play with another,
why he's writing "quickies"! But if they come further
apart, it is a sure sign he's already written out.
If the reviewers praise him Tuesday, it's only
because they're gentle, quixotic fellows. But watch
them tear him apart on Wednesday! . . . The young writer
is now ready for a world cruise!47
Odets was ready for a world cruise. For a New York
playwright this means almost inevitably Hollywood. Odets
has unashamedly admitted on several occasions that money is
an imperative that the playwright has a difficult time deny
ing: "Considering that the writer of plays is so underpaid,
is there any wonder that there aren't 10 successful drama
tists in the country? And if they don't come to Hollywood
and settle down to making good movies and a good living they
are likely to starve to death— if the critics don't kill 'em
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2 1 3
first!"1+8 "I never made a living out of the theatre. A
playwright can spend six to eight months writing a play,
then make about six weeks salary. Of 13 plays I have writ
ten, I made a living out of two. Golden Boy and Country
Girl."49
Hollywood was a way out of the economic wilderness,
and Harold Clurman thinks that for Odets at this time Holly
wood represented Sin: "Odets would never reach any maturity
as a person until he had exercised his right to sin; and
eitner survived or succumbed to [Hollywood's] effects."50
But Newsweek's incredibly short and callous obituary did not
find Odets on the survivors' list. It dismisses his later
career with a terse: he had "his stature stunted in Holly
wood." 51
This, I think, is a fallacious contention which does
considerable disservice to the substantial contributions
which Odets has made to the American theater. Odets spent
his whole life trying to duplicate in the critics' eyes the
merits of his first two works. Awake and Sing is perhaps
his greatest play, but The Country Girl and The Big Knife
have universal dimension which transcend the rather circum
scribed arena of even this superb effort. And Waiting for
Lefty, which was always thrown up to Odets as a water mark
which he never touched again, is in fact too violently pro
pagandists to have much lasting value; his amazing gift for
dialogue was to be much more fully developed in later plays.
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2 1 4
There is a deep, distinctive maturity in the plays
of Odets, which persistently reiterate the clash between art
(the honesty, sensitivity, and truth of the human spirit)
and Philistinism (the atrophy of creative energy, the com
mercialism and perversion of creative enterprise). In Gold-
en Boy Joe Bonaparte gives up fine potential as a concert
violinist for the quick money (and a Duesenberg automobile,
a symbol of his affluence, which eventually destroys him) of
prize fighting. For Odets this concession to capitalism,
the withering of talent, will always lead to destruction (as
it does for Charlie^Castle in The Big Knife).
The figure of Charlie Castle is Odets' perception of
the artist who sold his soul to Hollywood, and The Big Knife
(1948) is his statement on the rapacious Hollywood system,
and his theme goes on:
Isn't every human being a mechanism to them? Don't they
slowly, inch by inch, murder everyone they use? Don't
they murder the highest dreams and hopes of a whole
great people with the movies they make? This whole
movie thing is a murder of the people. Only we hit them
on the heads, under hair— nobody sees the marks.52
And the washed-up actor in The Country Girl (1950) completes
the picture. Again we have portraiture of a man of formerly
great theatrical talent, now dissipated by weakness and al
coholism. Significantly, this has a happy ending, breaking
with the despair and disillusion of Golden Boy and The Big
Knife, and Odets seems to be saying that rejuvenation is
possible with personal commitment and the love and concern
of friends. Such was Odets' own struggle with critical
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2 1 5
myopia and the questionable possibility of self-fulfillment,
his personal battle with the mindless, pernicious elements
which posed a threat to his own humanity. As Harold Clurman
wrote, in an elegiac piece in the New York Times; "Most of
Odets' work was a confession. He told us of his anguish at
sharing those values in our civilization that he despised.
He begged for protection from the contaminations against
which he always raged and which he realized infected him."53
His film work forms an interesting if uneven pat
tern. Most of the time he was a highly-paid ghost writer,
acting as an uncredited rewrite man polishing other writers'
scripts. The credits he did take vary from the effective
None But the Lonely Heart (1944), which he also directed;
the pungent Deadline at Dawn (1946), directed by his Group
Theatre mentor, Harold Clurman ("there, in the middle of all
the fakery, was Susan Hayward, pure Brooklyn and pure Holly
wood, and infinitely more real and lasting than the WPA"54);
and the bitter and witty Sweet Smell of Success (1957): to
an entertaining potboiler such as Humoresque (1946), which
reflects Odets' flair for dialogue; to the rather dismal The
Story on Page One (1960), another directorial effort; and
Wild in the Country (1961), an Elvis Presley vehicle which
swings Odets' proletarian focus full circle.
Although Odets did not manage to please his critics
to their total satisfaction with his post-Lefty dramatic
pieces, he did write. He balanced the Hollywood films with
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2 1 6
the following plays: I Can't Sleep (1936), Golden Boy
(1937), Night Music (1940), Clash by Night (1941), The Big
Knife (1948), The Country Girl (1950), The Flowering Peach
(1954). And, the critics notwithstanding, the plays do form
a compelling mosaic of man's struggle with his own inherent
weakness: introspective blood and fire of persuasive drama
tic intensity, and the ultimate affirmation of human poten
tial, which will not be gainsaid by captious critics. Clur
man pinpoints this vital quality in Odets: "Stronger than
the sound of tormen't that rose from his clash by night was
the urgency of hope, a belief in ultimate salvation, a
desperately noble affirmation of what was purest in himself
and the exalted ideals of his race and his country. Here we
find the source of Odets1 importance. His work reflected
not only his own faltering but the time and place with which
he struggled.1,55
It seems somehow superfluous and a bit naive to
assert the literary credentials and viability of some of the
best dramatists America has produced. But because writers
of even the caliber of Maxwell Anderson, Robert E. Sherwood,
Lillian Heilman, Sidney Howard, S. N. Behrman, Marc Con
nelly, et al., went to Hollywood on various occasions, the
danger of "infection or contamination" could be predicated
by the elitists. In most instances we can allay the anxiety
of these purists by simple scrutiny of a writer's dramatic
and cinematic work, a citation of the plays and films he
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2 1 7
wrote which document a consistent, commendable creative
fertility.
While working on the New York World Maxwell Anderson
met another Eastern screenwriter, Laurence Stallings (pre
viously discussed), with whom he collaborated successfully
on a number of plays.
What Price Glory? (1924) brought fame to Anderson
and Stallings; a play about World War I, its outspoken lan
guage and realistic war scenes established it as a landmark
in drama history— the first modern play to apply realistic
techniques to war. His contribution to this play would make
Anderson the logical choice to do the screenplay and dia
logue (along with another imported playwright/producer,
George Abbott) for one of the most effective anti-war films
ever made, the still contemporary All Quiet on the Western
Front (1930). It was Anderson's first film.
With Elizabeth the Queen (1930) Anderson hit his
stride in the historical play, and for the first time made a
modern play in blank verse commercially successful. The
special quality of this drama is the vitality given to his
torical characters through the emphasis on their emotional
inwardness and the use of highly expressive language.
Anderson next turned to political satire. Both Your
Houses (1933) is a barbed attack on bungling, dishonest con
gressmen. An idealistic newcomer to Congress tries to
defeat an unsound appropriations bill by loading it with
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2 1 8
fantastic riders, but to his consternation the bill passes.
The play was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. In Mary of Scotland
(1933) the struggle between Catholic Mary and imperious,
Protestant Elizabeth is powerfully drawn, with sympathy for
the sweet-tempered Mary, who is vilified and betrayed by the
scheming Elizabeth. The ennoblement of character, so essen
tial to tragedy in Anderson's view (as set forth in his sys
tematic theory of drama, The Essence of Tragedy, 1935), is
clearly presented in Mary's deeply moral faith. His basic
tenet of moral excellence would become the fulcrum of his
screenplay for Joan of Arc (1948) , the film version of his
play Joan of Lorraine (1946).
One of Anderson's most notable achievements, Winter-
set (1935), is a tragedy in verse which used as background
the Sacco-Vanzetti case. The central character, the son of
a man put to death for another's crime, seeks to clear his
father's name and wreak vengeance upon the actual murderers.
The verse of the play is modern in diction and rhythm yet
retains in its highest moments great power.
During this perhaps richest period of Anderson's
play production (1930-1935), he was writing the following
films: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Rain and
Washington Merry-Go-Round (both 1932) , Death Takes a Holiday
and We Live Again (both 1934), So Red the Rose (1935).
He was not to write another film until Joan of Arc
(19 4 8), but in the interim there was no curtailment of his
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2 1 9
playwriting: Wingless Victory (1936), The Masque of Kings
(1936) , The Star Wagon (193 7) , High Tor (1937), Knicker
bocker Holiday (1938).
Key Largo (1939) is one of Anderson's most searching
plays in its probing of the bases of man's ethical faith.
It set its theme against the Spanish Civil War. The World
War II period stimulated his Candle in the Wind (1941), The
Eve of St. Mark (1942), Storm Operation (1944).
This substantial and diversified output is hardly
the product of a writer who had his faculties stunted by
Hollywood. Truckline Cafe (19 46) was followed by Joan of
Lorraine (1946); another historical play, Anne of the Thou
sand Days (19 48), which presents Henry VIII in a more favor
able light than most previous interpretations, was well
received. Lost in the Stars (1949) was an effective drama
tization of Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country, with a
musical score by Kurt Weill. Next came a play on Socrates,
Barefoot in Athens (1951). Anderson's last play, The Bad
Seed (1955), is a tensely psychological study of evil in the
character of a child.
Anderson was again an astute choice as screenwriter
for a film dealing with guilt and justice and the ultimate
vindication of ethical truth. He wrote the screenplay56 for
Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong-Man (1957) , which was based on
his "The True Story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero." It
was a powerfully moving conclusion to a moderate filmogra
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220
phy, punctuated over the years by extraordinarily signifi
cant dramatic theater, the quality and stature of which, it
seems clear, was totally without negative influence from his
Hollywood projects.
Before Robert E. Sherwood became a four-time Pulitz
er Prize winner for drama and biography (Roosevelt and Hop
kins , 1948), he was movie critic for Life5 7 (1921-1928),
Photoplay, Movie Weekly, The New York Herald (1922-1924),
and McCall1s (1926-1932) . (Fortunately— since he sometimes
had to review the same picture five times— he had a sturdy
talent for finding fresh phrases for identical opinions.)
His film criticism manifested a stylish, though
slightly acerbic, humor which infiltrates much of his writ
ing— from his apprentice work as glib rewrite man at Vanity
Fair, through such charming plays as The Road to Rome
(1927), Reunion in Vienna (1931), Idiot's Delight (1936),
Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938). Sherwood's style was per
fectly suited for the old humorous weekly Life, whose tone
was pleasant, civilized, leisurely, at once sentimental and
mocking— America's Punch.
Toward the end of his film critic tenure at Life,
Sherwood reviewed Robert Benchley's The Sex Life of the
Polyp (August 16, 1928) and registered some apprehension
about Benchley's involvement with Hollywood: "I hope the
money and fame won't go to his head. There are plenty of
good actors in this world, but all too few good dramatic
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221
critics." Sherwood was again cynically taking note— as he
had specifically with Edward Knoblock and Dorothy Parker—
of the sound-era phenomenon of Hollywood's massive employ
ment of established literary figures. But, ironically,
Sherwood himself (like other critics who made the trip:
such as Clayton Hamilton, Louis Sherman, Charles Brackett,
Frank Nugent) would spend several screenwriting stints in
Hollywood during the ensuing years. Unlike Benchley, Park
er, and other of his Algonquin "Round Table" cronies, he
would suffer no impairment of his independent writing
career.
During these screenwriting days (off and on 1926-
1953) he was not always happy with the Hollywood environ
ment: "We'll be glad to get out of this place," he wrote to
his mother. "The people are very nice and the work is
interesting, but there's a horrible pall of boredom hanging
over everything. The stench of stagnation assails the nos
trils. It may be ideal for the natives, but it's no place
for a white man." Writing to Kyle Crichton at Scribner's,
he said: "The industry, by the way, doesn't seem to me to
be half so insane as it was in the old De Mille days. The
people here are for the most part very good company, and the
literacy rate is going up all the time. But the place it
self— and by that I mean California--is deadly dull." Nor
was he always able to rationalize the strictures of studio
employment: "I frequently long for the good old days when I
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222
was an unshackled critic of the cinema, instead of the hire
ling, as I'd like to disgorge a number of embarrassing
views,"s 8
Nevertheless, the films he wrote complemented nicely
the vigorous talents of dramatist and critic, bore witness
to his maturing personality, and reflected the literary
icons of his earlier work. The humorous strain which was
evident in all his endeavors continued to manifest itself in
Roman Scandals (1933, written with George S. Kaufman), The
Scarlet Pimpernel (1935), The Ghost Goes West (1936,
directed by Rene Clair) , his own Idiot's Delight (1939) , and
The Bishop's Wife (1947) .
He outlined one of his working tenets for film when
he was a critic: "size and romance are distinct assets
. . . the big picture has all the advantage over the little
one, especially if it goes back into history to find a theme
and a background',1 • (Life, December 28, 1922). This concept
found fruition in many of his plays, and his films reflected
this interest as well. His work on the scripts of Rasputin
and the Empress (1932) , Rembrandt (1936) , Conquest (1937) ,
and Marie Antoinette (193 8), and his screenplays for The
Adventures of Marco Polo (1938) and his own Abe Lincoln in
Illinois (1940) all framed their stories in historical
periods. When Sherwood handed John Barrymore his screen
adaptation of his play Reunion in Vienna, an affectionate
glimpse at fallen aristocrats, filmed in 1933, Barrymore was
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223
delighted: "Why, that character is autobiographical! A
crazy, conceited, arrogant, offensive egotist— flaunting
himself about, hogging the center of every stage, devising
magnificent exits for himself— why, that's me!"59
It was with his screenplays for Rebecca (1940) and
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) that Sherwood was most
compatible with the filmic qualities which involved him as
critic: cinema which was literate, intelligent, unselfcon
sciously honest.
In a moment of despair over Hollywood, recorded in
an article called "The Blessed and the Cursed," Sherwood
wrote: "I'm sure that Omar Khayyam would have loved Holly
wood, and that, had he lived there, he would have left
behind him no compositions that an Edward Fitzgerald would
have bothered to translate."60 Sherwood was not speaking
autobiographically. He had dealt with Hollywood on many
levels, and had left a body of film literature— criticism
and screenplays— that not only would have engaged the tal
ents of an Edward Fitzgerald, but would have excited, grati
fied, humbled them as well.
As indicated earlier, Zoe Akins has taken quite a
beating from George Jean Nathan, as he persistently com
mented on "Hollywood's influence upon what was once one of
the likely talents in our theatre." Observing in 1936 the
stage works which Akins had produced since beginning peri
odic screenwriting in 1930, Nathan bristled:
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What Hollywood has done in Miss Akins' case is to exag
gerate all her worst faults and diminish to the vanish
ing point her quondam virtues. It is true that, even
before she went Hollywood, a kind of gold swimming pool
quality infected her writing, but the gold swimming pool
is now found to be overflowing with mush.61
But Nathan has never been philosophically in sympathy with
the light comedy or the comedy of manners as ultimately sus
taining the levels of art. ("That is the threatening weak
ness of our immediate American theatre."62) Thus, he was as
much disturbed by Akins' ideological shift in focus— from
plays which were somewhat too serious and not as profound as
she wished them to be, to those of frothier themes— as he
was in the natural extension of this policy: a trip to
Hollywood. Nathan was complaining about her loss of integ
rity as early as 1921? Hollywood allowed his vituperation to
make an easy transference.
From her former "serious" period, Declassde (1919)
depicts the decline of an English peeress from a secure
position in England to a dubious one in this country, and
won for Akins her first great success. Later, to Nathan's
dismay, she turned to light romantic comedies, and did some
of her best work in plays like The Varying Shore (1921), The
Texas Nightingale (1922) , A Royal Fandango (1923) .
In its review of Girls About Town (1931), a film
directed by George Cukor, Variety said, "Maybe Par shoved
this out to beat UA's Greeks Had a Word for It to the market
post."63 The Greeks Had a Word for It (1932) and the orig
inal story for Girls About Town were both written by Zoe
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Akins and both involve gold diggers. Akins, whose play, The
Furies (1927), had been directed by Cukor, would write four
scripts for him: Girls About Town, Camille (1937), Zaza
(1938), Desire Me (1947). Akins began working in films in
1930, and she was a specialist in the woman's film. As
absurd as these films seem today, within the context of
their time they were an impassioned portrayal of the emanci
pated woman. In this mode was the smoothly produced Chris
topher Strong (193 3), written by Akins and directed by the
first noted woman in this capacity, Dorothy Arzner. The
film was a rather stylish and polished study of independent
Katharine Hepburn, an aviatrix who is in love with married
Colin Clive.
The major period of her Hollywood involvement was
1930-1938 (13 film credits), and she receives only one
credit after that (Desire Me, 1947). Thus, as with so many
other of the Eastern writers, Akins committed herself to an
intensified span of participation in screenwriting (which
came after a similar flurry of activity in the theater), for
which she sincerely, honestly conditioned her dramatic
talents for specialized cinematic use, and then withdrew to
a reassertion of vigor in her original medium. But while
she participated, Hollywood seemed to her as a worthy exten
sion and recipient of her effort and sensibilities, and was
rather disdainful of those whose motives were exclusively
financial: "Anyone who goes to Hollywood simply for the
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226
money to be got out of it and not with a great faith and
pride and artistic belief in writing for the pictures should
be allowed no place there."64
The Old Maid (1935), Zoe Akins' dramatization of the
novelette by Edith Wharton, was produced during the heart of
her Hollywood years, and, almost in stentorian rebuttal to
Nathan and others, won a Pulitzer Prize. During these years
she also wrote such plays as 0 Evening Star (1936), The
Happy Days (1941), and Mrs. January and Mr. Ex (1944), which
even the vindictive Nathan conceded "a generally amusing and
often drolly conceived little play."65 And all this was
interwoven with film work, including her noteworthy script
for Camille (1937), perhaps Garbo's most famous film. The
screenplay, which Cukor credits almost entirely to Akins, is
well-constructed and smooth, particularly successful in
creating a period dialogue that does not jar.56
Akins' reputation as a skillful portrayer of social
milieu in her plays and films is ultimately sustained, and
she remained productive in later years. She wrote verse, a
novel, Forever Young (1941), and two ensuing plays, Another
Darling and The Swallow's Nest (both 19 50).
In order to illustrate the endurance of other Pul
itzer Prize-winning dramatists, we can present the following
configurations of creative effort in both stage and film.
Moss Hart said of himself that he had "the soul of a
beachcomber" and left to himself would not write another
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line.67 But what he wrote, especially in combination with
George S. Kaufman, is one of the wittiest and most effective
series of plays ever to appear on the American stage. The
following pattern indicates that his screenwriting in Holly
wood was not incompatible with his dramatic writing.
REPRESENTATIVE FILMS
Flesh (1932)
The Masquerader (1933)
The Broadway Melody of 1936
(T93F)
Frankie and Johnnie (1936)
Winged Victory (1944)
Gentlemen1s Agreement (19 47)
Kans Christian Anderson (1952)
A Star Is Born (1954)
Prince of Players (1954)
REPRESENTATIVE PLAYS
Once In a Lifetime (1930)
Face the Music (1933)
Merrily We Roll Along (1934)
You Can't Take It with You
(1936; Pulitzer Prize,
1937)
I'd Rather Be Right (1937)
The American Way (1939)
The Man Who Came to Dinner
(1939')“
George Washington Slept Here
(1940)
Winged Victory (1943)
Light Up the Sky (1948)
The Climate of Eden (1952)
He won the Antoinette Perry Award for his direction
of the musical My Fair Lady; his autobiography, Act One,
became a best seller in 1959.
Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich [Hackett] were a
screenwriting/playwriting team who were good friends of F.
Scott Fitzgerald, when they were all under contract to
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the late 1930's. Fitzgerald incorpo-
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22 8
rated them into The Last Tycoon, under the guise of the
Tarletons, who become shocked at the concept of multiple
authorship of a film: "'these tarletons are a husband and
wife team from the East— pretty good playwrights. They've
just found out they're not alone on the story and it shocks
them— shocks their sense of unity— that's the word they'll
use.'
'But what does make the — the unity?' . . .
'I'm the unity,' [Stahr] said."58
The joint efforts of the Hacketts resulted in a
series of successful plays and movies. Their most notable
films included The Thin Man (1934), Ah, Wilderness I (1935) ,
Lady in the Dark (1944) , It's a Wonderful Life (1946) ,
Father of the Bride (1950), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
(195 4) . They managed to keep close contact with the stage
with Up Pops the Devil (1931), Bridal Wise (1932), The Great
Big Doorstep (1942). It all culminated with The Diary of
Anne Frank (1956), a play which was the result of two years
of research and writing, which received a Pulitzer Prize,
the New York Drama Critics Award, and the Antoinette Perry
Award. George Stevens made a filmed version with their
screenplay.
John Patrick's first play, Hell Freezes Over, was
produced on Broadway in 1935, and was brought to Hollywood
soon after. His wartime experiences provided the background
for The Hasty Heart (19 45) , a play which followed a series
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229
of motion picture scripts. The Teahouse of the August Moon
(1953) was a comedy which dealt with the adventures of a
group of American soldiers in Okinawa during the Occupation;
it was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and
the Pulitzer Prize. The quality of his film writing
actually increased during this period of heightened critical
recognition in the theatrical world. He wrote a series of
consistently successful screenplays: Three Coins in the
Fountain (1954) , Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (1955) ,
High Society (1956), Les Girls (1957), Some Came Running
(1958) , The World of Suzie Wong (1960) .
It is tempting to say in the instance of dramatist
Samson Raphaelson that his greatest contribution to the
artistic arena is his film work, as he is one of the most
accomplished screenwriters of the sound era— except for the
fact that his plays have enjoyed an almost equally positive
critical response. His stage comedies Accent On Youth
(1934) and Skylark (1939) were selected as among the best of
their respective seasons. A writer of impressive scope and
versatility, Raphaelson has produced superb comedy and drama
in his screenplays with almost interchangeable virtuosity.
An overview of his film and stage work reveals an almost
unparalleled breadth; his film credits, at least, represent
a model of achievement virtually unmatched by any other
Eastern writer in Hollywood.
Raphaelson was director Ernst Lubitsch's favorite
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screen writer during his American sound film period, with
whom he made eight pictures: The Smiling Lieutenant (1931),
The Man I Killed (1932), One Hour with You (1932), Trouble
in Paradise (1932) , The Merry Widow (1934), The Shop Around
the Corner (1940) , Heaven Can Wait (1943) , Angel (1937),
plus a ninth, That Lady in Ermine (1948), which Raphaelson
completed just before the director's last illness. Three—
Trouble in Paradise, The Shop Around the Corner, and Heaven
Can Wait— the director counted among his major productions,
especially the first two. Trouble in Paradise, Lubitsch
regarded as his best work.
Raphaelson's brilliant dual career as playwright and
screenwriter is also reflected in such successes on the
Broadway stage as The Jazz Singer (1925), The Wooden Slipper
(1934) , White Man (1936) , Jason (1942), The Perfect Marriage
(1944), Hilda Crane (1950), among others, and in his screen
plays for Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941), Green Dolphin
Street (1947).69
The plays of John Van Druten are intelligent and
lighthearted, nevertheless showing keen psychological in
sight, and have been for the most part quite successful. He
has also written a series of svelte, witty, and generally
engaging motion pictures. There is not a suggestion of
negative influence discernible from his film enterprises;
rather, to the contrary, there is every evidence in the
heightened pattern of cinematic continuity in his later
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231
plays (especially I Am a Camera), and in the refined sense
of gracious dialogue in his films (most notably Night Must
Fall, Raffles, and Gaslight), that the two media were func
tioning synergistically.
REPRESENTATIVE FILMS REPRESENTATIVE PLAYS
Night Must Fall (1937) Leave Her to Heaven (1940)
Raffles (1939 Old Acquaintance (1940)
Lucky Partners (19 40) The Damask Cheek (1942)
My Life with Caroline (1941) The Voice of the Turtle
Johnny Come Lately (19 43)
(1943)"
I Remember Mama (1944)
Old Acquaintance (1943)
The Mermaids Singing (1945)
Gaslight (1944)
Make Way for Lucia (1948)
Voice of the Turtle (1948)
Bell, Book, and Candle (1950)
I Am a Camera (1951)
Nathan, of course, fails to mention that Van Druten
is an eminent example of a writer whose literary endeavors
in drama and film have salubriously coexisted. A strong Van
Druten supporter, he did say, however, that in the respects
of honest simplicity, verisimilitude, casting, and stage
direction, "there is no better man in our theatre"; and that
"it is good to have a writer of sex comedy possessed of some
demulcent wisdom and critical humor."70 Van Druten dealt
with his own craft in The Way to the Present (1938) and The
Playwright at Work (1953).
The first play by Sidney Howard to attract wide
attention was They Knew What They Wanted (1924), which won a
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2 3 2
Pulitzer Prize. One of his best plays is The Silver Cord
(1926), one of the earliest and best psychological studies
of a dominant mother, dealt with directly and without senti
mentality. Thus, Howard had quite an established critical
reputation when he went to Hollywood in 1929. It is signif
icant that he went to work for Samuel Goldwyn, one of the
few producers who respected the contributions of writers in
the process of film creation; it was a felicitous relation
ship, and Howard would write all but two of his films for
Goldwyn. Howard embossed his name on the cinema history
books through two important endeavors: his brilliant adap
tations of the Sinclair Lewis novels, Arrowsmith and Dods-
worth, and his screenplay for Gone with the Wind.
It was Howard who persuaded Goldwyn that a film
could be made from Lewis's esteemed novel, Arrowsmith. The
playwright was alone in his opinion. The novel had never
been seriously considered for pictures. It was told in epi
sodes— the bane of screen craftsmen— and it dealt with sub
ject matter (the conflict between long-term experimental
research and immediate human needs) thought to be beyond the
scope of screen audiences. Arrowsmith was an early forerun
ner of what came to be known in the late 1930's as "message
pictures." It stands the years better than many of its suc
cessors. Howard's beautifully concentrated script (1931)
ruthlessly hacked out the excursions into generalized com
ment on American life in which Lewis, after Babbitt,
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......................................... 2 3 3
increasingly indulged.71
Howard's screenplay of Dodsworth (1936) follows his
stage dramatization of Sinclair Lewis's novel almost to the
letter. This should have resulted in that major irritant of
the film aesthete, a photographed play. That it did not is
due to the odd fact that Howard's original play itself was
nearer to screen form than to orthodox dramaturgy. No less
than 14 scenes were required to tell the story behind the
footlights, and these 14 remain the "master scenes" of How
ard's script. Within these scenes themselves, much that
took place "off stage" in the theatrical version has been
translated into action, and director William Wyler has
amplified the detail of the narrative, but play and film are
essentially equivalent in structure. The stage Dodsworth
might have played choppily had not the playwright unified it
by concentrating interest in the disintegrating relation
between Sam and Fran Dodsworth. The many interior mono
logues in which Lewis's Dodsworth reflected on America and
Europe, the changing American character, and his own confu
sion, are here jettisoned to make way for a strong and con
fident hero who acts decisively as soon as he sees the
truth. 7 2
The incredible series of events which temporarily
obscured, rejected, and ultimately resurrected Howard's
screenplay for Gone with the Wind has been wittily told by
Ben Hecht,7 3 and has been recently retold by Gavin Lam-
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2 3 4
bert.71f And if Gone with the Wind (1939) was the posthumous
(Howard died before the film was made) apex of his cinematic
career, the totality of his film and dramatic works estab
lish a standard of viability against which all other Eastern
writers could model their own literary lives.
REPRESENTATIVE FILMS REPRESENTATIVE PLAYS
Bulldog Drummond (1929) Half Gods (1929)
Condemned (1929) The Late Christopher Bean
(1932)
A Lady to Love (1930) , from
his They Knew What They Dodsworth (1934)
Wanted
Yellow Jack (1934, with
Raffles (1930) Paul de Kruif)
Arrowsmith (1931) Ode to Liberty (1934)
The Greeks Had a Word for Them Paths of Glory (1935)
~(193T)--------------------------- -----------------
The Ghost of Yankee Doodle
Dodsworth (1936) (1937)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
All of the dramas of Lillian Heilman are noted for
their intensity of psychological conflict and the demonic
motivations of their characters. Her first performed work
was The Children's Hour (1934), based on an obscure Scottish
scandal involving lesbianism. Consistent with his policy
of employing highly established writers for his adaptations
of the best literary works, Goldwyn brought Heilman to
Hollywood to do the screenplay for a filmed version of Guy
Bolton's play, The Dark Angel (1935). Goldwyn then decided
to make a feature film from Heilman's volatile The Chil
dren's Hour; Heilman herself was to do the translation from
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the stage version to the screen.
Heilman herself did not believe that her play could
be transmuted into a film without fatal damage; it was Gold
wyn who convinced her that her theme was the power, not the
nature, of a lie. New York Times critic Frank Nugent, in
his review of the film, now called These Three (1936), suc
cinctly put the case:
Samuel Goldwyn1s purchase of the screen rights to
Lillian Heilman's "The Children's Hour" was one of the
funniest Goldwyn stories of last year. He paid $50,000
for a play which the Hays office had frowned upon, buy
ing it with the understanding that he could not use its
title or its plot or even mention the fact that he had
acquired it. "The Children's Hour," in Hollywood's eyes
was a dead horse, and Mr. Goldwyn, much to everyone's
amusement, donated $50,000 for the privilege of carting
it away under cover of night.
Last week the dead horse came to life as These Three
at the Rivoli, and we are fairly sure that if you listen
attentively you may hear Mr. Goldwyn laughing up his
sleeve. The picture carefully refrains from mentioning
its parent work, cheerfully limiting itself to the word
that its screenplay is by Miss Heilman. And while Miss
Heilman might concede, under duress, that she has
plagiarized her play, she might argue, too, that her
theme is quite changed and that the resemblance of These
Three to "The Children's Hour" is merely superficial.
It wouldn't be much of an argument, of course, but you
must admit that it satisfied Mr. Hays's watchdogs.7
The degree to which Heilman's screenplay translates
verbal exposition into cinematic action is illustrated by
the fact that Scene I in the dramatic version is Scene 12 in
the film. In this reworking, her drama gains in solidity
and conviction. The excellence of direction (William
Wyler) and cinematography (Gregg Toland) constitute an
invisible perfection, so totally is photographic style made
the vehicle of the mounting moods of the script. Few
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236
dialogue films have been cut with the subtle precision evi
dent here.
The Little Foxes (1941), again for Goldwyn and with
Heilman's screenplay from her own play, is one of the best
films of the sound era. It is a masterpiece of translation
from the stage to film, and Howard Barnes of the New York
Herald Tribune keenly felt the screen version: "There is
twice as much mental and emotional jolt in the film than
there was in the stage work."76 Indeed, rather than being
stunted by Hollywood, Heilman turned her excellent plays
into superior motion pictures; while also writing films of
independent source.
REPRESENTATIVE FILMS
The Dark Angel (1935
These Three (1936), from
her play The Children's
Hour
Dead End (1937)
The Little Foxes (1941),
from her play
The North Star (1943)
The Searching Wind (1946) ,
from her play
The Children's Hour (1961),
from play
The Chase (1966)
Another husband-and-wife screenwriting team, Bella
and Samuel Spewack, kept an active professional life in the
theater in spite of an especially rich employment period in
REPRESENTATIVE PLAYS
The Children's Hour (1934)
The Little Foxes (1939)
The Watch on the Rhine (1941)
The Searching Wind (1944)
Another Part of the Forest
(1946)
The Autumn Garden (1951)
Candide (1955), musical
adaptation
Toys in the Attic (1960)
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2 3 7
Hollywood during the 1930's. Indeed, their dramatic works
tangibly seem to have enjoyed the greater part of their
creative energies, as the plays are so vastly superior to
the palpably indifferent motion pictures they wrote (with
the exception of Boy Meets Girl, 193 8, an adaptation of
their own hit play). It is probably true that their facil
ity with the brittle, lightweight comedy material of their
stage productions— especially after the resounding success
of their hilarious satire on Hollywood in Bov Meets Girl— -
locked them into a pattern in their screenwriting assign
ments which, unfortunately, precluded much possibility of
inventive movie results. In any event, they are noteworthy
as having vivified their dramatic professions with active
play production (unlike their washed-up screenwriter carica
tures in Boy Meets Girl), concurrently with Hollywood
employment.
REPRESENTATIVE FILMS
Secret Witness (1931), from
his novel Murder in the
Gilded Cage
Clear All Wires (1933) , from
their play
The Cat and the Fiddle (1934)
Rendezvous (1935)
Boy Meets Girl (1938)
Three Loves Has Nancy (1938)
My Favorite Wife (1940)
Weekend at the Waldorf (1945)
REPRESENTATIVE PLAYS
Clear All Wires (1932)
Spring Song (1934)
Boy Meets Girl (1935)
Leave It to Me (19 38) ,
songs by Cole Porter
Miss Swan Expects (1939)
Kiss Me, Kate (1949),
songs by Cole Porter
My Three Angels (1953)
Festival (1955)
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Most of the plays of S. N. Behrxnan are contributions
to the comedy of ideas. His characters have a worldly air;
his dialogue is lightly humorous; his plots are usually
insubstantial. What he wrote might be dismissed as drawing
room comedy if he were not interested in serious themes like
politics, ethics, and cross-currents of thought. In one of
his plays, No Time for Comedy (1939), Behrman spoke somewhat
autobiographically through his dramatist protagonist, as
this playwright was depicted as having the urge to deal with
the serious problems and tragedies of his time, but the tal
ent only for light comedy. In the vein of Kaufman and
Hart's Merrily We Roll Along, Behrman's work is a further
extension of this continuing struggle for the writer between
art (which seems to be always thought of in terms of heavy
drama and tragedy) and commercialism (identified with comedy
and lightweight entertainment). In microcosm, it is the
same conflict which, as it seemed, faced Behrman (or any
writer) in the form of his native, "sublime" theater versus
the "lesser, vulgar" Hollywood.
Hollywood, of course, made overtures to the bright,
successful dramatic talent, Behrman. He was offered a six-
month contract at a salary of $1250 a week, mainly on the
basis of his first success, The Second Man (1927). Arthur
Richman, his playwright friend who had much experience in
Hollywood, told him, "They'll be happier with you at two
thousand than at twelve-fifty. They don't really believe
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239
that a writer they can get for twelve-fifty can be much
good." 7 7
Behrman indeed confronted the classic problem of
every writer in this study:
I hadn't made much money out of "The Second Man" . . .
The few hours of an opening night could demolish years
of work. It was quite possible— in fact, it was quite
likely--that I would never write another successful
play. Here was Winnie Sheehan [production head of Fox
Studios] offering me a trip to the Coast. I loved
trains. I loved travel. Federick Jackson Turner's book
"The Frontier in American History" had argued that the
frontier was focal in American history. I would cross
all the frontiers. I would cross the Mississippi. I
was torn between the desire to see the Mississippi and
the urge to go back to Woodstock, Vermont, sit myself
down at the bridge table in Room 202, and get involved
again in the tense, warm claustrophobia of a new play.78
The more lucrative contract was received, and Behr
man, in 1930, was embraced by halcyon Hollywood. ("There
were few places in America where you could go out to dinner
with Harpo and Groucho Marx, the Franz Werfels, Leopold Sto
kowski, Aldous Hudley, Somerset Maugham, and George and Ira
Gershwin."79 For the next three decades Behrman followed
the mode of the most successful— and literarily viable—
Eastern writers in Hollywood; i.e., he came and went when he
had the creative and/or financial urge, and did not become
locked in to a total dependence on the comparative ease and
munificence of the work. He was rather strongly committed
to screenwriting in the following periods: 1930-1935, 1937-
1938, 1941, 1951, 1958. As mentioned previously, he was
associated with the best of the Greta Garbo pictures, his
grace with dialogue being a major attribute of those 1930's
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pictures.
But Behrman, during every second of his most inten
sive Hollywood involvement, never lost one fraction of his
supremacy as the comedic talent of the Broadway stage, earn
ing this superlative from George Jean Nathan: "Behrman has
had no native competitor as a contriver of literate, intel
ligent and thoroughly adult comedy."80 Note the correspon
dence between the years of his film periods (especially the
most fertile 1930's) and the years of his theatrical works,
as an indication that Hollywood caused absolutely no diminu
tion of his personal writing: Brief Moment (1931); Biogra
phy (1932), about a woman portrait painter and a journalist;
Rain from Heaven (1934), one of the earliest anti-Nazi
plays; End of Summer (1936), a comedy on the use of wealth;
Amphitryon 38 (1937); Wine of Choice (1938) , on liberalism
and its difficulties; No Time for Comedy (1939); The Talley
Method (1941); The Pirate (1942); Jacobowsky and the Colonel
(19 44), an aristocratic and aloof Polish officer and a hum
ble Polish Jew trying to escape the Nazis; I Know My Love
(1949). He also wrote two vastly entertaining biographies:
Duveen (1952) , a work on the famous art dealer, and Portrait
of Max (1960), a brilliant profile of Max Beerboim.
It is a fitting conclusion to a chapter devoted, in
part, to those dramatists who maintained their independence
from some potentially destructive aspects of Hollywood, that
the careers and attitudes of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
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2 4 1
be reviewed. Originally two newspapermen from Chicago, they
established themselves as rather effective and urbane drama
tists, novelist (Hecht), short story writers, and screen
writers: separately and in collaboration. In the 1930's
they both cultivated and acquired a reputation for eccentric
and iconoclastic behavior, for unorthodox and outspokenly
belligerent attitudes toward the Hollywood establishment.
So vocal and flamboyant were they (especially Hecht) in
their denunciations of the ignorance and puerility of the
processes of Hollywood movie production, in their determined
— almost obsessive--resolve to avoid any Hollywood entangle
ment which might weaken their status as satirical outsiders,
that there was no moment when they relinquished their stud
ied literary freedom. They never would have gotten away
with it except for the fact that they were supremely tal
ented. (Pauline Kael in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has attributed
half the entertaining movies produced by Hollywood to Hecht
— the other half to Jules Furthman.)
Hecht and MacArthur saw early in the game that they
had to assume directorial control of their projects, in
order to preserve the integrity of their screenplays.
Interestingly, they produced and directed in the 1930's four
feature films which reflected their own special brand of
Broadway sophistication: Crime without Passion (1934), Once
in a Blue Moon and The Scoundrel (both 1935), and Soak the
Rich (1936). Because of "the renegade duo's” aversion to
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2 4 2
Hollywood, the films were shot at Paramount1s studios at
Astoria, Long Island, in their beloved East.
Crime without Passion was made for $172,000 and
grossed almost half a million. "Which," Hecht and MacArthur
observed, "is considered a stinking failure in Hollywood."81
Nevertheless, the low-budget policy of shooting which they
used on all their films was a sound one, and quite antithet
ical to the general procedures at Hollywood studios: "Cut
the costs to the limit, cut out as many exterior scenes as
possible because, if it rains and you can't shoot, it sets
you back at least $1,100 a day [the abusive weather was one
of the reasons the production companies moved to Hollywood
in the first place], cut out expensive actors or, if you
have to have one, make him work on a percentage arrangement
and gamble with you, write pictures with an eye to a some
what more intelligent public than the Hollywood boneheads
believe exists, forget moonlight swimming pool parties,
stick to dill pickles, and trust in God!"82
Hecht and MacArthur's method of operation, rejoicing
as much in its glibness as in its independence, produced
disconcertingly uneven results. All productions were marked
by the unquestioned expertise of the cinematographer Lee
Garmes (an inspired acquisition to the technically inept
combination of "directors" Hecht and MacArthur); Crime with
out Passion had the benefit of the famed opening montage of
the "furies" flying over New York, executed by Slavko Vorka-
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2 4 3
pitch, and the smoothly proficient acting of Claude Rains;
The Scoundrel possessed the appropriately supercilious per
formance of Noel Coward, an imaginative casting choice for
the role of cynical book publisher. But the films are sur
prisingly flat and uninspired, the factitious and sterile
visual textures reflecting the low budgets and truncated
shooting schedules. Considering the combined screenwriting
and literary talents of Hecht and MacArthur, the dialogue
and narrative structures are curiously banal, almost under
graduate in a kind of arty intensity.
For all the anticipation of new cinematic frontiers
to be breached by the emancipated writers, their first
efforts (in spite of moderate commercial success) set with
critical disapprobation. A feeling of harsh disappointment
— and almost a bristling scorn in the face of the tandem
writers' pretentiousness--found in Alfred Hayes' "The Pair
from Paramount" and Clifton Fadiman's "Those Scoundrels:
Coward, Hecht, & MacArthur" is typical of the critical
response.8 3
The early efforts of these two men (and a future
film, Angels Over Broadway, 1940, a solo writing and direc
torial job by Hecht) are tangible and functional examples of
the inherent problems of creativity, especially on a consis
tent basis, for even the most talented artists— any artist,
in any field. These pictures were bruited as having been
conceived and executed with a minimum of Hollywood interfer
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2 4 4
ence; the authors flaunted their independence from the tra
ditional, "artistically gelding" procedures of movie making.
Yet the pictures were critical failures.
This factor brings us again to the idea that Holly
wood should not and cannot be made the exclusive cause for
the misfire of certain productions, or for the impotence of
certain writers to achieve desired results. The individual
"writer," from the double-decker phrase "Easter writer in
Hollywood," must be interpreted in terms of his proper rela
tionship to the Hollywood structure, so as to assume his
reasonable share of responsibility in any artistic malfunc
tion— or, indeed, in any decision which crucially affects
his future literary life. Clifford Odets said, "There is no
prostituting of talent in writing for movies, and anyone who
says so is guilty of phony morality." 8 This is true; there
is not--necessarily— any prostitution in film writing. Cer
tainly it occurs, but so it does in Broadway plays and in
books. Gifted men who go to Hollywood are chiefly concerned
throughout their film careers, in many cases, with the mat
ter of integrity. Movies are generally so conceived, ges-
tated, and delivered in compromise that this could hardly be
otherwise. But the struggle to remain chaste occupies so
much of these men's thoughts that, even when they are win
ning it, they often lose judgment on what they are remaining
uncompromised about. (In 1943 noted screenwriter Dudley
Nichols and director Jean Renoir were given, as Nichols
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2 4 5
said, "complete freedom to make a film, without any other
impediment than our own shortcomings."85 The result, This
Land Is Mine, was an excessively wordy, preachy effort.
This one example, among the countless instances of artistic
miscalculations by writers and directors who were relatively
unfettered by external restrictions— certain mistakes by
Rod and Hawks; the later pictures of Preston Sturges, Chap
lin, or Fritz Lang; contemporary pictures by younger film
makers who self-indulgently abused the right of "final cut":
Hopper, Fonda, Ken Russell— points out that art, of any kind
will not automatically happen simply because the artist is
given full rein.) For those who are concerned only with
what finally appears on the screen, negative virtues are not
enough.
Thus, Hecht and MacArthur, in their early rebellion
against the studio system (and what a great chance it was,
too), failed to posit innovative or revelatory works of film
art. They have nothing to blame but themselves. As Alfred
Hayes rather sarcastically wrote:
And so, after all, it was no Lazarus who arose out
of the Hollywood grave when Hecht-MacArthur left. The
corpse simply moved to Long Island. We may remember
years and years ago that Mr. Hecht refused to evade
charges of literary obscenity in Chicago and valiantly
defended the freedom of the artist from censorhsip, that
Hecht himself once showed signs of being an artist. But
that was in another country, and besides, the wench is
dead.86
Ironically, Hecht and MacArthur functioned much more
capably in terms of artistic achievement when they wrote
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2 4 6
their scripts within the Hollywood set-up. Working in uni
son with such directors as Josef von Sternberg, Howard
Hawks, William Wyler, Alfred Hitchcock, George Stevens, the
writers fashioned a veritable chronicle of cinematic high-
points of the 1930's. Together they wrote nine films: The
Unholy Garden (1931), The Twentieth Century (1934, from
their play), Crime Without Passion, Once in a Blue Moon, The
Scoundrel, Barbary Coast (1935), Soak the Rich, Gunga Din
(1939), Wuthering Heights (1939).
MacArthur has much less prolific in his solo efforts
than was Hecht, with only three credits to his name after
1939. These non-Hecht films include some respectable, if
eccentric, efforts: Billy the Kid (1930, directed by King
Vidor), The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) , Rasputin and the
Empress (1932, Academy nomination best original story), The
Senator Was Indiscreet (1947, George S. Kaufman's directo
rial effort).
Hecht's filmography is arguably the finest of all
Hollywood screenwriters; highlights are: Underworld (1927,
Academy Award best original story), Design for Living (1933),
Viva, Villa 1 (1934, Academy nomination best adaptation),
Nothing Sacred (1937) , Spellbound (1945) , Notorious (1946) ,
Academy nomination best original screenplay), Kiss of Death
(1947), Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950).
Certainly, in light of their avowed dedication to
avoiding the pitfalls of the Hollywood success pattern,
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2 4 7
Hecht and MacArthur were very active in the literary arena.
They wrote the following plays together: The Front Page
(1928) , Twentieth Century (1932) , Jumbo (1935) , Ladies and
Gentlemen (1939), Swan Song (1946) . In addition, Hecht
wrote (after he began his career as screenwriter): The
Great Magoo (1932, with Gene Fowler), To Quito and Back
(1937), Winkelberg (1958); plus A Jew in Love (1930, novel),
I Hate Actors 1 (1944, novel) , A Guide for the Bedeviled
(1944, analysis of his own convictions), Perfidy (1961, a
study of Israel), several short story collections.
The dramatists on these pages found that the way to
psychological survival was literary survival, that the way
to "beat" the system was not to beat yourself. Ben Hecht
was speaking for all Eastern writers who made the survivors'
list when he wrote: "The first wave of geniuses from Broad
way, London, Paris and Berlin was on hand issuing dinner
invitations (black tie), collecting weekly bags of gold and
denouncing Hollywood, much as in these pages. For when we
started we were all much alike. It was my misfortune to
remain unchanged."8 7
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2 4 8
NOTES
Robert E. Sherwood, "Footnote to a Preface," in
Tne Passionate Playgoer, ed. by George Oppenheimer (New
York: The Viking Press, 1963), p. 228.
2Ibid., p. 230.
See also Sherwood's "Renaissance in Hollywood,"
The American Mercury, April, 1929, pp. 433-437, for an
earlier appraisal of the impact of the sound film on the
Broadway theater.
3George Jean Nathan, The Theatre, The Drama, The
Girls (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921), pp. 134-135, 143.
^Ibid., p . 132.
5See Frances Taylor Patterson, "The Author and
Hollywood," The North American Review, Autumn, 1937, pp. 84-
89, for a discussion of Hollywood's involvement with Broad
way, with the film considered a positive rather than nega
tive force.
6Nathan, The Theatre of the Moment (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1936), p. 105.
7Ibid., p . Ill.
8Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years, p. 158.
9Representative doses of Nathan's preternatural
hatred of Hollywood, other than those references made in the
text, are to be found in his: "Its Motion Pictures," The
Popular Theatre (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1918), pp. 122-
145, a series of hilarious examples satirizing the way which
movies are constructed and written; "After-thoughts on
Hollywood," The Morning After the First Night (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1938), pp. 21-240; "Hollywood Logic,"
"Hollywood Mind," "Movies and Stage," Encyclopaedia of the
Theatre (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940), pp. 179-184,
270-275; comments during discussion of "A Bell for Adano,
December 6, 1944," The Theatre Book of the Year 1944-1945
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), pp. 180-186— a debate
between Nathan and stage-film director Rouben Mamoulian con
cerning the relative merits of film and drama, with Nathan
turning Mamoulian (in Nathan's biased version) into an inco
herent jackdaw, unable to effectively posit even a single
virtue in film's favor.
1°Nathan, Art of the Night (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1928), p. 1 2 T .
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2 4 9
1 Nathan, Theatre of the Moment, p. 194.
12*b id-
1 3See Proletarian Writers of the Thirties, ed. by
David Madden (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois Uni
versity Press, 1968).
1‘ ‘Nathan, Theatre of the Moment, pp. 273-274.
15lbid»/ P. 27 4.
16John Howard Lawson, Film: The Creative Process
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), pp. 101-102” .
17Nathan, The Theatre Book of the Year 1943-1944
(New York: Alfred" A. Knopf, 1944) , pp. 128, 130.
18Burns Mantle, The Best Plays of 1924-1925 (New
York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1925), pp. 384-385.
19Nathan, The Theatre Book of the Year 1945-1946
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p. 108.
20Gassner and Nichols, Twenty Best Film Plays,
pp. 951ff. '
2Nathan, Theatre of the Moment, pp. 188-192.
22See Pauline Kael, "Raising Kane— I," The New
Yorker, February 20, 1971, pp. 48-52ff.
23James M. Cain, "Vincent Sargent Lawrence," The
Screen Writer, January, 1947, pp. 14-15.
2‘ ‘Nathan, Theatre Book of the Year 19 42-19 43 (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943), p^ 231.
See also Audrey Wood, "Too Fast and Too Slow," The
Screen Writer, August, 1945, p. 37: "Critics are particu-
larly angered by this type of play when it is authored by a
successful Hollywood writer. Even Hollywood's own dramatic
reviewer, Irving Hoffman, drips a deeper acidity than is
usual if the failing contributor is a Hollywood name."
25Nathan, Theatre Book 1944-1945, p. 267.
2 6Ibid., p. 269.
27Schulberg, The Disenchanted, p. 30ff.
28Quoted in Mantle, The Best Plays of 1924-1925,
p. 144.
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2 5 0
29Quoted from Edwin Justus Mayer, Sunrise in My
Pocket (New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1941).
30The Firebrand of Florence (1945) was a lavish
musical show, derived from Mayer's The Firebrand, by Ira
Gershwin and Kurt Weill. It was a costly failure.
31Mayer, The Firebrand, quoted in The Best Plays of
1924-1925, p. 1 5 6 ~ . ---------------------------- --------------------
32Mayer, screenplay of To Be Or Not To Be (1942).
33Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night, p. 315.
34Nathan, Theatre of the Moment, p. 19 0.
35Ibid.
36George Oppenheimer, The View from the Sixties:
Memories of a Spent Life (New York: David McKay Company,
1966), p. 93 .
37Ibid., pp. 103-104.
3 8Ibid., p. 123. Italics not in original.
39Ibid., p. 254.
40Mantle, Best Plays of 1923-1924, p. 263.
41Mantle, Best Plays of 1929-1930, p. 175.
42For some fascinating discussions of this entire
problem of artistic potential and fulfillment, see Nathan,
"Fallen by the Wayside," The Theatre of the Moment, pp. 188-
195; Encyclopaedia of the Theatre, pp. 338-340.
43Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years, pp. 193-19 4.
44Ibid., p. 194.
45Mantle, Best Plays of 1937-1938, p. 295.
46Obituary, New York Times, August 16, 1963.
47Quoted in Clurman, The Fervent Years, pp. 157-158.
48Quoted in Philip K. Scheuer, "Big Knife Sheathed
by Clifford Odets," Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1959,
p. 13.
49Obituary, Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1963, p.8.
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2 5 1
b0Clurman, The Fervent Years, p. 159.
51 Obituary, Newsweek, August 26, 1963 .
52Clifford Odets, The Big Knife (New York: Random
House, 1949), p. 135.
53Clurman, "Clifford Odets' Ideals," New York Times,
August 26, 1963.
5 Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, p. 210.
55Clurman, "Clifford Odets' Ideals."
56Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, in their Hitchcock
(1957), maintain that Anderson wrote only the dialogue. He
receives screenplay credit, however, along with Angus
McPhail.
57No relation to the now defunct Life magazine,
whose name was purchased from Time, Inc., in 1936.
Much of the material on Sherwood is distilled from
the author's article on Sherwood as film critic, Film Com
ment , September, 1972, pp. 70-73.
58All quotations from John Mason Brown, The Worlds
of Robert E. Sherwood: Mirror to His Times (New York:
Harper & Row, Publishers, 19 65), p. 267.
59Ibid., p. 296.
60Sherwood, "Hollywood: The Blessed and the Cursed,"
p. 72. Fuller context of this quotation is given in Chapter
IV above.
61 Nathan, Theatre of the Moment, p. 290.
62Nathan, The Morning After the First Night, p. 50.
Cf. Nathan, The Entertainment of a Nation, pp. 84-
85, quoted in Chapter V above.
63Quoted in Gary Carey, Cukor & Co. (New York: The
Museum of Modern Art, 1971), p. 24.
61tQuoted in Scribner's Magazine, November, 1937,
p. 66.
65Nathan, Theatre Book of 1943-1944, p. 2 71.
66Carey, Cukor & Co., p. 65.
67Moss Hart, Act One (New York: Random House, 1959).
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2 5 2
68Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon, pp. 71-72.
69There is a singularly revealing interview with Sam
Raphaelson, which closely examines his working arrangement
with Lubitsch, in Herman G. Weinberg, The Lubitsch Touch
(New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968), pp. 203-214.
7 °Nathan, Theatre Book of 1944-1945, p. Ill; 1945-
1946, p. 209.
71Richard Griffith, Goldwyn, p. 20.
72Ibid., p. 27.
73Hecht, A Child of the Century, pp. 455-457.
?lfGavin Lambert, "The Making of Gone with the Wind,"
Part I. The Atlantic Monthly, Fbbruary, 1973, pp. 37-51;
Part II, March, 1973, pp. 56-72.
75Frank S. Nugent, "Review of These Three," New York
Times, March 22, 1936.
76Howard Barnes, "Review of The Little Foxes," New
York Herald Tribune, August 22, 1941.
77S. N. Behrman, "People in a Diary," The New York
er, May 20, 1972, pp. 64-65.
7 8Ibid., p. 65.
79 Ibid., p. 80.
80Nathan, Theatre of the Moment, p. 270.
81 Ibid. , p. 216.
82Ibid.
83Alfred Hayes, "The Pair from Paramount," New
Theatre, March, 1936, pp. 14-15, 33: "The first three
Hecht-MacArthur productions were, save for their photogra
phy, distinguished by their irrelevance, their pretentious
emptiness, and their failure to approach even the cinematic
standards of the Hollywood product."
Clifton Fadiman, "Those Scoundrels Coward, Hecht,
& MacArthur," Stage, July, 1935, pp. 23-24: "It [The Scoun
drel] is hokum m a top hat, a smoothie for the simple-
minded, concocted by two merry gents who are experts at
practical jokes and who are entitled to enjoy a private
snicker over the sensation they have caused in what is known
as polite society. . . . This teeny-weeny neurotic [Mallare,
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2 5 3
the book publisher played by Noel Coward], this boy-scout
Baudelaire, this Broadway Petronius, was all right enough in
the days of Erik Dorn [novel by Ben Hecht, 1921], when we
were young and innocent and anything could devastate us.
But that Mr. Hecht should confidently figure on getting
away with him in 1935 is a sad commentary on our sense of
humor."
See also Katharine Best, "Miracle in Astoria,"
Stage, March, 1935, pp. 30-31.
84Quoted in Stanley Kauffmann, "Is Artistic Integ
rity Enough?" The New Republic, February 8, 1960, p. 22.
85Quoted in Paul Jensen, "The Career of Dudley
Nichols," Film Comment, Winter 1970-71, p. 57.
86Hayes, "The Pair from Paramount," p. 33.
8 7Hecht, Charlie, p. 165.
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CHAPTER VII
THE NOVELISTS, THE POETS, AND OTHERS
The dramatists flooded Hollywood with the dawn of
the sound film because of the supposed affinity between the
word-oriented theater and the movies' new capability for
spoken dialogue. But the influx of literati was by no means
limited to Broadway playwrights. Anybody who could write a
speakable declarative sentence— novelists, short story
writers, poets, critics, newspapermen, radio script-writers
— was in great demand by the studios.
Again, the cries of alarm went up from the literary
circles in the East about Hollywood's destructive drain on
the vital writing blood in these different areas. The
situation, however, was identical to the one experienced by
those from the world of drama: the major novelists and
others, as in the case of the best playwrights, those who
were dedicated to and capable of producing literary art,
were not adversely affected by Hollywood. On the contrary,
Hollywood was a chance for impecunious writers of the
Depression to pursue their art (on the money they made
writing films), at a time when most people in America could
little afford such a self-indulgent luxury. As Dalton
254
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2 5 5
Trumbo, in an article written for The North American Review
in 1933, said: "For ten years Hollywood has subsidized
American drama and American letters. Many a roaring liter
ary lion would be only a harmless pussy without his movie
swag: and many a playwright would be dashing off features
for the Sunday supplements instead of sounding profound
alarums anent the strangulation of native drama."1
The most famous symbol of the whole Eastern writer
phenomenon, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, concurs with the
idea that the writers who had the least to lose were those
who were doing all the crying, that Hollywood was an easily
accessible target for these writers to blame for their own
literary inadequacies:
These Texas lands are like crossing a sea— spiri
tually I mean, with a fat contract at the end and the
loss of something for a year or so. Tho I find that the
vast majority of [writers] who yelp about that had no
thing to lose, either talent or vitality, when they sold
out— and at the moment with my play finished I'm no
exception. Even Dotty's [Dorothy Parker] chief kick
was, I imagine, that the precious lazybones never had to
work so hard in her life. And it amuses me to see the
squirming of one-opus geniuses like Lawson, Hermann and
Saroyan who simply have no more to say. How simple to
be a Communist under those conditions— one can explain
away not only the world's inadequacies but one's own.2
One-opus washouts or literary giants, some of these
writers will be discussed, once again, within categories
which suggest whether they continued to write their own
work, or whether they tended to abandon outside efforts for
the exclusivity of Hollywood employment.
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2 5 6
Writers Who Became Substantially Involved
with Hollywood--Wrote Few or No
Subsequent Works of Their Own
Robert Benchley had a theory that everyone tends to
become the type of person he hates most, and when he gave up
writing in his later Hollywood years he gave up the one
thing in which he had honest pride. Benchley had been the
managing editor of Vanity Fair magazine (1919-1920); drama
editor of Life; for several years the drama editor of The
New Yorker, replacing Charles Brackett; had written several
successful humorous books, such as Of All Things (1921),
Love Conquers All (1922), Pluck and Luck (1925)— twelve
books in all; and was one of the pivotal figures of the
Algonquin "Round Table." He was indeed recognized as a
notable humorist and respected critic. When he left for
Hollywood (mainly for a job as an actor), he pretty much
forgot about the literary world (although several collec
tions of his humorous pieces continued to be published).
His son, Nathaniel Benchley, said that his father
had never been able to write all he wanted, that he had
burned himself out on the mass production of trivia when he
should have been doing something better, and he knew that
his fame was more because of the movies than because of his
writing. But he would still have preferred to be fairly
well-known as a writer than very well-known as a movie and
radio comedian. The only trouble was that the movie and
radio work paid much more money, and was not anywhere near
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2 5 7
as hard as writing had become.3 (At one point he decided,
as a salve to his conscience and as proof that he could do
some serious writing, to write a history of the era of Queen
Anne: an enterprise that was similar to the proposed his
torical project of dramatist Edwin Justus Mayer. He read
books, made copious notes, and amassed reams of background
material, but he never once made a definite start on the
writing.)
Critic Theodore Strauss told of the conflict which
Benchley had to resolve: "whenever he grows nostalgic about
his two seats on the aisle, or pines for the old inkwell and
the writer's lamp, he merely draws out his son's tuition
bills and consoles himself with the thought that after all,
youths don't go to college forever and maybe before he's 90
he may be writing about the theatre again."1 * Again, we find
this element that Hollywood was only a temporary, money-
raising occupation. Benchley himself maintained: "I got
into this racket against my will. And I'm still in it
against my will. But some day . . ."5
At times, Benchley exhibited a painful self-aware
ness of his evaporated writing career. He turned away from
Robert Sherwood (his former editor at Life) at a party in
Hollywood: "'Those eyes, I can't stand those eyes looking
at me.' Everyone thought he was joking, as he usually was,
but he was frowning at Sherwood who had recently won another
Pulitzer Prize. 'He's looking at me,' sighed Bob, 'and
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2 5 8
thinking of how he knew me when I was going to be a great
writer. And now he's thinking, Look what he became.'"6
But the point to be stressed in the Benchley syn
drome is that he chose his career pattern for mainly finan
cial reasons. He could have adopted a life style other than
that of big spender (his son's biography chronicles amazing
excess), resident of the Garden of Allah, willing to make
certain sacrifices. He could have written if he had only
the strength to act. As his son admitted: "his only limi
tations were those of desire."7
Benchley, however, is fondly remembered for his
series of 4 8 very humorous short subjects, which he wrote
and starred in, including The Treasurer's Report (1928) , The
Courtship of the Newt (1938), No News Is Good News (1943),
and How to Sleep, which won an Academy Award as the best
comedy short of 1935. (He was the uncredited contributor to
many feature scripts, and he appeared as an actor in 35 fea
ture films.) He once said: "The writer who is a frustrated
actor is a stock character. So I must be an actor who is a
frustrated writer. Almost every time a producer hires me to
do a job on a script he eventually gets the idea that I
should have a role in the production as well. When I went
to work for Wanger and Hitchcock on Foreign Correspondent I
had no intention of acting. Then Hitch decided that a guy
who looked as funny as I did should appear on the screen and
had me write in a part for myself."8
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2 5 9
Charles Brackett, who was replaced by Robert Bench
ley, was the drama critic for The New Yorker for three years
(1926-1929) and also wrote a number of novels, among them:
The Counsel of the Ungodly (1920), Week-End (1925), Entirely
Surrounded (1934) , a roman a clef about Alexander Woollcott
and his island colony on Lake Bomoseen, Vermont. This lit
erary pattern was averted in 1934 when he went to Hollywood.
But, as in the case of inferior or mediocre drama
tists who turned into first-rate screenwriters (Riskin,
Buchman, Sturges), it is with some ambivalence that the
observer mourns Brackett's loss to the rank of indifferent
novelists, in light of his subsequent surge of motion pic
ture achievements. In collaboration with Billy Wilder, he
wrote a staggering string of critical and commercial hits.
With Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), Midnight (1939), and
Ninotchka (1939), he and Wilder continued to confirm the
Eastern writers' dominance of their special contribution to
cinematic art, the svelte and sassy comedy of the 1930's.
Ball of Fire (19 41) is one of the best comedies of the
19 40's, but one of their most underrated films. With hum
bling versatility they proceeded to produce a wide variance
of themes and tones in their films: The Major and the Minor
(1942), Five Graves to Cairo (1943), The Lost Weekend (1945,
Academy Award best screenplay), -A Foreign Affair (1948) ,
Sunset Boulevard (1950, Academy Award best story and screen
play) . Without Wilder his story and screenplay for Titanic
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2 6 0
(1953) was similarly awarded an Oscar for best of the year.
Both Herman J. Mankiewicz and Nunnally Johnson were
former newspapermen before they made the trip to Hollywood,
and are additional examples of writers who seemed to be bet
ter suited to the specialized structures and narrative
requirements of movie storytelling than to the nature of
traditional literary forms. Johnson was to be associated
with some outstanding motion pictures, both as writer and
director. Among his best screenplays are: Jesse James
(1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Moon Is Down (1943) ,
Woman in the Window (1944) , The Dark Mirror (1946) , The
Desert Fox (1951), The Three Faces of Eve (1957, also
directed), The Dirty Dozen (1967). Mankiewicz must pretty
much rest on his screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941) as his
one unqualified achievement, although his work on Dinner at
Eight (1933), The Pride of the Yankees (1942, Academy nomi
nation for best screenplay), The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
are commendable efforts. Kane, of course, would guarantee
Mankiewicz historical recognition if he had never written
anything else.
Johnson was a successful newspaperman and short
story writer in New York before he decided to acquiese to a
letter Mankiewicz sent, imploring him to come to Hollywood
and try screenwriting. (It will be remembered that Mankie
wicz sent a similar plea to Ben Hecht. Mankiewicz, who was
among the earliest to "sell out" (1925), delighted in con
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2 6 1
scripting his old New York cronies to the easy money ambi
ence of Hollywood.) Johnson went West in 1932.
"I had written for The New Yorker," says Johnson.
"Funny thing about that magazine. Over the years it main
tained a very strict anti-movie attitude. We had a saying
around town that The-New Yorker1s critic was only allowed to
like one movie a year--which was in direct contrast to
editor Harold Ross's own tastes. He enjoyed the movies.
But when I suggested to Ross that I was interested in the
job of doing a weekly movie-review column, Ross wouldn't
hear of it. 'Reviewing movies is for women and fairies I' he
insisted."9
The New Yorker and other literary outlets lost John
son to Hollywood, but his was a long and varied career
filled with rich cinematic highlights. In retrospect, John
son would say: "You know, nobody ever wrote about Hollywood
with any seriousness until Scott Fitzgerald did The Last
Tycoon. Up till then, the level of Hollywood satire was all
of the Kaufman-Hart school— you know, the Once in a Lifetime
comedy. They all had the same characters— the drunk writ
ers, the stupid producers, the arrogant directors . . . who
are all still here, tool"10
The Hollywood saga of Herman Mankiewicz has been
effectively told by Pauline Kael in The Citizen Kane Book
(1972), but there is one quality about Mankiewicz which
makes him especially useful to a discussion of writers who
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did not write. Like Dorothy Parker, especially, he would
rather talk than write. Simply stated: Mankiewicz did not
have the discipline or willpower for traditional writing.
Since the Hollywood scripts were usually hawked and yelled
into existence at story conferences and cocktail parties,
he found greater compatibility with the smokey writers1
building at M-G-M than with a novelist's or dramatist's pen
cil, paper, and a quiet room. "The doom of unproductivity
was on him," wrote Ben Hecht. "I knew that no one as witty
and spontaneous as Herman would ever put himself on paper.
A man whose genius is on tap like free lager beer seldom
makes literature out of it."11
In addition to his early pieces for the New York
Times, Mankiewicz did collaborate on two plays, which did
very badly: The Good Fellow (1926, with George S. Kaufman,
7 performances) and The Wild Man of Borneo (1927, with Marc
Connelly, 15 performances) . Connelly concurs with Hecht
that Mankiewicz had a real difficulty in getting down to
work: "Mank was always ready to discuss the development of
a play, but getting him to share the writing took great
effort. . . » Mank was so engaging that the fun of his com
panionship outweighed our annoyance over his reluctance to
work."12 It seems obvious that Hollywood could have had
negligible impact on a literary constitution which was ooz
ing with lassitude and indolence even in the East.
Not surprisingly, Mankiewicz's disinclination to the
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263
labors of writing got him into trouble even in the compara
tively relaxed literary atmosphere of Hollywood. He found
that his inability to consistently produce put him period
ically out of a job. Fitzgerald, in a letter to Maxwell
Perkins in 1938, refers not only to Mankiewicz's fluctua
tions, but to the paradoxical nature of Hollywood's alter
nating callousness and sentimentality: "Hard times weed out
many of the incompetents, but they swarm back— Herman Man
kiewicz, a ruined man who hasn't written ten feet of conti
nuity in two years, was finally dropped by Metro, but imme
diately picked up by Columbia! He is a nice fellow that
everybody likes and has been brilliant, but he is being
hired because everyone is sorry for his wife--which I think
would make him rather an obstacle in the way of making good
pictures. Utter toughness toward the helpless, combined
with super-sentimentality— Jesus, what a combination!"13
Three volumes of poetry (Enough Rope, 1926; Sunset
Gun, 1928; Death and Taxes, 1931) and two of short stories
(Laments for the Living, 1930; After Such Pleasures, 1933)
are not an enormous literary legacy. Yet Dorothy Parker
deserves a place in American literature for all that her
total output was small, and despite the fact that its qual
ity is uneven.
The times through which she moved would seem to be
those of an awakening national maturity. The 1920's seemed
to be the time to have irresponsible fun, and the people
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Dorothy Parker knew then were, for the most part, bright
lightweights. They were also, for the most part, young peo
ple on the way up; they would become successful popular
entertainers and writers of coy ephemera for the magazines,
including The New Yorker, and the writers of inconsequential
plays. This is not to say that they were not bright and
funny, but they could hardly be mistaken for theater of any
real weight. It was a smart set that she fell in with— one
that had little to do with those who were making serious
contributions in literature and the dramatic arts, most
probably because the serious contributors had very little to
do with New York City: Hemingway, Faulkner, and Dos Passos
were, for example, based elsewhere.
This is why I place little cogency in the contention
that Hollywood, especially in the 1930's, conducted a
pogrom against America's literary talent. When all the
totals are added up, the scoreboard reads this way: the
writers of true substance and endurance either never went to
Hollywood (O'Neill, Hemingway) or were unaffected by it
(Faulkner, Sherwood); those who went and never wrote much
thereafter were not, for the most part, depriving the public
of a great literary heritage. Frankly, there is more artis
try of lasting importance in Parker's film work for A Star
Is Born (1937) than in the typical gossamer evanescence
found in the play she wrote with Elmer Rice, Close Harmony
(1924). (Surely, Citizen Kane is of far greater signifi
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2 6 5
cance to the world of art than Mankiewicz's two brittle,
transient plays, which were scabrous failures even during
the frivolous 1920's.) This Algonquin crowd to which Park
er, Benchley, Connelly, and others were attached may have
been the source of great excitement and anecdotal revelry
for the graduate students of the Jazz Age (and subsequent
decades), but it seems questionable indeed to maintain that
the work they, and others, did for Hollywood was of less
consequence than their own humorously trivial, often belab
ored pursuits. The contribution the bright people of
Parker's New York group made was that it showed a way out of
the dank and stuffy Victorian woods, and to prepare the cli
mate for the more important works of others . Parker had
been one of these pioneers, and her contribution in this
regard has been by no means a minor one. The facts she
chose to select from experience added up (in her poetry and
stories) to very bleak meanings indeed, but none can say
that what she chose to report about the human condition was
inaccurate.
In 1921 Dorothy Parker expressed her opinion of
motion pictures in a "Hymn of Hate":
Every few minutes, there is a close-up of the star
Registering one of her three expressions.
The sub-titles ofter positive proof
That there is a place where bad metaphors go when
they die.
The critics agree unanimously
That the picture removes all doubt
As to whether movies should be classed among the
arts—
Removes all doubt is right. . . .
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266
I Hate Movies:
They lower my vitality.14
Nevertheless, in 1929 she was in Hollywood working for the
movies she openly despised. Robert E. Sherwood noted her
change of venue: "that ruthlessly wise poetess, Dorothy
Parker, was lured to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio in
Hollywood for the purpose of.writing dialogue for Madame X1
If they could get him, they would doubtless turn Eugene
O'Neill loose on Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm."15 (Ironi
cally, Sherwood's facetious comment turned out to be not
that outlandish; Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm was eventually
scripted by noted playwright S. N. Behrman.)
Parker made it clear that her years in Hollywood
were not happy ones: "Hollywood was a horror to me when I
was there and it's a horror to look back on. I can't imag
ine how I did it. When I got away from it I couldn't even
refer to the place by name. 'Out there1 I called it."16
"Hollywood smells like a laundry," she told Ward
Morehouse, drama critic of the New York World Telegram &
Sun. "The beautiful vegetables taste as if they were raised
in trunks, and at those wonderful supermarkets you find that
the vegetables are all wax. The flowers out there smell
like dirty, old dollar bills. Sure, you make money writing
on the coast, and God knows you earn it, but that money is
like so much compressed snow. It goes so fast it melts in
your hand.nl 7
She was cynical about the writers' motives: "I want
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267
nothing from Hollywood but money and anyone who tells you
that he came here for anything else or tries to make beauti
ful words out of it lies in his teeth."18 She was cynical
about the nature and quality of the work: "We are not
authors, we're just workers. Of course, our craft is a
respectable one, just as the carpenter's craft, for
instance, is respectable. You see, writing for films is
just like doing crossword puzzles— except that to do cross
word puzzles you have to have a certain knowledge of
words."1 9
Thus we have the ex-Algonquin wit cracking off about
the oppressive and artificial Hollywood. And indeed there
was much distortion of the noble ideals of art. But Park
er's statements are all so typical of those New York bright
people who had just about written themselves out in their
own efforts, enjoyed the Hollywood money, but, like someone
who was discovered to have a trashy best seller on his book
shelf, found it chic to deprecate something that has a kind
of perverse attraction. F. Scott Fitzgerald referred to
these people as the "spoiled writers," whose who waywardly,
subconsciously took grim pleasure in their indifference and
condescension toward the movie system: "The heroes are the
great corruptionists, or the supremely indifferent— by whom I
mean the spoiled writers, Hecht, Nunnally Johnson, Dotty
[Dorothy Parker], Dash Hammett, etc. That Dotty has
embraced the church and reads her office faithfully every
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day does not affect her indifference. So is one type of
Commy Malraux didn't list among his categories in Man1s Hope
— but nothing would disappoint her so vehemently as suc
cess."20 Indeed, these writers withheld a full dedication
to screenwriting, because that kind of major effort toward
the job would deny them the excuse for the righteous ire
they delighted in. In the case of Dorothy Parker, her
biographer, John Keats, wrote: "something always held her
back from full commitment. Possibly, commitment would have
made her happy, and happy was, probably, what she never
wanted to be."21
So many of this slick Eastern group did not like to
write. Parker, like Herman Mankiewicz, had an aversion to
the real toil of authorship; the whole crowd therefore was
quite susceptible to the allurements of a Hollywood job
which seemed less taxing literarily and intellectually. As
Pauline Kael says: "In Hollywood, they sat around building
on to each other's gags, covering up implausibilities and
dull spots, throwing new wisecracks on top of jokes they had
laughed at in New York. Screenwriting was an extension of
what they used to do for fun, and now they got paid for it.
They had liked to talk more than to write, and this weakness
became their way of life. As far as the official literary
culture was concerned, they dropped from sight."22 Even
when she was "unshackled" from the diversions of Hollywood
deadlines, as when she was doing a series of monthly book
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reviews for Esquire, Parker had an agonizing time forcing
herself to work. She missed many issues over a five-year
period (1958-1962), always for a variety of reasons. But
Harold Hayes, her editor at Esquire, knew the right reason:
"She seemed sincerely to detest writing. She truly hated to
write. She'd just lie about how far along she was with a
piece. She fled from the problem of doing anything."23
A sampling of the films that Parker helped write,
however, indicates that she was involved in some of the
screen's most engaging work: The Moon's Our Home (1936), A
Star Is Born (1937, Academy Award nomination for best
screenplay Trade Winds (1938), The Little Foxes (1941),
Saboteur (1942), Smash-up— The Story of a Woman (1947, sec
ond Academy nomination, this for best original story).
Regarding Saboteur, its director, Alfred Hitchcock, was
especially appreciative of some of the elements which Parker
put into her screenplay:
Some of her touches, I'm afraid, were missed alto
gether; they were too subtle. There was the scene of
the couple who boarded a train and landed in what
turned out to be the car for circus freaks. A midget
opens the door, and at first the couple can't see any
one; it's only when they look down that they see the
midget. Then there was the bearded lady with her beard
done up in curlers for the night. And the row between
the thin man and the midget, who was known as "the
Major." The Siamese twins who weren't on speaking
terms with each other and communicated through a third
person had a funny line. One of them says, "I wish
you'd tell her to do something about her insomnia. I
do nothing but toss and turn all night! "21f
She may have hated Hollywood, but motion pictures were
enriched through her efforts.
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270
Donald Ogden Stewart was a good friend of both Rob
ert Benchley and Dorothy Parker (Benchley was best man at
his first marriage in 1926). And, significantly, his career
pattern was identical to theirs. He began by writing a
series of parodies for Vanity Fair magazine, which he pub
lished as a book, A Parody Outline of History (1921). He
wrote a best seller called Proper Behavior (1922), and, in
the next few years, wrote a series of books which definitely
established him as a popular American humorist: Aunt
Polly's Story of Mankind (1923), Mr. and Mrs. Haddock Abroad
(1924), The Crazy Fool (1925), Mr. and Mrs. Haddock in
Paris, France (1926), Father William (1929), and a play,
Rebound (1930). Time has dulled the satire of these books
somewhat, although their flippant tone is still notal-
gically amusing.
True to the pattern of other of his Algonquin "Round
Table" colleagues, Stewart left for Hollywood, where he was
so successful as a screenwriter that he produced no other
literary works for 17 years. The films he wrote, however,
distinguished him as one of the best and most sought-after
artists in his adopted medium: Laughter (1930, Academy
Award nomination for best original story), Dinner at Eight
(1933) , The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Holiday (1938) , Love
Affair (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940, Academy Award
best screenplay), Kitty Foyle (1940), That Uncertain Feeling
(1941), Keeper of the Flame (1942), Life with Father (1947).
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After many successful years as a writer in Holly
wood, Stewart evolved a set of rules for survival: "Try to
find out who the star of your film will actually be. It's
very disconcerting to have written something for Joan Craw
ford and find it's Lana Turner who'll be the actual star.
Second, never tackle a screenplay at the beginning of its
development. Let the producer and his other writers mess
it up, and then, when they're faced with an actual shooting
date, you do the final job. And finally, you must learn not
to let them break your heart."25
A conclusion to be drawn from the greatest part of
Stewart's film work is that he was an excellent adaptor.
His adaptations, particularly of plays, are notable for both
their fidelity and sensitivity to the original material.
When Stewart does change a line or add an additional scene,
it is with an uncanny gift for writing in the precise style
of the playwright. He was, then, a kind of play doctor,
shaping and pruning other people's work, but guarding care
fully the illusion that it is they who were speaking.
In an article on Stewart, critic Gary Carey says
that "given Stewart's early reputation as a creative writer,
it is surprising that he found adaptation so fulfilling that
between 1930 and 1942 he never felt the need to return to
either the novel or the play as a form of personal expres
sion."26 In actual fact, Stewart was not fulfilled by his
work in Hollywood; he referred to himself as an "example of
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272
a talent that for ten years had been going to wrack and ruin
amid the alabaster swimming pools of Hollywood."27 In an
aptly titled article, "Sad Tale of a Penitent Humorist,"
Stewart was revealingly introspective: "The horrible catch
to it all is that they were ten marvelous years and I
enjoyed every minute. But I hadn't become the writer I set
out to be when I wrote Aunt Polly's Story of Mankind and
went about in drunken moments whispering that it was the
Candide of 1923. I shall spend the rest of my life making
up those ten years I wasted so beautifully."28
Ella Winter, the wife of Stewart, explains in her
autobiography, And Not to Yield, that Stewart wanted to get
away from Hollywood and devote himself to serious writing.
"He liked the film medium and did not join in the popular
fashion of denigrating film writing, but with more and more
to say about these momentous times, he sought a freer and
more independent form of self-expression."29
Stewart had supposedly "discovered his conscience,"
and the vehicle which was to return him to literary prestige
was a play, How I Wonder (19 47). But the depressing result
was (as in the case with Daniel Fuch's West of the Rockies)
that he was unable to revitalize the literary skills which
had lain dormant since 1930. The play received uniformly
negative critical notices. The cruelest review was by
George Jean Nathan, adding a further installment to his
catalogue of what he thought were examples of Hollywood's
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273
destruction of creative talent. The following is a long
excerpt from Nathan's review, but it is an almost perfect
rendering of that anti-Hollywood loathing of all that is
perceived to be at the root of literary inadequacy:
Mr. Stewart has been spending the last fifteen years
in Hollywood as a writer for the moving pictures. It
is apparent that, like many another writer for the mov
ing pictures in Hollywood, he has been thinking.
Thinking is the favorite extra-professional exercise of
such literati, particularly those who before their fall
were on the way to doing creditable work.
The thinking uniformly takes a single course. It
assumes the form of a resolve to achieve absolution and
regain self-respect through a piece of writing, gener
ally dramatic, which will attest to the fact that pro
longed immersion in Hollywood has not, as is offen
sively supposed, rotted what brains the thinker may
previously have had and that, on the contrary, he is
still possessed of the upper-crust talents which for so
long he condescendingly sacrificed to pecuniary riches.
The cerebration, flowering, thereupon develops into
two bouquets. First, its impresario concludes that his
dramatic rebirth must take the shape of a performance
which will be so markedly oppugnant to everything in
any manner even distantly associated with the screen
that people will be transportedly set back on their
tails by his inner contempt for the medium and by his
re-divulgation of his old, real, admirable self, for
years so lamentably suppressed. Secondly, he cautious
ly decides, the performance must nevertheless, despite
its immaculate design, have in it elements contributing
to commercial success, since if it were to fail he
might not get an invitation to return to Hollywood and
would find himself with his chemise hanging out. Our
cogitator thus frequently becomes the victim of his own
confusion and what he writes is neither fish, flesh nor
fowl, but only a marinated herring trailed across the
road between the films and the stage. His cerebral
fruit, moreover, which in his Hollywood surroundings
has impressed him as a veritable bolt from the blue and
as something intellectually revolutionary, has long
since, he gloomily discovers, become a platitude, and a
doddery one, in the more cognizant region of the drama.
His dramatic devices, which seemed to him so remarkably
original and imaginative in the stereotyped atmosphere
of the pictures, have, he learns, been employed time
and again in the years he has been absent in that
incinerator of talent. And even his commercial sense,
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so fully developed in him by his film bosses, is often
at severe odds with that of the more sophisticated
theatre box-office. He finds himself, in short, in the
position of one who has been a prodigy in the films and
who, attempting to graduate himself from the intellec
tual low grade, is shocked to realize that he is still
just a Quiz Kid, without the answers.30
In the middle 1920's Samuel Hoffenstein contributed
to the New York Tribune a column known as "The Dome," one of
the paper's most popular departments. With his Poems in
Praise of Practically Nothing (1928), sardonic verse of the
Jazz Age, he created a sensation. They were a characteris
tic product of the period in their cynicism, but there was a
note of gaiety that relieved them of all sourness and insin
cerity. Many predictions were made about his future as
poet, parodist, prominent man of letters. Comparisons could
be favorably made with Ogden Nash (another writer who tried
his hand in Hollywood). He supposedly confirmed the predic
tions with his Year In, You're Out in 1930.
He was then silent for 17 years until Pencil in the
Air (1947). Hollywood occupied the intervening years. He
himself felt that his Hollywood work had ruined his literary
career, and he never seemed to be fulfilled during those
years: Sheila Graham remembers him as one "who always
seemed unhappy."31 The following passage from his poem "The
Notebook of a Schnook," from Pencil in the Air, expresses a
little of the combination of whimsy and melancholy that Hof
fenstein felt after so long in the movie medium:
I write a scenario for moving pictures;
I let myself go without any strictures;
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My mind works in bright ascensions;
The characters swell and get dimensions;
The heroine rises from Gibel's basement
To what could be called a magic casement,
By sheer virtue and, call it pluck,
With maybe a reel and a half of luck;
She doesn’t use posterior palsy
Or displace so much as a single falsie;
She scorns the usual oo-la-la
And never ruffles a modest bra,
(The censor's dream of the cinema);
She doesn't find pearls in common oysters;
She sips a little but never roisters.
The hero's gonads are under wraps,
He never clutches or cuffs or slaps
In heat Vesuvian, or even Stygian—
He acts Oxonian or Cantabrigian
With maybe a soupgon of the South—
Cotton wouldn't melt in his mouth;
The plot would harmlessly beguile
A William Wordsworth honey chile;
The Big Shot's hot and the little shotlets
Wake their wives with contagious hotlets.
So what happens? The usual factors—
The studio simply can't get actors,
Directors, cutters, stagehands, stages,
Or girls to type the extra pages:
The way it ends, to put it briefly,
Is what happens is nothing, chiefly.32
Hoffenstein was, nevertheless, one of the best
Hollywood screenwriters. The tendency is great, for example,
to exhalt the genius of director Rouben Mamoulian on the
basis of three of his earliest and best accomplishments
(indeed he did little of comparable merit later): Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932), Love Me Tonight (1932), and Song
of Songs (1933). That is, until it is noted that Samuel
Hoffenstein did the scripts for all three. Each screenplay
is united with the others through a continuity of graceful
dialogue with an undercurrent of sexual tension and innuen
do. Admittedly, the films possess the visual textures of
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276
Mamoulian's stylized images, and a rhythm of performance
which is traceable to his sense of timing and pacing. But
the witty and provocative qualities of character insight
which are provided by the dialogue are more logically Hof
fenstein 's contributions. Observe in the following three
passages a consistent, unifying sexual basis (but always
with humor and charm) for the dramatic action.
In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll (Fredric
March) rescues a prostitute (Miriam Hopkins) from a street
gang who is beating her up. Escorting her home, Jekyll
offers his services as a doctor. "Look where he kicked me,"
complains the girl, provocatively drawing her skirts up to
reveal a shapely leg. After an innocent flirtation ("By the
way, you must not wear so tight a garter . . . It . . . er
. . . impedes the circulation"), Jekyll leaves with his com
panion Dr. Lanyon (Holmes Herbert).
Lanyon: I thought you conduct quite disgusting, Jekyll.
Jekyll: Conduct? Why, a pretty girl kissed me. Should
I call the constable? Even suppose I'd liked it?
Lanyon: Perhaps you've forgotten you're engaged to
Muriel?
Jekyll: Forgotten it? Can a man dying of thirst forget
water? And do you know what would happen to that
thirst if it were denied water?
Lanyon: If I understand you correctly, you sound almost
indecent.
In Love Me Tonight, the conversation between Prin
cess Jeanette (Jeanette MacDonald) and the Count de Savignac
(Charles Butterworth) is studded with double entendres (this
was before the 1934 Production Code restrictions):
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277
Princess: Count! I'm going to bed!
Count: I just came up to join you.
Princess: Join me!
Count: Join you in a little chat before dinner.
Princess: Not tonight. I've had another fainting spell
and my uncle the Duke thought bed was the best place
for me.
Count: I always think that. . . . I brought along my
flute hoping to entertain.
In Song of Songs, the Baron von Merzbach (Lionel
Atwill) arrives at Aunt Rasmussen's (Alison Skipworth) book
shop to bargain for her niece (Marlene Dietrich) in a gen
tlemanly way:
Baron: Let's not beat about the bush, Frau Rasmussen.
I have a library, a very extensive library, and I
require someone to take care of it; someone familiar
with books. Your niece could do it very well.
Aunt: My niece, Excellency?
Baron: She would have to live at my place. I am pre
pared to pay her a very liberal salary.
Aunt: Why, Excellency . . . (laughs] . . . my niece
could hardly . . . uh . . .
Baron: All the proprieties would be observed.
Aunt: Still, Excellency . . . [laughs] . . . a young
girl in a bachelor's household?
Baron: Hmmm! A very rare edition. A thousand marks?
[It is priced at 3 marks.] That's a lot of money
for a book. Understand me, Frau Rasmussen, when I
set my mind upon a thing, I usually get it, one way
or another.
Aunt: Perhaps your Excellency would be interested in
my other books?
Baron: Yes, no doubt, no doubt. I shall be dropping in
from time to time. Let me see, what were we talking
about? Oh, yes, your niece . . ,33
Hoffenstein's scripts for other commendable films
possessed a grace and verve: The Gay Divorcee (1934), Lydia
(1941), Tales of Manhattan (1942), Flesh and Fantasy (1943),
Laura (1944, Academy Award nomination for best screenplay),
Cluny Brown (1946, a very compatible collaboration with
Ernst Lubitsch). When Hoffenstein died in 1947, Ben Hecht
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278
gave him a suitably poignant epitaph: "he was not meant for
the roughhouse esthetics of Hollywood."31*
Dajhiell Hammett is thought of as one of the origi
nators ana foremost exponent of the "hard-boiled" or "tough
guy" story of detective fiction. Raymond Chandler wrote
that Hammett "gave murder back to the kind of people that
commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and
with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought duelling pis
tols, curare, and tropical fish."35 Hammett's short stories
are remarkable in the way they are written, but not in the
things they say. Their tersely casual characterization is
attractive in a gritty way, but they are not often memora
ble. His true achievement rests upon his five novels: Red
Harvest and The Pain Curse (both 1929), The Maltese Falcon
(1930), The Glass Key (1931), and The Thin Man (1934). Ham
mett's whole writing career, outside of film and radio work,
covered only twelve years and the novels only five.
Hammett went to Hollywood in 1930 to write for the
screen. He left in 19 42; during this period he was credited
with one screenplay (Watch On the Rhine, 1943) and four
original screen stories. Much of his work, in "polish"
form, went uncredited.
Hammett spent a couple years of very pleasant living
in Hollywood, during which time he produced no new stories
for the famous Black Mask magazine, a receptable for most of
the hard-boiled fiction of the late 1920's and 1930's which
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had published much of his earlier work. The readers con
stantly wrote the editor asking for new Hammett stories. In
desperation, the Black Mask editor ran an editorial: "we
have many letters asking when he'll have another story for
us. Our answer is 'maybe'— because when a fellow is pulling
$100,000 a year out of Hollywood we just don't have the
heart--or is it nerve?— to suggest that he knock off and
turn us out one of those great old Continental Op stories.
Anyway, we keep hoping."3 6
The Thin Man was written during Hammett's Hollywood
period in 1934, but William Nolan, in his critical study of
Hammett, finds significance in the type of hero that was
selected for the novel. Protagonist Nick Charles is de
picted as a self-indulgent playboy, an ex-detective who quit
the business to marry Nora and manage her properties, who
just wants to be left alone in his easy life. This charac
terization is a major break with the dark, morose, job-hold
ing detectives of previous works. Nolan perceives that
what, on the surface, is amusing and fresh in the published
version simply reflects Hammett's own decay as an individual
and as a writer. The discipline which held Hammett to the
typewriter was largely gone; he was a constant drinker; the
man could no longer believe in, nor write about, detectives
who resisted life's pleasures to get a case solved. This
novel reflects Hammett's own uncertainty in his career; it
foreshadowed the long years of creative silence ahead:
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after The Thin Man just three new short stories appeared
(all in 1934). There would be film, radio, and newspaper
work, but— at the age of 39— solid creative prose was behind
him. He would live another two and a half decades as a
silent novelist.37
It is significant that one of Hammett1s final short
stories, "This Little Pig," deals with Hollywood— and with a
specific nuance. In it, the protagonist is a hack screen
writer, Chauncey "Bugs" Parish, who interrupts a play he is
writing to help a producer "sex up my Western." The story
finds Parish a hack to the end, as he accepts another
quickie assignment: "Max Rhinewien had bought a Hungarian
comedy which he said needed more epigrams and talked me into
doing the adaptation."38
In flavor, mood, and general structure, this story
is much like F. Scott Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby tales, which
would appear several years later in Esquire. Since Fitz
gerald knew and read Hammett it is possible that Hobby might
have been partially inspired by Bugs Paris. But it is per
haps more interesting to note that in the last stages of his
literary output, Hammett should choose this portrait of the
meretricious hacker for his narrative focus. Just as Hobby
was a gloomy projection of Fitzgerald's worst fears within
the Hollywood framework, Parish may have functioned for Ham
mett on a somewhat similar symbolic level as a projection of
his own weaknesses and literary Philistinism.
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(Ironically, there was a dramatic reversal in the
careers of Hammett and dramatist Lillian Heilman, for years
his paramour. Just as 1934 marked the end of Hammett's com
pleted creative fiction, it also marked the beginning of
Heilman's success as a playwright. By the close of that
year, her first staged drama, The Children's Hour, was a
triumph in New York. From then on it was a pattern of con
tinued success.)
John Huston turned Hammett's The Maltese Falcon into
one of the screen's masterpieces by retaining the structure
and the dialogue of the novel practically sequence by
sequence and word for word. Huston simply had his secretary
recopy the book, setting it up in basic shots, scenes, dia
logue. He did some cutting and minor touch-up on the
"script" before going into production, but it was almost
entirely Hammett's novel. "Hammett remains the real author
of the film without ever having worked on it," wrote critic
Allen Eyles. "Huston . . . imposed no viewpoint of his own,
but sought to realize on film the atmosphere of the book,
merging precisely into the aloof position Hammett adopts in
his writing. Hammett's style is tersely descriptive,
involving no explanations of any of his characters, and is
entirely concerned in conveying a situation by its exter
nals, letting events speak for themselves."39
Although the film retains the novel's dialogue,
almost word for word, there are deletions. Huston elimi
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2 8 2
nated a minor character (Gutman's daughter) and dropped the
Flitcraft parable; he also toned down the homosexual aspects
of the Cairo-Cook relationship. And Huston's sharp ear for
dialogue improved the exchange between Cairo and Spade, when
the former offers a retaining foe. "You will take, say, one
hundred dollars?" he asks, and Spade replies (in the novel),
"Better make it two hundred." Huston's line was sharper:
"I will take, say, two hundred." He also added the detec
tive's final reply, as he holds the phony lead falcon, and
one of the cops asks what it is. Spade answers: "The stuff
that dreams are made of." I have always thought, however,
that this line was a bit contrived, too literary, and out-
of-character for a man like Spade to have uttered.40
When Hammett worked on the screen adaptation of
Lillian Heilman's stage drama, Watch on the Rhine, he wanted
to be as faithful to it as Huston had been to his novel. It
became Hammett's only screenplay, but he claimed no credit
for the job. "The material was all there," he said. "I
simply arranged it in screen form." When the picture was
released the New York Herald Tribune commented: "Dashiell
Hammett, who did the screenplay . . . has retained prac
tically every word . . . adding only a few scenes because of
the wider latitude of the screen." It was to be his last
direct contribution to Hollywood.41
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Writers Who Took Periodic Employment
in Hollywood— Continued to Write
Subsequent Works of Their Own
Because of F. Scott Fitzgerald's literary reputa
tion, there has been a tendency to ascribe unjustified blame
to Hollywood for his general physical and psychological
debility during the later screenwriting years. Actually, as
early as 1929, Fitzgerald's personal life began to change as
radically as the life of the nation itself. Without pushing
the analogy too far, it is possible to point to similarities
between the stock market crash of 1929, which ushered in the
great Depression of the 1930's (and brought to the fore a
new generation of writers deeply committed to social protest
and the proletarian novel), and the subsequent collapse of
both the Fitzgeralds— Scott into a state of "emotional bank
ruptcy" and his wife Zelda into schizophrenia and insanity.
The great splurge of the 1920's, of which Fitzgerald, per
haps more than any other individual of the period, had been
the glittering symbol, had ended, for both man and nation,
in depression and despair— indeed, in the very kind of
tragedy that Fitzgerald himself, in creating the great Gats-
by (.1925) had developed from both a personal and a cultural
situation, so too did Tender Is the Night (1934) . Nine
years, however, had elapsed between the two novels, and the
world had undergone a violent change in this time. By 1934,
Fitzgerald was struggling to survive and endure "in a real
dark night of the soul," as he wrote in The Crack-up, "where
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it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day."1 *2
When Fitzgerald ended up in Hollywood for the last
time (1937-1940)— he was there for very brief periods
before: January-March, 1927; November, 1931-May, 1932— his
previous major literary work was Tender Is the Night, a com
mercial failure of three years before. Thus, he certainly
was not silenced by the Hollywood "system"; his readership
was already unresponsive to this clarion voice of the by
gone Jazz Age. To Fitzgerald, Hollywood represented a sal
vational rather than a destructive force.
Aaron Latham has done a remarkably thorough job on
the Hollywood years of Fitzgerald in his Crazy Sundays
(19 71), but perhaps a little more elaboration should be
given to the contention that Hollywood was not a stimulation
to the writer's dissipation. Rather, from the throes of
^dissipation, Fitzgerald managed to use his Hollywood experi
ences in order to "paste it together," re-order his literary
perspective, and marshal his energies to begin writing what
might have been his best work, The Last Tycoon. To be sure,
the milieu was often perverse, shallow, frustrating, and
stupid; what in the beginning was a brave new hope of con
tributing solid, innovative dimension to the films on which
he worked, soon deteriorated to a melancholy acceptance of
the commercial and often gross exigencies of the medium.
But he was there of his own free will, seeking a way out of
his own personal darkness. In his own literary life, it
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2 8 5
looks as if he succeeded. If he had lived, he might have
become a viable patron saint for all Eastern writers who
made the trip West.
Unlike his literary counterpart, Manley Halliday in
The Disenchanted, Fitzgerald was not a film snob. He had
expressed in The Crack-Up that "as long past as 1930, I had
a hunch that the talkies would make even the best-selling
novelist as archaic as silent pictures."43 He plunged into
a study of filmmaking that even included a card file of the
plot lines of all the pictures he had seen.44
There is little doubt that the advent of the film
work would have a powerful impact on the image he had of
himself. When he went to Hollywood in these later years he
knew
I have now at last become a writer only. The man I had
persistently tried to be became such a burden that I
have "cut him loose" with as little compunction as Negro
lady cuts loose a rival on Saturday night. . . . The old
dream of being an entire man in the Goethe-Byron-Shaw
tradition, with an opulent American touch, a sort of
combination of J. P. Morgan, Topham Beauclerk, and St.
Francis of Assisi, has been relegated to the junk heap
of the shoulder pads worn one day on the Princeton
freshman football field and the overseas cap never worn
overseas.4 5
Ironically, it was this same kind of imagery that was used
(by writer Dorothy Herzog in a Photoplay article) to de
scribe production head Irving Thalberg: "a combined Horatio
Alger hero, Peter Pan, Napoleon, Falstaff, and J. Pierpont
Morgan."46 Thalberg, a gentle, sensitive producer who had
most favorably impressed Fitzgerald in Hollywood, would
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become the protagonist (in the persona of Monroe Stahr) of
The Last Tycoon.
In the beginning Fitzgerald was very optimistic: "I
love it here. It's nice work if you can get it and you can
get it if you try about three years. The point is once
you've got it— Screen Credit 1st, a Hit 2nd, and the Academy
Award 3rd— you can count on it forever . . . and know
there's one place you'll be fed without being asked to even
wash the dishes."h7
The pessimism and disillusionment came with the re
writing by producer Joseph Mankiewicz of his script for
Three Comrades (193 8), which Fitzgerald considered a mutila
tion of an honest and delicate piece of work. Mankiewicz
liked the way Fitzgerald had brought the characters to life
against their background, but he found Fitzgerald's dialogue
too flowery and redundant— the work of a novelist rather
than a screenwriter. Fitzgerald's touches of magic also
seemed irrelevant. For example, when one of the three com
rades phoned his sweetheart, an angel was supposed to plug
in the connection at the hotel switchboard. Fitzgerald
wrote Mankiewicz: "To say I'm disillusioned is putting it
mildly. For nineteen years I've written best selling enter
tainment, and my dialogue is supposedly right up at the top.
. . . You had something and you have arbitrarily and care
lessly torn it to pieces. . . . I am utterly miserable at
seeing months of work and thought negated in one hasty week.
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. . .Oh, Joe, can't producers ever be wrong? I'm a good
writer— honest. I thought you were going to play fair." 1+8
After this set-back Fitzgerald wrote his daughter,
Scottie: "You don't realize that what I am doing is the
last tired effort of a man who once did something finer and
better."49 From an initial hope of regaining his momentar
ily obscured stature, Fitzgerald's vision now focused on
"this amazing business which has a way of whizzing you along
at terrific speed and then letting you wait in a dispirited,
half-cocked mood when you don't feel like undertaking any
thing else, while it makes up its mind. It is a strange
conglomeration of a few excellent overtired men making the
pictures, and as dismal a crowd of fakes and hacks at the
bottom as you can imagine."50 As for Hollywood itself, he
called it "a dump . . . a hideous town, pointed up by the
insulting gradens of its rich, full of the human spirit at a
new low of debasement."51
It was during this dark period that Fitzgerald wrote
the Pat Hobby stories (17 in all, for Esquire), which were a
sardonic portrait of a broken-down script writer and a per
sonification of what he feared he himself might become.
Hobby, who is 49 years old, has been a screenwriter for 20
years, during which time he has earned 30 credits. Accord
ing to Hobby, filmmaking is an industry, not an art ("Boil
Some Water— Lots of It"); consequently, he regards himself
as a writer, not an author ("Mightier Than the Sword").
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When assigned to do an adaptation, Hobby does not trouble
himself to read the original; instead he gets four of his
friends to study the source and after they give him their
reactions, he does the scenario ("A Man in the Way"). In
deed Hobby— who "used to be a good man for structure"— has
"scarcely opened a book in a decade"; he remarks: "In
silent days was where you got real training--with directors
shooting off the cuff and needing a gag in a split second.
Now it's a sis job. They got English teachers working in
pictures" ("Teamed with Genius"). Hence, he has had only a
few credits in the past five years ("Pat Hobby and Orson
Welles"); and his salary has dropped to $250 a week ("Pat
Hobby's Secret"). In view of the fact that "not so much as
a trio of picture writers were known to the public" ("The
Homes of the Stars"), Hobby's great dream is to become a
producer ("Pat Hobby's Christmas Wish"). In spite of the
comic approach taken in the series, Fitzgerald's cynicism
over his Hollywood experiences can be detected.52 Hobby was
pre-dated by Hammett's Bugs Parish, but it seems reasonable
to suppose that the conception of Hobby was functioning in
subsequent characters, such as Charlie Castle in Odets' The
Big Knife, Sy Clifton in Gilbert's The Squirrel Cage, and
partially in Sammy Glick in Schulberg's What Makes Sammy
Run?
In spite of the disillusionment, Fitzgerald wrote to
Scottie in the Winter of 1939 that "I expect to dip in and
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289
out of the pictures for the rest of my natural life, but it
is not very soul-satisfying because it is a business of
telling stories fit for children and this is only interest
ing up to a point."53 Fitzgerald's ultimate reassertion of
artistry would be literary, through his former medium, the
novel. Hollywood was the source of perhaps his greatest
literary achievement, The Last Tycoon.
"No one's yet written the novel on Hollywood," Fitz
gerald told Sheilah Graham, adding that "most writers had
approached Hollywood almost sneeringly, treating it as
though it were a cartoon strip peopled by one-dimensional
'Comic:-book characters--every producer gross and illiterate,
every writer charmingly unstable, every star an overgrown
child." He vowed to write "a serious novel" about the
movies, its focus on Thalberg, and its basic theme "the cre
ative versus the commercial."5^ The Last Tycoon represents
one of the most striking applications of the cinematic
imagination to a literary subject, in its thematic collision
between money and art, in its quick-cutting structure. It
is a solid manifestation of a literary reawakening for Fitz
gerald, that in Hollywood he found the genesis for a keener
grasp on the consciousness of society. Hollywood may have
misused Fitzgerald's talents as screenwriter, but it did
nothing to curtail those literary skills and perceptions
which made him one of the few great novelists America has
produced.
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John Dos Passos has commented on this salutary interaction
between Fitzgerald and Hollywood: "Hollywood, the subject
of The Last Tycoon, is probably the most important and the
most difficult subject for our time to deal with. Whether
we like it or not it is in that great bargain sale of five-
and ten-cent lusts and dreams that the new bottom level of
our culture is being created. The fact that at the end of a
life of brilliant worldly successes and crushing disasters
Scott Fitzgerald was engaged so ably in a work of such
importance proves him to have been the first-rate novelist
his friends believed him to be. . . . Even in their unfin
ished state these fragments, I believe, are of sufficient
dimensions to raise the level of American fiction to follow
in some such way as Marlowe's blank verse line raised the
whole level of Elizabethan verse."55
. . . . . : .Budd Schulberg confirms this evaluation of a Fitz
gerald writing with a power which was undiminished by his
screenwriting work: "he had drawn upon Hollywood for sub
ject matter, for technique and finally for moral insight.
To learn of his struggles there, his 'crazy Sundays,' but
also his hard-working Mondays, is to reaffirm one's faith in
the stamina of genius."56
In 1939 critic Edmund Wilson wrote that he had been
worried that novelist Nathanael West had fallen victim to
Hollywood. As indicated in the quotation from West (above,
Chapter III), in which he explains his motivation for going
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291
to Hollywood, he simply was unable to survive on the earn
ings ($780) from two previous books. After the commercial
failure of his classic Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) , West
decided that screenwriting was a way to provide money so
that his own creative endeavors might continue. The follow
ing years in Hollywood were a period of gestation, years
which might have given Edmund Wilson some apprehension, but
which resulted in his brilliant The Day of the Locust
(1939) . And Wilson greeted it this way: "Nathanael West,
the author of Miss Lonelyhearts, went to Hollywood a few
years ago, and his silence had been causing his readers
alarm lest he might have faded out on the Coast as so many
of his fellows have done. But Mr. West, as this new book
happily proves, is still alive beyond the mountains, and
quite able to set down what he feels and sees— has still, in
short, remained an artist."57
The Day of the Locust is not so much a story of
Hollywood as a kind of parable of the failure of the Ameri
can dream. Homer Simpson, a central character, finds him
self in the midst of people who have been brought up on the
movies and are bored with life as they find it. He is
typical of the thousands of middle-aged middle-class folk
who save their money and go to California in search of sun
shine and glamour, only to find monotony and tinsel and,
finally, death. West's characters are a mixture of degen
eracy, failure, and boredom, grotesques inhabiting the
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satiric half-world he has created. The novel's underlying
motif is the falsity of American values: everything in the
book is phony— the language, the buildings, the actors, and
finally, life itself as seen in Hollywood. If the novel is
depressing in its truth, it is brilliant in its power and
artistry.
West's view of screenwriting had varied from despair
to resignation to ironical delight, but he was unusual among
the majority of Hollywood writers in his complete indiffer
ence toward the artfulness of his own films. Unlike the so-
called "glamour" dramatists and novelists, who impressed the
studio moguls with their prestigious literary reputations
and who earned very large weekly salaries (like Fitzgerald,
at first), West, author of three distinguished novels (be-
fore Locust)— The Dream of Balso Snell, Miss Lonelyhearts, . .
and A Cool Million— but which had no commercial impact,
found that in the hierarchies of Hollywood he had no status
at all. Thus, throughout his Hollywood period (1933-1940),
West would be employed by relatively small-fry studios,
Republic and RKO, at salaries which averaged around $2 50 a
week: compared to Fitzgerald's $1250 a week at M-G-M.
Republic and RKO generally turned out very low-budget pic
tures, but West said that he preferred to work on B or even
C movies, since writing these was mechanical and did not
involve creative energy at all. He could easily write lines
like, "Pardner, when you say that, smile." It was "rela
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2 9 3
tively painless and I can concentrate on what I want to
write for myself." (His novels he wrote out by hand, typed
and corrected them himself, and worked them again and again.
His film outlines and treatments he dictated quickly and
even gaily, often in collaboration and in running conversa
tion with his secretary.)58
He regarded his screenwriting as hack work, ways of
making money; and he had no illusions about the value of the
scripts. Importantly, he did not feel that he had been
exploited in doing this work. "While he resisted the con
descension then regarded as typical of the New Yorker atti
tude toward movies, he clearly, on the level of conscious
ness that was the source of his fiction, detested the stu
dios and their product; he felt tied to them by economics
but never by affection; and if fascinated, he was also
disgusted."59 This semi-ambivalence was present when he
turned to writing his novel, which was to be drawn from
these Hollywood experiences. The tone and thematic focus of
the book could not be a "balanced" reflection; he had to be
highly selective for the sake of art. West explained his
difficulty in this regard: "If I put into Day of the Locust
any of the sincere, honest people who work here and are mak
ing such a great, progressive fight, those chapters couldn't
be written satirically and the whole fabric of the peculiar
half world which I attempted to create would be badly torn
by them."6 0
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So much of West's film work, reduced in the studio
mills to conformity with the formulas of the low-budget pro
grammer, is unworthy of discussion. But Five Came Back
(1938), about a plane crash in a jungle and the dramatic
decisions to be made as to which five of the survivors would
be chosen for salvation in the damaged plane, contains some
imaginative twists in the standard melodrama format. I_
Stole a Million (1939) gave West his first important solo
screen credit, and Joseph I. Breen, director of the Motion
Picture Producers and Distributors of America, said that of
the 3,60 0 stories, scripts, plays, novels handled during the
year, "this new treatment by Mr. West is, by far, the best
piece of craftsmanship in screen adaption (sic) that we have
seen— certainly, in a year."61 This was dubious praise from
the head of the censorship board, and West was greatly
amused by it. But it meant added security, because from
such adulation came increases in salary. And, interesting
ly, West did the first screenplay version of Frances Isles's
Before the Fact, to be filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as Suspi
cion (1941). Hitchcock's version, however, was re-written
by Sam Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, and Alma Reville, and the
basic conception of the protagonist in West's version was
changed from a murderer to a cad. Jay Martin, West's biog
rapher, claims West's conception was superior: "Better con
ceived, motivated, and dramatized than Isles's novel of Sus
picion, Before the Fact was West's best script: years later
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Hitchcock called it an 'absolutely beautiful script,' which
he had altered only because he could not work with material
entirely executed by others."62
Ironically, while Fitzgerald continued to struggle
learning the nuances of film technique and to have his
scripts rewritten by others, West, indifferent to screen
art, was earning a string of solo credits and was increas
ingly regarded as a skilled craftsman. Hollywood was, as
West had said, a peculiar half-world, with strange turnings.
Had not Fitzgerald's books seemed destined for popularity in
the 1920's while West, in the 1930's, saw his own books fall
silently into oblivion? Now, for all Fitzgerald's thrash
ings, his position vis a vis the Hollywood establishment was
very tenuous indeed. West, though Locust sank from sight
quickly after publication, was beginning to rise out of the
ranks of the screen hacks. As Martin concludes, "What was
success . . . and by what curious circuits did it come? And
if he could satisfy millions of film viewers, West must have
asked himself, why could he reach no more than 1,500 with
his novels?"63
In viewing the careers of two great writers, one
simple, salient fact emerges: F. Scott Fitzgerald and
Nathanael West each wrote a major American novel while
simultaneously occuped with writing motion pictures. The
fact that important literature continued to be produced by
major writers, such as Fitzgerald and West (as well as Faulk
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296
ner, Steinbeck, Anderson, et al.), during and after their
Hollywood employment, tends to mitigate the almost aphoris-
mic claim that Hollywood was virtually transcendental in its
debasement of literary talent. This is a significant factor
in the saga of the intellectual in Hollywood, for as Carolyn
See writes, "in Hollywood dreams sometimes do come true, and
this was certainly another seductive aspect of the city for
those writers who may have come here to sell their souls but
never got around to it."64 It seems unlikely that the
American dream was fulfilled for either Fitzgerald or West,
in Hollywood or out. Ironies converged on December 21,
19 40, with the death of Fitzgerald after a life of physical
dissipation, and the very next day, with the death of West
in an automobile accident. But if the dream went unful
filled, their last works remain as a fruition of a kind of a
literary and economic calvary, an artistic redemption which
must not be underestimated. And it seems as if Hollywood
helped.
The careers of novelists James M. Cain and Raymond
Chandler intersect on several different levels. Both began
writing novels fairly late in their writing careers, both in
the so-called "hard-boiled" or "tough guy" style; Chandler
would help adapt a Cain novel into one of the most pungent
and muscular films of the 1940's, Double Indemnity (1944);
both, after periods of Hollywood screenwriting (a less suc
cessful venture for Cain than for Chandler), continued a
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297
fertile productivity of their fiction, both possessed of a
rock-solid equilibrium and resolve to retain their literary
integrity.
James M. Cain was a newspaperman, essayist, short
story writer before he went to Hollywood. Right before he
accepted the screenwriting assignment, he had worked for
Harold Ross at The New Yorker as managing editor. Signifi
cantly, and ironically, in light of Ross's well-known con
descension toward Hollywood, Cain felt that working for Ross
was more personally draining than working at the studios:
"It was, for some reason, the most compromising to self-
respect of any period in my life. . . . He wasn't for me."65
Thus, in 1931, Cain secured a six-month Hollywood contract a
at $400 a week, twice his New Yorker salary.
Cain was not a successful screenwriter, but he
claims to have learned a little about writing from the expe
rience and from other movie people. He was to receive only
five film credits: Algiers (1938), Stand Up and Fight
(1939), When Tomorrow Comes (1939), Gypsy Wildcat (1944),
Everybody Does It (19 49), none of which approached the
gritty, real quality which he achieved in his novels. But
three films (not scripted by him) made from those novels—
Double Indemnity (1944) , Mildred Pierce (1945), The Postman
Always Rings Twice (1946)— have been critically received as
superbly executed products of the studio years.
From childhood Cain had never had much respect for
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298
films, feeling at times a contempt: "And it has never left
me. It explains, I think, more than anything else, why I
flopped in Hollywood. I wanted the picture money, I worked
like a dog to get it, I parked my pride, my aesthetic con
victions, my mind outside on the street, and did everything
to be a success at this highly paid trade. I studied the
'Technique1 of moving pictures, I did everything to become
adept at them. The one thing I could not park was my nose.
My dislike of pictures went down to my guts, and that's why
I couldn't possibly write them."66
That Cain flopped as a screenwriter is not as impor
tant, however, as the fact that during these years in Holly
wood he began writing his novels. Cain had never written
any fictional pieces longer than a short story before he
began working in films. But in 1933 he wrote perhaps his
best novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, which created a
sensation. This prompted M-G-M to hire Cain to write a
script. Feeling that the assignment was getting nowhere,
Cain, to release himself from his obligation (while simul
taneously serving to release him for those occasional
charges that he "sold out" to Hollywood), returned the down
payment to the studio! So unprecedented was this gesture
that the check remained uncashed for months: there were no
provisions in the studio accountancy system to record the
return of money paid to an author.67
Cain credits the movies with having taught him a few
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299
cinematic techniques which have influenced his fiction. As
Edmund Wilson has pointed out in "The Boys in the Back
Room," even novelists who did not write for the movies have
been influenced by their pace, themes, characters, tone, and
attitudes.6 8 The emphasis on violence in movies inheres in
the nature of the medium itself, for effects of rapid and
cataclysmic action are especially adaptable to the cinematic
framework. This suggests why the tough novels which were
Cain's specialty seem cinematic in structure and technique.
In "Camera Obscura," an important essay which
appeared in The American Mercury in 1933, Cain expresses his
own hard-boiled perspective on writing for the movies: "Of
the 30 0 or so writers actually employed in Hollywood, I sup
pose I know fifty, and I don't know one who doesn't dislike
movie work, and wish he could afford to quit it."69 He then
goes on to make a statement which tends to substantiate the
general thesis of this paper, i.e., the best of the estab
lished Eastern writers were able to function effectively
within the studio mechanism, while continuing to remain fer
tile in their own writing fields:
The ones who find it least irksome, oddly enough, are
those who were professional novelists, playwrights, or
story writers before they came to it. This is not
because they are better at it, or are more politely
treated, or have thicker skins. It is because, for
„theia, it is not the only egg in the basket. If they
fail" at it, or get into a row with some supervisor, or
for one reason or another have to leave, they still have
their trade to fall back on. To them, the movies are
only a sideline, and an unimportant one except for the
money that is in it; their real work, the thing that
seems worth while to them, is something else. Thus they
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300
shed studio grief easily and even manage to regard it a
bit humorously.70
Cain concluded his essay with the typically reasoned and
balanced view that, while there was much to condemn in the
situation which existed for the writer in Hollywood, "there
are worse trades than confecting entertainment, and if you
realize clearly that you are at work on entertainment, some
thing that lives tonight and tomorrow is forgotten, then the
suspicion that you are a prostitute of the arts loses much
of its sting."71
Cain's novel Double Indemnity was filmed by director
Billy Wilder in 19 44, and is considered a landmark in the
history of the cinema. It was Raymond Chandler's first film
assignment (he went to work for Paramount in 1943, and quit
in 1946— with one reprise in 1951 for Hitchcock's Strangers
on a Train--a career similar to, though vastly more success
ful than Cain's). Cain tells of his encounter with Chandler
and Wilder. Complaining that Chandler was throwing away
Cain's trenchant, terse dialogue, Wilder got some student
actors in from the Paramount acting school, coached them,
and let Chandler hear what it would be like if he would only
put in the script what was in the book. "It sounded like
holy hell, to Wilder's utter astonishment. Then Chandler
explained to Wilder what the trouble was: 'I could have
told you,' said Chandler, 'that Cain's dialogue, in his fic
tion, is written to the eye. That ragged righthand margin
that you find so exciting, is wonderful to look at, but it
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301
can't be recited by actors. Now that we've got that out of
the way, let's dialogue it in the same spirit as he has in
the book, but not the identically same words.' They got me
over there, purportedly to discuss something else, but I
detected the real reason Wilder wanted to see me was in the
hope I would contradict Chandler, and somehow explain what
had evaporated when the kids tried to do my lines. But at
once, I bore Chandler out— reminding Wilder I could write
spoken enough, but on the printed page there just wasn't
room for talky climaxes. Chandler, an older man a bit irked
by Wilder's omniscience, had this odd smile on his face as
the talk went on."72
To Hamish Hamilton, his English publisher, Chandler
wrote: "Working with Billy Wilder on Double Indemnity was
an agonizing experience and has probably shortened my life,
but I learned from it about as much about screen writing as
I am capable of learning, which is not very much,"73 an
attitude similar to Cain's. Chandler received an Academy
nomination for best screenplay for Double Indemnity. It was
not The Maltese Falcon (1941) , as is often asserted, that
started a trend in high-budget private-eye pictures, but
Double Indemnity and Chandler's own Murder, My Sweet (1944;
adapted from his novel Farewell, My Lovely, 1940). In a
letter to his producer, Joseph Sistrom, Chandler said that
there was "no question but that Double Indemnity started it,
although it was not exactly a mystery."71*
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302
Aware of the realities of the cinema, as he experi
enced them, James M. Cain knew that what he had to say could
be said only in the solitude of novel writing, only in the
way a novel can say things. And Cain spoke often from his
own personal vision, and in cogent demonstration of his dis
cipline and dedication; every Cain novel was written during
or after his periods of screenwriting. These are represen
tative works: in addition to The Postman Always Rings
Twice, Serenade (1937), Mildred Pierce (1941), Love1s Lovely
Counterfeit (1942), Three of a Kind (1943, contains Career
in C Major, The Embezzler, and Double Indemnity), Past All
Dishonor (1946), The Butterfly (1947) , Galatea (1953) , Mig-
non (1962), The Magician's Wife (1965).
Raymond Chandler essentially agreed with Cain's
view: "The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in
little and then take half of that little out and still pre
serve an effect of leisure and natural movement."75 But
Chandler, unlike Cain, met and subdued the challenge of
screenwriting with a small but impressive number of tautly
written screenplays: in addition to Double Indemnity, The
Unseen (1945), The Blue Dahlia (1946), for which Chandler
received an Academy nomination for best original screenplay,
Strangers on a Train (1951).
Chandler's above description of screenwriting is a
good definition of the tough-guy novels in general, and
especially his. He was like Cain in that he was able to
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303
function effectively within and around the framework of
intermittent Hollywood assignments. His talents as screen
writer were solicited on the basis of his excellent tough
novels The Big Sleep (1939) , Farewell My Lovely (1940), The
High Window (1942) , but he remained impressively creative
after Hollywood exposure. Thus, future novels followed:
Red Wind (1946) , Spanish Blood (1946) , The Little Sister
(1949), The Long Goodbye (1954), Playback (1958).
Raymond Chandler's literary production in fiction,
like Cain':?, was not voluminous. Yet at his death he was
translated and published in 18 countries. Whether his work
(or, indeed, Cain's) will be elevated to a "literary" status
is problematical. The genre of fiction which these two men
wrote simply is not fashionable enough for such a status.
But as Philip Durham, Chandler's biographer, writes: "an
evaluation of his work must take into account two character
istics: he made extended use of the American vernacular,
writing a prose that seemed for many to be the nearest one
can come to a recognizable American language; and he created
a symbolic American man [Philip Marlowe] who lived in a
melting pot American city and acted in the traditional
American way."76
The pattern of similarities for these various writ
ers extends to Horace McCoy, from the "tough" school like
Cain and Chandler and sharing their contempt for Hollywood
screenwriting employment. Cain and Chandler, however,
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3 0 4
accepted a studio writing position only when the project
appealed to them or if they needed money. They were highly
selective, and were very careful not to get ensnared into
any arrangement which severely limited their independent
writing. (Raymond Chandler, for example, after a four-year
gap between pictures, explains his eventual acceptance of
the Strangers on a Train assignment: "I got myself involved
in a film job doing a script for Alfred Hitchcock and I
don't seem able to do anything else while I'm at it. It's a
silly enough story and quite a chore. Why am I doing it?
Partly because I thought I might like Hitch, which I do,
and partly because one gets tired of saying no, and someday
I might want to say yes and not get asked. But it won't
last beyond the end of this month, I think and hope."77)
McCoy had a much more profound involvement with Hollywood,
committing almost 2 0 years to screenwriting, contributing to
approximately 10 0 films, earning 3 6 screen credits. This
kind of immersion in an activity which he claims to have
bated tends to undercut the cogency of his protestations,
and makes suspect the sincerity of his charges that the sys
tem was evil. Twenty years is certainly a long enough time
for him to have extricated himself, as others have done, if
he found the work odious.
The films which he wrote off and on between 1933 and
19 55 are of little consequence. Like those with which
Nathanael West was connected, the features varied between
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3 0 5
low-budget westerns and routine melodramas. But more impor
tantly to our study is that McCoy, who was a newspaperman
and a short story writer and a Hollywood extra before turn
ing novelist, found that Hollywood was not a retarding
influence (and was, in fact, at times a catalyst) on his
personal writing. As Thomas Sturak maintains in "Horace
McCoy's Objective Lyricism": "In terms of his career as a
novelist, McCoy's own experiences in the down-and-out world
of the Hollywood extra during the early thirties were cru
cial and determinative. Besides providing him with raw
materials for two books [They Shoot Horses, Don't They,
1935; I Should Have Stayed Home, 1938], the initial shock of
failure and the struggle for success set the emotional bent
of his creative imagination in all of his subsequent serious
fiction."78
Like Cain, all of McCoy's novels were written after
he began as a Hollywood screenwriter. His first novel, They
Shoot Horses, Don't They? while of little commercial impact,
was an unquestionable succesr.d' estime and a brilliant tour
de force which drew upon his early experiences and observa
tions in Hollywood. His next novel was No Pockets in a
Shroud (1937), which he closely followed with I Should Have
Stayed Home. Qualifying for inclusion in the sub-genre of
the "Hollywood" novel, this latter work has at its core what
McCoy calls "the most terrifying town in the world." In
constructing the moral, "keep away from Hollywood," McCoy is
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306
warning not only his naive hero (Ralph Carston), but empa
thizing with "sellouts" like an idealistic writer turned
cynic (Johnny Hill), who evidently served as McCoy's per
sona. As the Saturday Review recognized, "Horace McCoy
hates Hollywood, not enough to stay away from it but enough
to get all the bile out of his system in a short, bitter,
name-calling novel."79
Sturak observed that McCoy himself struck no tragic
figure as a Hollywood writer; his public image was hardly
that of an artiste manqud. Privately, however, he felt him
self a failure. But They Shoot Horses, Don't They? began to
enjoy a considerable underground reputation. Word began to
drift back to the United States that in Paris "everyone in
the knowledgeable world talks about American writers, about
a curious trinity: Hemingway, Faulkner, and McCoy."
Another report described McCoy as "the most discussed
American writer in France."30
Flattered and frightened by this sudden "spectacle
of a dead man rising" McCoy made his fourth novel, Kiss
Tomorrow Goodbye (1948) , the acid test of his creative
genius and artistic talents— to prove, as it were, both to
himself and to the world that his previous works, especially
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, had not been flukes and that
his revival abroad was not merely a Frenchman's fancy. On
the surface the novel was an example of the popular drama of
the rise and fall of a gangster; subliminally, it is his
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307
most damning novel about himself in Hollywood.81
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye is a confirmation of McCoy's
vitality, a signpost, like The Day of the Locust was for
West, that he was "alive and well in Hollywood." In its
thematic preoccupations with states of awareness, failure
and success, death and rebirth, and the quest for self-
identity, the novel reflected a period of crisis in his own
life which was dominated by a mood of disintegration and
complicated by a promising turn of fortune so sudden and
unexpected that it was, McCoy wrote in a letter, "something
like a miracle, to be revived after all these years with
such a fanfare." Time and again in his personal letters, he
spoke of the book's importance to him "as a symbol" of his
regeneration as a writer. Indeed, critic Sturak perceives
the novel "as both the climax of his career and a paradigm
of his creative imagination."82 (His final novel, Scalpel,
was published in 1952.)
Basically sensitive and honest, McCoy was torn all
his life between the crude material values of fame and for
tune, and a dream of enduring greatness. His professional
and private lives represented a classic tension between the
traditional poles of art and financial success. Throughout
his life McCoy struggled with a compulsion to fulfill a
heightened conception of himself as an artist. Sturak con
cludes that "the clash of this romantic illusion and the
inexorable realities of time and existence resulted in deep
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308
feelings of guilt, self-doubt, and self-division. Trans
muted by his imagination, these reactions inform all of his
fictional dramas as failure, success, corruption, and un
requited ambition."83 Whether, in the end, McCoy's own
self-vision was achieved it is impossible to know; but the
view of McCoy's literary works from an external critical
perspective, illuminated by the glossy neon of a background
Hollywood sign, is of a meaningful achievement etched in
success.
Rose Franken earned seven film credits during a
Hollywood period which extended from 1934 to 1946. Again,
as with the films by Cain and McCoy, the projects are of
little interest, with perhaps the exception of Claudia and
David (1946), which is an engaging utilization of the char
acters and concepts of her Claudia series from prose fiction
and the Broadway stage. Of primary importance is the fact
that Miss Franken was a most energetic and vital author in
her three major areas of endeavor: novels, plays, and
motion pictures.
Her celebrity is largely based on her Claudia novels,
which deal with the happy domestic life of her girlish hero
ine over the course of two decades. These books are light,
often sentimental, and notable for their extensive reliance
on the gay, idiosyncratic speech of the chief protagonists,
Claudia and her husband David.
Certainly not content with creative outlets of the
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309
caliber of her first film credit, Elinor Norton (1934),
Franken supplemented her Hollywood work with prominent
efforts in other literary fields. The following are repre
sentative novels and plays that were written concurrently
with and after her motion pictures in Hollywood.
NOVELS PLAYS
Claudia and David (1940 Claudia (1941)
Another Claudia (1943) Outrageous Fortune (1943)
From Claudia to David (1950) Doctors Disagree (1943)
The Fragile Years (1952) Soldier's Wife (1944)
Rendezvous (1953) The Hallams (1948)
Third Person Intimate (1955)
The Antic Years (1958)
One of her plays, Outrageous Fortune, George Jean
Nathan picked as the best dramatic play of the season, call
ing it "a play whose delicate imagination and inner wisdom
bulk above its defects and constitute it on the whole a
credit to the American drama."84 Nathan did not mention
that his rare critical praise was in recognition of an
established novelist and a fine playwright, who had been for
nine years previously a Hollywood screenwriter. But it was.
Although Gene Fowler turned early from newspaper
work, he remained essentially a newspaperman. Everywhere he
displays a genius for making facts as lively as fiction.
Ben Hecht called him "one of the half-dozen great reports
of his era." Between 1932 and 1949 he worked on many films
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310
and earned 15 credits, including What Price Hollywood?
(1932) , Call of the Wild (1935), White Fang (1936), Billy
the Kid (1941). Fowler is an excellent example of the pre
viously delineated theory that newspapermen seemed to have
been better equipped to deal with the vicissitudes of
Hollywood screenwriting and the studios' cavalier treatment
of the writer's work. Along with Hecht, MacArthur, Nunnally
Johnson, Herman Mankiewicz, and other ex-newspapermen,
Fowier possessed a resiliency and a sardonic whimsy which
sustained his psychological equilibrium, and which (unlike
Johnson and Mankiewicz, however) permitted him consistent
literary projects of his own.
Fowler knew that it took firm resolve on the part of
the writer not to be seduced by the easy money and the
Hollywood life style: "work doesn't come quite as easy here
because it is siesta country, and then there are all the
Christmas tree ornaments of the life here that are likely to
fool you— the servants, the big houses, the fancy automo
biles, the afternoons on the golf course and at the races,
the long weekends in the mountains or on the desert or in
boats. When you get believing that you have to have these
ornaments they become too important and it hurts your
work."8 5
He hit his stride writing biographies, particularly
accounts of picturesque contemporaries whom he knew person
ally. Fowler was sympathetic, but not biased; he told the
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311
truth objectively, sometimes causing naive hero-worshipers
great discomfort. While he was writing State1s Attorney
(1932), Nancy Steele Is Missing (1937), and The Earl of Chi
cago (1940), films which benefited from his newspaperman's
knowledge of the underworld scene and his feel for the
vernacular, Fowler was carving out his own colorful litera
ture. Works produced after he began serving as a screen
writer include: Timberline (1933), the account of two
extraordinary Denver editors? A Solo in Tom-Toms (1933) , an
autobiography; Salute to Yesterday (1937), which deals with
his earlier years; Good-Night, Sweet Prince (1943), a biog
raphy of John Barrymore and undoubtedly Fowler's best book;
Beau James (1949), which brilliantly describes the life and
times of Jimmy Walker, once mayor of New York; Schnozzola:
The Story of Jimmy Durante (1951); Minutes of the Last Meet
ing (1954), sketches of famous theater people woven around a
biography of Sadakichi Hartmann.
Ben Hecht touched on a quality which marked Fowler's
prose: "Gene wrote as he had lived. No self-laudation, no
hammy posturing as the authority on manly pursuits that he
was, disturbed his prose."86 Neither was it disturbed by
the flaccid textures of a potential Hollywood complacency or
literary insouciance to which many writers of weaker consti
tution fall victim.
When novelist and short story writer Irwin Shaw
looks back over his own career, he does so with a paradigm-
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312
atic honesty, reasonableness, and sense of balance that
should serve to inspire other writers, some of whom may have
sought scapegoats for whatever inadequacies they may
possess. If Shaw has made some incorrect artistic decisions
(not many), he assumes responsibility for them himself. The
author of the successful anti-war play, Bury the Dead (1936),
also wrote ten other plays which were all flops: "All my
mistakes have been of my own doing. I have no one to blame.
I regret wasting those years in the theater with unsuccess
ful plays . " 8 7
After Bury the Dead Shaw went to Hollywood, where
his film work was of considerably higher quality than that
of McCoy, Franken, Cain, Fowler, West, or Fitzgerald. From
1936 to 1942 (his first Hollywood period), the films for
which he wrote the screenplays are representative of Holly
wood at its best, especially a bravura splurge in 1942 when
Shaw was responsible for three of that year's best films:
The Talk of the Town, those delightful debates between Ron
ald Colman and Gary Grant on the legalistic versus the human
aspects of civilized law; The Hard Way, a powerful script of
Joan Leslie being pushed into show business by older sister
Ida Lupino; Commandos Strike at Dawn, a realistic war film.
Of his later films there are those which enjoy the romanti
cism and inventiveness of situation which characterize his
literary works: Easy Living (1949), fascinating and greatly
overlooked exploration of professional football, which the
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3 1 3
makers of the abortive Number One (1969) would have bene
fited from viewing; Ulysses (1955) and Desire Under the Elms
(1958), faithful renderings of the originals; In the French
Style (1963), from his own short stories. With trenchant
honesty, Shaw puts Hollywood in perspective; "In the days
when I needed money, I went out to Hollywood, like Faulkner,
and wrote movie scripts. Hollywood only ruins those who wan
want to be ruined."8 8
Shaw's novels and short stories suggest a rich pro
ductivity. An excellent collection of short stories, Sailor
Off the Bremen, appeared in 1939. Equally impressive was
Welcome to the City (1942), another group of stories. Sons
and Soldiers (1944) , a play, was followed by Act of Faith
and Other Stories (1946) . His first novel, The Young Lions
(19 48) , is considered one of the most important novels of
World War II. Mixed Company, short stories, and Report from
Israel, the text for a volume of camera studies by Robert
Capa, appeared in 1950. The Troubled Air (1950), a novel,
deals with the plight of the well-meaning liberal caught
between the threat of red-baiting and witch-hunting on the
one hand, and Communist pressure on the other. This was
followed by Lucy Crown (1956), Two Weeks in Another Town
(1960), Love on a Dark Street (1965), stories, Voices of a
Summer Day (1965), Rich Man, Poor Man (1969).
In his preface to the published screenplay of his
film (wrote and produced) In the French Style (1962) , Irwin
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3 1 4
Shaw expresses his enthusiasm for this particular project
and for the potential of the film medium in general. He
speaks of the increasingly important role of the writer of
screenplays, and rejects the traditional image of the Holly
wood author as one who is victimized by "fat vulgarians who
only talk about money and who are devoutly committed to
ruining the work of poets in the name of a magical entity
called box office."87 In Shaw's refreshing candor and
truthfulness, there are no cries of the wronged artist, of
the writer corrupted by a mindless machine; Shaw is willing
to stand or fall on the basis of naked talent; "The plea
sure of being permitted freely to use the marvelous medium
of the motion picture, limited only by the extent of the
combined talents of the director and myself, more than makes
up for the loss of any Swedish gold that might possibly come
my way."9 0
Shaw also learned from his close contact with the
production problems which occur during filming, that there
is often a great difference between the shape of the screen
play when produced in the writer's cubicle and the form it
takes when exposed to the exigencies of shooting. Shaw
says, "I rewrote the script almost entirely as we went
along, something that no other producer would have been able
to persuade me to do."91 This sort of rewriting on the spot
is something that both Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder
realized was necessary when they became directors, a prac
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315
tice they found particularly odious when other directors
would do it to the scripts they produced as screenwriters.52
Shaw remains quite optimistic about the increased
freedom and artistic possibilities of the motion picture;
never having suffered from the self-pity and finger-pointing
accusations of writers who never stop seeking receptacles
into which to dump the guilt of failure of their literary
visions, Shaw is content with the alliances he has made with
Hollywood over the years. No harm, no foul. In the mean
time, in 1973, he is celebrating his 60th birthday with a
recently published volume of short stories, God Was Here but
He Left Early, a forthcoming novel, Evening in Byzantium,
and the start of a new book.
John Steinbeck and William Faulkner are a logical
culmination to a study of writers who have steadfastly clung
to their art, who have tenaciously fought in their litera
ture to project an uncompromised vision of man. Both are
unquestionably among the best American writers of the 20th
century; both have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. It
seems redundant, blatantly unnecessary, to document the lit
erary credentials of Steinbeck and Faulkner; the suggestion
of compromise of personal or literary values by these two
men, on the basis of all tangible evidence, appears fatuous.
The mere association of these two distinguished men with a
Hollywood screenwriting assignment should be sufficient to
put at rest the charges that this work corrupts everybody it
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316
touches. Yet in the race to cast stones against the liter
ary sybarites who supposedly dissipated their delicate tal
ents, it is often forgotten that men of the stature of
Steinbeck and Faulkner wrote for films and were completely
unimpaired by it.
The motion picture period of John Steinbeck was
essentially the 1940's. He wrote the story and screenplay
for a documentary called The Forgotten Village (1941), a
real-life glimpse at the moving ambience of an impoverished
Mexican village. Steinbeck pointed out that his working
method was to write "a very elastic story" and then let the
movie crew go into the village, make friends, talk and lis
ten. In his prologue to the film (narrated by Burgess Mere
dith) the author sets the scene:
Among the tall mountains of Mexico the ancient life goes
on, sometimes little changing in a thousand years. Now
from the cities of the valley new thinking and new tech
niques reach out to the remote villages. The old and
the new meet and sometimes clash, but from the meetings
a gradual change is taking place in the villages.
This is the story of the little pueblo of Santiago
on the skirts of a hill in the mountains of Mexico. And
this is the story of the boy Juan Diego and of his fam
ily and of his people, who live in the long moment when
the past slips reluctantly into the future.93
His other film credits are: Lifeboat (1944,
directed by Alfred Hitchcock), A Medal for Benny (19 45), The
Pearl (1948) and The Red Pony (1949)— both from his novels,
and Viva Zapata (1952).
Steinbeck's screenplay for Viva Zapata, which was
nominated for an Academy Award for best story and screen-
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317
play, was the result of a close historical study into the
life of the Mexican revolutionary. Asked if he would write
another film script, Steinbeck said that he would write any
thing in the world: he would write a dirty limerick. But
he also said, "They didn't have a story, and I wrote one."
But the process of filmmaking bored him, and he disagreed
with the person who said that the finished result was often
exciting by stating that he would rather write a good
sonnet.9 *
What Steinbeck did write of his own works in the
1940's and beyond was simply an eloquent continuation of
what he had started earlier: his shorter fiction is humor
ous, warm, sentimental, and concerned with the small trage
dies in the lives of simple people; it implicitly contrasts
the "good life" of the natural man close to the soil with
the depersonalization and dehumanization of the commercial
world; his longer fiction is primarily concerned with the
growth and development of men to whom it is necessary to be
good "group-men" in order to be good individuals.
Simply enumerated, Steinbeck's personal work during
this period included: Sea of Cortez (1941), Cannery Row
(1945), The Red Pony (1945) , The Wayward Bus (1947) , The
Pearl (1947) , Burning Bright (1950) , East of Eden (1952) ,
Sweet Thursday (1954) , The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957),
Winter of Our Discontent (1961). These literary works are
their own best testimonial to Steinbeck's continued artis
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3 1 8
try.
William Faulkner is perhaps the most famous example
of a writer who preserved his literary effectiveness during
periodic stays in Hollywood writing films. Of course, he
had no illusions about the nature of his studio work: "the
way I see it, it's like chopping cotton or picking potato
bugs off plants; you know damn well it's not painting the
Sistine Chapel or winning the Kentucky Derby. But a man
likes the feel of some money in his pocket."95 And fre
quently he became fed up with the diversion from his real
love, his books: "I think I have had about all of Hollywood
I can stand," he wrote once. "I feel bad, depressed, dread
ful sense of wasting time, I imagine most of the symptoms of
some kind of blow-up or collapse. I may be able to come
back later, but I think I will finish this present job and
return home. Feeling as I do, I am actually becoming afraid
to stay here much longer."96
But Faulkner rejects the charge that Hollywood is
the evil force which aborts a writer's creative aims:
"Nothing can injure a man's writing if he's a first-rate
writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there's not
anything can help it much."97 And he became irritated with
the fake excuses and the phony complaints: "I get sick of
those people who say if they were free [of Hollywood] what
they'd do. They wouldn't do anything. It's not the pic
tures which are at fault. The writer is not accustomed to
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319
money. Money goes to his head and destroys him— not pic
tures. Pictures are trying to pay for what they get. Fre
quently they overpay. But does that debase the writer?"98
Faulkner certainly was not debased by the Hollywood
money. He stayed in Hollywood only long enough to earn sub
sistence for an extended period of private writing back home
in Mississippi. And his body of work during (1932-1955) and
after (1955-1962) the Hollywood years is proof that there
was no corruption of his talent. His work during that time
included Absalom, Absalom! (1936); the Snopes trilogy: The
Hamlet (1940), The Town (1957), The Mansion (1959) ; Go Down,
Moses (1942); intruder in the Dust (1948), and several
others. These superb pieces of literature were created
along with some memorable film work: a long relati-nship
with director Howard Hawks, including The Road to Glory
(1936), Air Force (1943), To Have and Have Not (1945) , The
Big Sleep (1946), Land of the Pharaohs (1955). Perhaps his
ability to write without embarrassment or condescension for
the audience of The Saturday Evening Post as well as for the
intellectual shows a healthy lack of self-consciousness. It
is hard to think of another American writer who could do so.
Budd Schulberg has his character Manley Halliday, in
The Disenchanted, ascribe Faulkner's survival to his lack of
commercial success: "Maybe lucky thing about Faulkner.
Never went over big. Just a few thousand to read 'im and
know what he is. Bill stays put. Writes people he knows,
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320
and his old man knew, and his old man. Sense o' past.
Sense o' place. Sense o' roots . . ."99
It is right and fitting that William Faulkner, the
exemplary figure for all artists of conscience and disci
pline in Hollywood, should give the prescription for sur
vival and individuality within the movie industry. Every
Eastern writer should have had it indelibly etched on his
artistic soul:
There's some people who are writers who believed they
had talent, they believed in the dream of perfection,
they get offers to go to Hollywood where they can make a
lot of money, they begin to acquire junk swimming pools
and imported cars, and they can't quit their jobs be
cause they have got to continue to own that swimming
pool and the imported cars. There are others with the
same dream of perfection, the same belief that maybe
they can match it, that go there and they resist the
money. They don't own the swimming pools, the imported
cars. They will do enough work to get what they need of
the money without becoming a slave to it . . .it is go
ing to be difficult to go completely against the grain
or the current of a culture. But you can compromise
without selling your individuality completely to it.
You've got to compromise because it makes things
easier. 0 0
Writers like Faulkner, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, West
remained productive in spite of the time they put in the
Hollywood studios. But the argument remains that they lost
valuable time expending effort on the screenplays and treat
ments of various motion pictures. It was a division of
their creative energies, and, of course, they lost books in
the process. But these authors did what they had to do.
When the public would not buy their poetic and complex fic
tion in sufficient volume to meet financial obligations,
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321
they turned to the art of motion pictures for which the pub
lic was eager to pay, and pay handsomely. But at what
expense of spirit? One wonders what else they could have
done. What better compromise was there for them? But,
finally, there are two indisputable facts. They survived.
They did their work.
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322
NOTES
1 Dalton Trumbo, "Stepchild of the Muses," The North
American Review, December, 1933, p. 559.
2Fitzgerald, "Letter to Corey Ford, Early July,
1937," The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. by Andrew
Turnbull (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1971), p. 557.
3Nathaniel Benchley, Robert Benchley, A Biography
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1955), p. 249 .
4Theodore Strauss, "Colloquy in Queens," New York
Times, February 9, 1941.
5Ibid.
sGraham, Garden of Allah, pp. 107-108.
7Benchley, Robert Benchley, p. 249. Italics not in
original.
8Quoted in "The Films of Robert Benchley," Film Fan
Monthly, May, 1966, p. 4.
9Quoted in Wit and Wisdom, p. 273.
Cf. this from Everett Freemay, "Hollywood and The
New Yorker," The Screen Writer, June-July, 19 48, p. 3:
At a gathering in Manhattan some months ago, I
turned to Harold Ross, editor of the New Yorker, and
asked a question that had long been on my deferred list:
"Why," I asked, "in a magazine with so many infor
mative and interesting departments, do you persist in
retaining movie critics who so obviously hate pictures?"
Ross simply grunted his reply.
"Where," he said, "can you find a literate man who
likes movies?"
1 °Wit and Wisdom, pp. 281-282.
11Hecht, Child of the Century, p. 366.
12Marc Connelly, Voices Offstage (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1968)"", p. 132.
1 3Fitzgerald, "Letter to Maxwell Perkins, April 23,
1938," Letters, p. 283.
14Dorothy Parker, "Hymn of Hate," Life, July 21,
1921, p. 10.
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323
15Sherwood, "Renaissance in Hollywood," p. 434.
1 5Quoted in Morton Cooper, "Parker's Pen Is Ever
Sharp," Coronet, May, 1965, p. 103.
17Quoted in John Keats, You Might As Well Live: The
Life and Times of Dorothy Parker (New York: Bantam Books,
Inc7,-1972), p. 234.
18Quoted in Dorothy Townsend, "The Queen of Wise
cracks Marshals Her Subjects," Los Angeles Times, June 18,
1962.
19"Are Film Writers Workers?" Pacific Weekly,
June 29, 1936, p. 371.
2°Fitzgerald, "Letter to Gerald Murphy, September
14, 1940," Letters, p. 436.
21Keats, You Might As Well Live, p. 276.
22Kael, "Raising Kane— I," p. 54.
23Quoted in Keats, You Might As Well Live, p. 249.
2I+Alfred Hitchcock, in Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), p. 105.
25Quoted in Wit and Wisdom, p. 92.
2BGary Carey, "The Many Voices of Donald Ogden
Stewart," Film Comment, Winter 1970-71, p. 77.
Stewart himself gives a very interesting summary
of his film writing experiences in "Writing for the Movies,"
Focus on Film, Winter (Nov/Dec), 1970, pp. 49-57.
27Quoted in Theodore Strauss, "Sad Tale of a Peni
tent Humorist," New York Times, January 24, 1943.
2 8Ibid.
29Quoted in Carey, "Many Voices," p. 78.
3“Nathan, TTfeeatre Book of 1947-1948, pp. 59-60 .
31 Graham, Garden of Allah, p. 151.
32Sarnuel Hoffenstein, "The Notebook of a Schnook,"
Pencil in the Air (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Com-
pany, Inc., 19 47), p. 78.
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3 2 4
All three excerpts from Tom Milne, Mamoulian
(Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1969),
pp. 41, 55, 67.
3I|Hecht, "If Hollywood Is Dead or Dying as a Movie
maker, Perhaps the Following Are Some of the Reasons," Play
boy, November, 1960, p. 139.
3 5Quoted in Julian Symons, Mortal Consequences (New
York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1972), p. 137.
36Quoted in William F. Nolan, Dashiell Hammett: A
Casebook (Santa Barbara, California: McNally & Loftin, Pub
lishers, 1969), p. 83.
3 7Ibid., pp. 87-88.
3 8Ibid., pp. 93-94.
39Ibid., p..102.
* * °Ibid., p. 103.
k 1Ibid., p. 106.
2Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up, ed. by Edmund Wilson
(New York: New Directions^ 1956), p. 3 44.
9 3Ibid., p. 78.
**^Schulberg, "Old Scott: The Mask, The Myth, and
The Man," Esquire, January, 1961, p. 98.
Joseph Scott, in "F. Scott Fitzgerald— A Taste of
Hemlock," Eos Angeles Times Calendar, December 19, 1965,
writes that "Fitzgerald did not feel like a burnt out case
at the start of his 1937 summer trip to Hollywood. . . .
Critic Maxwell Geismar has suggested that there may have
been no place else in the 30s for Fitzgerald to go. 'Per
haps his only remaining deep and instinctive contact with
all the myriad phases of life in the United States was with
show business.' "
S. J. Perelman, a fellow screenwriter with Fitz
gerald in those days, states in Graham, Garden of Allah,
p. 49: "Scott's dream wasn't yet jaded. It was to write
something so brilliant that it would securely establish his
reputation in Hollywood."
“ ^Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up, pp. 83-84 .
“ ^Dorothy Herzog, Photoplay, April, 1926, p. 66,
quoted in Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1968), pi 489.
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325
47Quoted in Andrew Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), pp. 289-290.
4 8Ibid., p. 290 .
49Quoted in Arthur Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1965), p. 312.
50Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald, p. 293.
51 Ibid., p. 317.
52Fitzgerald, The Pat Hobby Stories (Middlesex,
England: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1963).
53Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 49.
54Quoted in Edward Murray, The Cinematic Imagination
(New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1972), p. 202.
55John Dos Passos, "A Note on Fitzgerald," in The
Crack-Up, p. 343.
56Schulberg, "F. Scott Fitzgerald the Scriptwriter,"
Life, May 7, 1971, p. 9.
57Edmund Wilson, "The Boys in the Back Room,"
Classics and Commercials (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1962),
pp. 52-53.
58Most of the material on West is drawn or augmented
from the definitive and brilliant study by Jay Martin,
Nathanael West: The Art of His Life (New York: Hayden Book
Company, Inc., 1970).
59Ibid., pp. 287-288.
6 °Ibid., p. 336.
61 Ibid., p. 362.
6 2Ibid., p. 366.
5 3 £kid*' P- 368*
5 4See "Will Excess Spoil," p. 36.
65Quoted in David Madden, James M. Cain (New York:
Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1970), p. 42.
6 6Ibid., p. 43.
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3 2 6
68Wilson, "Boys in the Back Room," pp. 19-56.
This very concern with the influence of film tech
nique on literary style is the focus of William Murray's
The Cinematic Imagination (1972) and Robert Richardson's
Literature and Film (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1972).
69James M. Cain, "Camera Obscura," The American Mer
cury, October, 1933, p. 138.
70Ibid.
71 Ibid., p. 146.
72Quoted in David Madden, "James M. Cain and the
Movies of the Thirties and Forties," Film Heritage, Summer,
1967, pp. 18-19.
73Chandler, Raymond Chandler Speaking, p. 135.
7 4Ibid., p. 130.
75Quoted in Madden, "Cain and Movies," p. 25.
76Philip Durham, Down These Mean Streets A Man Must
Go (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1963), pp. 146-147.
77Chandler, Raymond Chandler Speaking, p. 132.
78Thomas Sturak, "Horace McCoy's Objective Lyri
cism," in Tough Guy Writers of the Thirties, p. 137.
79Ibid., p. 140.
80 Ibid.
8 1 1 Ibid., p. 141.
8 2Ibid.
8 3ibid »
8''Nathan, Theatre Book of 1943-1944, pp. 117-118.
85Quoted in Robert van Gelder, Writers and Writing
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946), p. 112.
85Hecht, Child of the Century, p. 374.
87Quoted in William Tuohy, "Author Irwin Shaw's
Career Survives Day of the Critic," Los Angeles Times,
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February 25, 1973, p. 14.
8 8Ibid.
89Irwin Shaw, In the French Style (New York: Mac-
fadden-Bartell Corporation, 1963), p. 10.
90Ibid., p. 11.
This sort of free-working arrangement has had, of
course, precedent even during the usually restrictive times
of the studio system. Ex-dramatist Norman Krasna, in "Some
Authors Die Happy," New York Times, May 18, 1941, section 9,
p. 4, tells how he, as writer and co-producer of The Devil
and Miss Jones (19 41), had a similar working relationship
with director Sam Wood. He writes: "In the middle of the
night a vision will come to the scenario writer. In this
vision he, the scenario writer, will see himself as a God
like creature, who, when he writes something on a type
writer, will later hear it on the screen. But positively.
"Imagine an author who can command the performance
of his work, letter-pure, comma perfect, apostrophe-
approved. I, dear reader, was such an author." (During the
filming of The Devil and Miss Jones, Krasna was on the set
to be consulted and to make changes as required.) Krasna
continues: "It is almost impossible to be letter-perfect on
the typewriter; not impossible to be letter-perfect on the
sound stage. All an author wants is preservation of what he
creates, and if the creation is altered, by him, to fit in
with physical circumstances he could not foresee at his
typewriter, he will die happy."
91 Shaw, In the French Style, p. 12.
92Director Mitchell Leisen has told how sacrosanct
both Sturges and Wilder considered their screenplays, and
how both became infuriated if Leisen attempted to change
even a word if it did not play right. (Before becoming
directors both Sturges (Easy Living, 1937; Remember the
Night, 1940) and Wilder (Midnight, 1939; Arise, My Love,
1940; Hold Back the Dawn, 1941) Had written the enclosed
films for Leisen. [From an interview with Mitchell Leisen
by the author, July, 1971.]
Former playwright Sam Raphaelson tells how salu
tary his relationship with director Ernst Lubitsch was in
this regard, and was delightfully shocked when he was awak
ened early one morning to learn that Lubitsch wanted to con
sult him on a contemplated line change. Raphaelson: "He
had just wanted to change one line— which no other director
in his right mind would dream of consulting a writer about,
let alone taking all that trouble. But he had the intelli
gence to know that maybe the change that he wanted to make
might have something to do with something he had forgotten,
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3 2 8
about some character, about some value, which this change
might contradict. He wanted my memory of the whole script,
and my sense of the character. No other director I ever
heard of would dream of taking that trouble— one line."
(From Herman G. Weinberg, The Lubitsch Touch. New York:
E. P. Dutton & Company, 1968, p. 2l0.)
93Quoted in Michael Burrows, John Steinbeck and His
Films (London: Primestyle Ltd., 1970), p. 9.
91*Ibid. , p. 21.
95Quoted in Joseph Blotner, "Faulkner in Holly
wood," in Man and the Movies, p. 301.
96Ibid♦, pp. 295-296.
97"Interview of William Faulkner," The Saturday
Review, July 28, 1962, p. 19.
98Quoted in Stan Swinton, "Faulkner Hits Writer
Alibis," Hollywood Citizen-News, March 8, 1953.
"Schulberg, The Disenchanted, p. 184.
100Quoted in Blotner, "Faulkner in Hollywood,"
p. 303.
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C H A P TER V I I I
CONCLUSION— A DEFENSE OF HOLLYWOOD
During the period when the studio system flourished
(and to a certain extent even today) the average Hollywood
films were most severely criticized on the grounds of triv
iality of subject matter, cheapness or triteness of view
point, and infrequency of adult attitudes. There is much
truth in these charges, and we can always turn to George
Jean Nathan for the pleasures of vituperation. Hollywood
must bear its portion of responsibility for all the fatui
ties, banalities, puerilities, and mindless censorship which
it has subsidized over the years. A true assessment of
those times, however, and a proper allocation of blame,
would certainly include the public that clamored for trash,
the pressure groups which fell into a frenzy whenever a
controversial subject appeared on the screen, the economic
conditions of film making which compelled the studios to
satisfy different levels of maturity in order to stay in
business. The percentage of people who grew up reading
Harper's and the plays of George Bernard Shaw was hardly
overwhelming in a weekly audience of over 50 million.
It is important to recognize that this criticism of
329
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3 3 0
the Hollywood film formed the background of a general feel
ing of snobbery against which many Eastern writers made
their commitments to movie writing. But it is also impor
tant to remember that other media of communication, other
genres of literature, have been the recipients of snobbish
criticism, whenever those art forms acquired the "taint" of
vulgarization or popularization. The novel, for example,
around the end of the eighteenth century, was condemned by
purists as a sub-literary genre which was read only by those
with cheap and "popular" appetites. Thus, we find Jane
Austen in 1798 effecting an almost bravado stance by declar
ing that her family were "great Novel-readers and not
ashamed of being so."1 And, in Northanger Abbey, Austen
defends the novel against the elitists, who more highly
prized the abilities of a man who abridged the History of
England, or who collected and published a dozen lines from
Milton or Pope, along with a paper from the Spectator (mod
ern correlative: a story in The New Yorker), than the more
extensive and complex efforts of a Samuel Richardson, a
Tobias Smollett, or a Fanny Burney (modern correlative: a
screenplay). Austen wrote: "Although our productions
[novels] have afforded more extensive and unaffected plea
sure than those of any other literary corporation in the
world, no species of composition has been so much decried.
. . . there seems almost a general wish of decrying the
capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of
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3 3 1
slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and
taste to recommend them."2
No form of art is appraised on the basis of its
trashy products. The novel is not dismissed as beneath con
tempt because of the enormous sale of Horatio Algers, Harold
Robbins, or Jacqueline Susanne. The drama is not discarded
because of the preponderance of mediocre farces, vaude
villes, and melodramas in its 25 centuries of existence as
written literature. Appraisal of the American film, of its
achievements and potentialities, must be made on thebasis
of its best efforts (admittedly few works of art in the
short 47-year history of the sound film), rather than on
cinematic claptrap. The two or three dozen sound films
which are properly considered works of art have been called
an oasis in the desert. But how many works of art of any
kind, in a comparable period, have there been? All good art
is an oasis.
In the matter of the oft-denounced crassness and
insensitivity and ruthless competitiveness of the Hollywood
studios, the only difference from the other organized arts
is one of degree. With the exception of their more fashion
able exteriors and a flair for chic and sophisticated trap
pings, the more traditional media share the movies' coloring
of commercialism. Film critic Otis Ferguson confirms this
fact:
And for all the talk you have heard, you can give odds
and make a pleasant sum of money betting that there is
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3 3 2
not a practice in Hollywood which cannot be matched in
precise kind with procedures from the world of litera
ture, music, and that strange downtown Luna Park
referred to affectionately as the Theater. (I will
undertake to cover moderate amounts on the literary game
myself with cries of glee, and I'm not just talking
about the pulps, slicks, or the fly-by-night publishing
outfits either. If an activity is to be damned by its
patent knaves and incompetents, just give me a piece of
the field of literature and get your money on the
line.) 3
The inherent problems and the disheartening effects
on the writers of the policy of multiple authorship (ini
tiated by Irving Thalberg, but utilized by all the major
studios) have been outlined earlier in this study. But
there has been no dearth of acknowledged and unacknowledged
collaboration for the stage. Literary critic John Gassner,
in discussing the similar practices of both film and stage,
points to the many hands that shaped the beautiful religious
plays of the "medieval communion" and to the frequent col
laboration in Shakespeare's time. (Gassner notes that in
1602 the Elizabethan "angel" Philip Henslowe lent a certain
company five pounds with which to pay Anthony Munday, Thomas
Middleton, Michael Drayton, John Webster, and others, for a
play entitled Caesar's Fall.) Gassner writes: "In one way
or another the dramatic arts have always involved collabora
tion; if not between writers, certainly between the writer
and those who staged his work. Of course, these remarks are
not intended as justification or apology for arbitrary
interference with the writers' creative job, but in such
instances the results usually expose the misdemeanor."1 *
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3 3 3
And lest an observer think that this "arbitrary
interference" was restricted to the barbaric machinery of
Hollywood, no less a monitor than George Jean Nathan himself
cites many instances in which the supposedly sacrosanct
plays of Broadway playwrights were altered, truncated,
otherwise rewritten, by producers, actors, any person who
could muscle in a change. Nathan's comments could have just
as easily applied to Hollywood screenwriters, but he is
speaking of New York dramatists "who, falling into unintel
ligent hands, have helplessly seen their work botched out of
all recognition and have suffered blame from the reviewers
through no fault of their own."5 Nathan gives detailed
recountings of how the following plays were crudely changed
and distorted against their authors' wishes: Many Happy
Returns by Clare Kummer; The Walking Gentlemen by Fulton
Oursler and Grace Perkins (concept of the lead character
changed by actor Victor Francen); Love's Old Sweet Song by
William Saroyan (second act rewritten by actor Walter
Huston); Lulu Belle by Edward Sheldon and Charles MacArthur
(tone and theme of play rewritten by producer David Belas-
co); The Old Foolishness by Paul Vincent Carroll (dialogue
rewritten by director Rachel Crothers); Boyd's Shop by St.
John Ervine (change of title, to Boyd's Daughter and face
tious monologue added by one of the actors); Dynamo by
Eugene O'Neill (change of tone and improper casting by the
Theatre Guild).5
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3 3 4
While these brief comments may be useful in a begin
ning defense against the traditional anti-Hollywood film
attitudes, the "defense of Hollywood" I was referring to was
my specific effort to relieve Hollywood of the guilt for the
destruction of writing talent which has often been asserted.
Hollywood created conditions in the 1930's which were often
disruptive to the writers' creative tranquility and detri
mental to their desired execution of many projects. But
Hollywood was not to blame for keeping writers there once
they found out what the conditions were. The writers could
have left anytime they wanted to do so; those that stayed,
for whatever length of time, did so by their own free will.
True, the studios made the employment seductively attractive
by the big money they paid to the writers; but, as said
before, it does not seem logical for a bank robber to blame
the bank for having money in it. Hollywood may have been an
occasion to sin for the writer, but the individual writer
must bear responsibility for the commission of the sin it
self, i.e., succumbing to the luxuries of the easy life and
forgetting about his own writing.
Accordingly, the major conclusions that are inferred
from the presence of the imported Eastern intellectual in
Hollywood should be reiterated. Simply stated, it seems as
if the majority of the writers of literary significance,
those of solid reputation and ability, who went to Hollywood
were not corrupted. Most of them either stayed for a short
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3 3 5
time and then took the money and ran back to their books and
plays, or managed to remain productive while working around
occasional stints at the studios. Those that "sold out,"
those that abandoned completely their independent writing
careers tended to be, in most part, men of secondary liter
ary importance to begin with, writers who lacked the dedica
tion, drive, and vision of authorship; they were men who
found Hollywood a propitious substitute for their faltering
resolve and mettle in the original media. Many of those who
did reject books for films found in the motion picture a
communications medium much more ideally suited to their
particular talents than any traditional literary form; for
some of these men, it was never a question of "selling out,"
it was simply a question of finding their mdtier.
A simple check of the lists of involved literary
figures (such as in the appendix of this paper, or in any
survey of the major writers of 20th-century American litera
ture) , will reaffirm the essential viability of these lead
ing authors. As John Gassner wrote, referring to a cursory
list of 3 6 established authors who wrote for films— such as
Sherwood, Heilman, Behrman; "Most of these contributors to
screen literature have also written noteworthy books and
plays, and many of them— despite reports to the contrary—
have returned from Hollywood to again write plays and
books."7 Additionally, in a rebuttal to what he calls "that
protocol of banality that flourishes west of Central Park—
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3 3 6
Hollywood the Destroyer," John Gregory Dunne attacks the
assumption that "if these writers [those who were
"destroyed"] had not been working for Sam Goldwyn or Irving
Thalberg they would have been writing Moby Dick or Long
Day's Journey into Night." Dunne, too, invokes the best
refutation— a list of major writers who were not destroyed:
"Faulkner, Heilman, O'Hara, Behrman, West, Kaufman— writers
who took the money and ran. The writers who fell apart in
Hollywood would have fallen apart in Zabar's; the flaw was
in them, not the community, but this is hard for the deter
ministic movie critic to accept."8
The greatest mortality among writers who went to
Hollywood was found in those of too impressionable an age,
those who had not yet achieved a reputation that probably
would have saved them from a barrage of uninspiring assign
ments . It was at that end of the age curve that the theater
suffered a real depletion of its writing talent. It was
simply the old story of the survival of the strongest and,
in this case, the most talented. Ben Hecht effectively
underscores this point: "Before it might seem that I am
writing about a tribe of Shelleys in chains, I should make
it clear that the movie writers 'ruined' by the movies are
for the most part a run of greedy hacks and incompetent
thickheads. Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing
through movieland there are scarcely fifty men and women of
wit or talent. The rest of the fraternity is deadwood."9
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3 3 7
In this connection, it might be pertinent to note
that American writers, by and large, seldom produce a great
body of work, a shelf of novels or other works, as many
European writers tend to do. American writers, especially
novelists, apparently produce their best work in bursts of
energy, and then gradually seem to lose their power. F.
Scott Fitzgerald has been very often thought the paradigm of
a brilliant and, seemingly, short-lived talent (but he did
die when he was very young, and, hopefully, I have been able
to suggest that The Last Tycoon was a resurgence of his old
creativity). But he is hardly the only one. Budd Schul-
berg, in The Four-Seasons of Success (1972), and the psycho
logical and sociological assumptions of Chapter V of this
paper, imply that a distinctively American emphasis on
impressive and instantaneous success is at the root of so
many literary declines. Schulberg writes: "What happened?
Why isn't Hemingway Tolstoy? Why isn't Fitzgerald Turgenev?
Why isn't Nelson Algren or Norman Mailer Dostoevski? Why
are the odds so high that James Jones will never write
another From Here to Eternity, that Ralph Ellison will never
write another Invisible Man, just as Richard Wright never
wrote another Native Son? Why did the mighty river of
Thomas Wolfe flood up too soon and overflow its banks?"10
Of course, the immediate inference from this list of writers
and the major point to be made is that, with the exception
of Fitzgerald, Hollywood cannot be considered as a factor in
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3 3 8
any of the negative periods of their careers. To Schul-
berg's list I could add my own selection of writers, who
seemingly wore themselves out with early spurts of creative
energy that they were never able to match later on— signifi
cantly, with no question of Hollywood influence in any way:
Stephen Crane, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, J. D.
Salinger, Robert Penn Warren, James T. Farrell, Henry Roth,
James Cozzens, Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell.
Whether Schulberg is correct in his analysis that so
many fine writers suffer decline because of the tremendous
public pressure imposed on them for frequent and superlative
literary product; whether his division of their careers into
Seasons of Success (from the spring of early success through
the winter of discontent, each season marking a phase of
public acceptance) adequately deals with the complexities of
the literary spirit— whatever the analysis, the fact remains
that literary decline, creative fluctuations, dissipation of
talent, inconsistency of writing efforts, adulturation of
artistic intensity, call it what you will, are all part of
an American literary scene that is exclusive of the Holly
wood sphere of influence. If there is a curve of decline in
writers who never went to Hollywood, perhaps it is specious
to blame the film industry, the system, the city itself for
a similar decline in writers who happen to periodically
(indeed permanently) function as screenwriters. Hollywood
does not have a monopoly on hacks, one-shot playwrights,
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3 3 9
burnt-out novelists— nor, indeed, on superior writers in the
September of their careers. The undulations of literary
ascent and decline seem to be part of the reticulated fabric
of the creative process of art on the one hand, and the com
plex nature of American societal and economic pressures on
the other. It seems inaccurate to reduce a multifaceted
situation to the circumscribed boundaries of a geographical
location or to a specific artistic medium. And, as for
human weakness to money, public acclaim, and the undemanding
requirements of hack writing, this is a defect for all sea
sons and for writers in all fields. Screenwriter Philip
Dunne agrees that writer acquiescence, at least in the spe
cies of creative truncation the writer may have experienced
in Hollywood, was a concomitant aspect of the process: "It
is an obvious if painful fact that the process of artistic
degradation cannot be blamed exclusively on the producer.
There is a strong implication that the writer, too, must be
willing to accept the degradation."11
Critics and the public seem to take special delight
in crowning writers before they are ready and dethroning
them before they are finished. The public likes success,
instant success, and looks for results and is impatient with
processes. Playwrights, novelists, and to a lesser extent
even poets are victimized by the psychology of what-was-your-
last-hit? Writers who went to Hollywood and missed produc
ing a book for a couple of years were treated to the most
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blistering attacks for their sterility. This kind of criti
cism was quite often premature and very injust. A pattern
of this sort for even the most viable writer is not uncom
mon. It must be remembered that for 12 years, between 1934
and 19 46, Eugene O'Neill did not have a Broadvray play. And,
to carry the literary analogue to its extreme limits, even
William Shakespeare did not escape the charges that success
had adversely affected the quality of his work. Tucker
Brooke in A Literary History of England records that "by
159 8 Shakespeare had, however unwittingly and unmethodi
cally, attained name and fame. Two natural consequences of
success--pressure towards over-production and a certain
slackening of creative energy— may perhaps be observed in
other comedies of the decade."12 O'Neill, of course,
rebounded brilliantly with The Iceman Cometh (1946), A Moon
for the Misbegotten (1957) , A Touch of the Poet (1958) , and
unquestionably his greatest play (one of the best of modern
literature), Long Day's Journey into Night (1956). And
Shakespeare could never be seriously considered as having
been corrupted, as his great tragedies and a rich late
period of genius were to follow. O'Neill and Shakespeare
could not be written off for a chronological lapse or a
qualitative inconsistency; the Hollywood writer, considered
analogously, must be given the same latitude.
Hollywood has been wrongly made a symbol of the
writer's personal weaknesses, for, as Schulberg rightly
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341
maintains, "there were Hollywoods before Hollywood was even
discovered. There were people who went there and met it on
its own terms and beat it. The challenge of doing a good
movie, of doing a good piece of work, isn't something to be
ashamed of. The only thing to be ashamed of is to be sucked
in and to let yourself be dependent on that contract and
paycheck. That's when you're lost."1 3
And the beat goes on right into the 1970's. Even
one of the most prominent recent examples of a negative
experience by an Eastern writer in Hollywood indicates that,
as it was true with the contract writer of the 1930's, the
hired author must share complicity in any miscarriage of the
project. Mario Puzo, in The Godfather Papers, tells how the
general environment in which he worked on the script for The
Godfather tended to dampen his enthusiasm for the work. It
was obvious that it was not his movie, because the producers
retained control to alter any of his artistic decisions. So
what else is new? This situation has not changed since Joe
Mankiewicz rewore Fitzgerald's script for Three Comrades.
It is an unfortunate, often irrational practice; but a mod
ern writer, unless he is his own producer and director, or
in some other fashion acquires contractual creative control
over his picture, will continue to face the same frustration
and heartbreak that confronted the screenwriters under the
studio system. However, the writer still retains his free
will to accept or reject the challenge of having to deal
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342
with a moral dilemma and a financial temptation. Mario Puzo
accepted Paramount1s money to write a screenplay for The
Godfather; he was not happy that he could be out-voted by
the studio executives on story points he thought were his
domain. But Puzo admits that he was spending money profli
gately, enjoying a luxury he had never known before; "play
ing tennis, getting a taste of the social life in Hollywood.
. . . Socially, I had round heels. I wasn't getting much
work done, but nobody seemed to be worrying." Before he
knew it, he was past his deadline for the screenplay; Puzo
confesses he had "goofed off for some four months." Conse
quently, he turned in something that he was not happy with,
something that was a second-rate version of a novel which he
says "is an accomplishment any professional storyteller can
brag about."14
So typical is this Puzo experience; a writer
becoming discouraged and disheartened by studio policy and
then turning in inferior work. That is the way the situa
tion for the writer was and, to a certain extent, still is.
But if the writer does not like it, if he cannot function
under those conditions, he should not stay and then blame
Hollywood for having destroyed his talent. He should not
blow out the candle and then curse the darkness. As Puzo
himself says, "writers shouldn't get mad. They should just
get the hell out of the movie business."1 5 Writers still
retain their free will to follow the examples of a Robert
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343
Sherwood and a William Faulkner on one path, or pursue the
qualitatively different models of Pat Hobby and Sammy Glick
on another. Hollywood should not be made to bear the total
responsibility in either case.
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344
N O T E S
1 Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra, December 18,
179 8, in A Literary History of England, ed. by Albert C.
Baugh (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1948),
p. 1201.
2Austen, Northanger Abbey, Chapter V.
3Ferguson, Film Criticism, p. 428.
4John Gassner, "The Screenplay as Literature," in
Twenty Best Film Plays, p. xii.
5Nathan, Theatre Book of 19 44-1945, p. 223.
6Ibid., pp. 223-229.
7Gassner, "Screenplay as Literature," p. xii.
8John Gregory Dunne, "The Perils of Critic Paul
ine," Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 25, 1973, p. 10.
9Hecht, Child of the Century, p. 442.
1°Schulberg, The Four Seasons of Success (Garden
City, New York: Doubleday & Company^ Inc., 1972), p. 14.
11 Philip Dunne, "An Essay on Dignity," The Screen
Writer, December, 1945, p. 7.
12Tucker Brooke, in A Literary History of England,
p. 225.
13Quoted in Harvey Breit, "Talk with Mr. Schulberg,"
New York Times Book Review, November 5, 1950, p. 28.
Schulberg made an allied point years before in
What Makes Sammy Run? pp. 209-210: "The trouble with Holly
wood is that too many people who won't leave are ashamed to
be there. But when a moving picture is right, it socks the
eye and the ear and the solar plexus all at once and that is
a hell of a temptation for any writer. . . . Hollywood may
be full of phonies, mediocrities, dictators and good men who
have lost their way, but there is something that draws you
there that you should not be ashamed of."
1 ‘ ‘Mario Puzo, The Godfather Papers (Greenwich, Con
necticut: Fawcett Publications, I n c 1972) , pp. 51-52.
1 5lbid-f P- 5 2 *
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B I B L I O G R A P H Y
345
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
B IB L IO G R A P H Y
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3 4 8
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349
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3 5 0
Nolan, William F. Dashiell Hammett— A Casebook. Santa Bar
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351
Selznick, David 0. Memo from David 0. Selznick. Edited by
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1970.
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3 5 2
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3 5 3
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3 5 5
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_________ . "Those Scoundrels Coward, Hecht, & MacArthur,"
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3 5 7
Lambert, Gavin. "The Making of Gone with the Wind," The
Atlantic Monthly, February, 1973, pp. 37-51 (Part
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New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1966.
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August 16, 1969, pp. 28-31.
"Queen of the Round Table," Newsweek, June 19, 1967.
Ring, Frances. "Isherwood— A Writer in Many Mediums," Los
Angeles Times, August 21, 1966.
Rivkin, Allen. "A Portrait of the Guild Writer," Point of
View, August, 1964, pp. 22-27.
Rodell, John S. "Authority and the Screen Writer," The
Screen Writer, November, 19 47, pp. 8-10.
Samsell, R. L. "Hollywood— It Wasn't All That Bad," Fitz
gerald/Hemingway Annual 1969. Edited by Matthew J.
Bruccoli. Washington, dTc TT Microcard Editions,
1969.
Sargent, Epes Winthrop. "The Literary Side of Pictures,"
The Moving Picture World, July 11, 1914, pp. 199-
202 .
Scheuer, Philip K. "Big Knife Sheathed by Clifford Odets,"
Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1959, p. 13.
_________ . "Clifford Odets Won Over to Movies," Los Angeles
Times, May 14, 1944.
Schulberg, Budd. "A Biased Course in Cohnology," Life,
March 3, 19 67, p. 6.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
3 5 9
Schulberg, Budd. "F. Scott the Scriptwriter," Life, May 7,
1971, p. 9. ----
_. "The Four Seasons of Success:- Old Scott: The
Mask, the Myth, and the Man," Esquire, January,
1961, pp. 96-101.
_. "Gentle Genius at Large in Jungletown," Life,
February 28, 19 69, p. 6.
"How Are Things in Panicsville?" Life, December
20, 1963, pp. 79-104.
_________. "It Was Great to Be a Boy in Hollywood," Holiday,
January, 1955, pp. 70-80.
_________. "Literature-of the Film— The Hollywood Novel,"
Fi1ms, Spring, 1940, pp. 68-78.
______ . "Movies in America: After Fifty Years," The
Atlantic Monthly, November, 1947, pp. 115-121.
"Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood," The New Repub
lic, March 3, 1941, pp. 311-312.
________. "Why Manley Haliiday Is . . . Manley Halliday,"
Theatre Arts, December, 1958, pp. 15-17, 70-71.
. "Why Write It When You Can't Sell It to the Pic
tures?" The Saturday Review, September 3, 195 5,
pp. 5-6.
_________. "The Writer and Hollywood," Harper's Magazine,
October, 1959, pp. 132-137.
Schultheiss, John. "The 1 EasternWriter in Hollywood,"
Cinema Journal, Fall, 1971", pp. 13-47.
"Robert E. Sherwood— Film Critic," Film Comment,
September, 1972, pp. 70-73.
Schwartz, Al and Sherwood. "Comedian's Blood Royal," The
Spice of Variety. Edited by Abel Green. New York:
Henry Holt and Company, 1952.
See, Carolyn. "Will Excess Spoil the Hollywood Writer?" Los
Angeles Times West Magazine, March 26, 1967, pp. 3 4-
J G ~ .
Senwald, Andre. "A Spotlight for the Film Writers," New
York Times, March 10, 1935.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
3 6 0
Sheldon, Sidney. "The Hollywood Writer," Theatre Arts,
August, 1951, p. 31.
Sherwood, Robert E. "Hollywood: The Blessed and the
Cursed," America as Americans See It. Edited by
Fred J. Ringel. New York: The Literary
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"Renaissance in Hollywood," The American Mercury,
April, 1929, pp. 431-437.
________ . "They're Film Writers— Not Juke Boxes," New York
Times Magazine, December 1, 1946, p. 15.
Shils, Edward. "Mass Society and Its Culture," Daedalus,
Spring, 1960, pp. 288-314.
Smith, Cecil. "A Fond Look at Robert Sherwood," Los Angeles
Times, March 3, 1966.
"Ben Hecht Returns," Los Angeles Times, August
26, 1956.
Stallings, Laurence. "Sermons in Silver," Stage, April,
1936, p. 37.
"The Youth in the Abyss," Esquire, October, 1951,
pp. 47, 107-110.
Stewart, Donald Ogden. "Writing for the Movies," Focus on
Film, Winter (November/December) 1970, pp. 49-57.
Strauss, Theodore. "Colloquy in Queens," New York Times,
February 9, 19 41.
________ . "Sad Tale of a Penitent Humorist," New York
Times, January 24, 1943.
Swinton, Stan. "Faulkner Hits Writer Alibis," Hollywood
Citizen-News, March 8, 1953.
Taylor, Dwight. "Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood," Harper's
Magazine, March, 1959, pp. 67-71.
Teichmann, Howard. "The Man Who Hated Hollywood," New York
Times, April 30, 1972, pp. 11, 18.
Thomas, Bob. "When Fitzgerald, Lewis, Faulkner Acted As If
Slumming in Hollywood," Variety, January 7, 1970,
pp. 1, 3 6.
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3 6 1
Thompson, Howard. "Through Faulkner's View-Finder," New
York Times, March 16, 1958.
Townsend, Dorothy. "The Queen of Wisecracks Marshals Her
Subjects," Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1962.
Trumbo, Dalton. "Stepchild of the Muses," The North Ameri
can Review, December, 1933, pp. 559-566. ~
Tuohy, William. "Author Irwin Shaw's Career Survives Day of
the Critic," Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1973,
p. 14.
Walker, Franklin. "Hollywood in Fiction," The Pacific
Spectator, Spring, 1948, pp. 127-131^
Wanger, Walter. "Hollywood and the Intellectual," The
Saturday Review, December 5, 1942, pp. 6, 40.
"Well Known Writers Turning to a New Field— That of Writing
Film Scenarios," The Moving Picture World, January
29, 1910, p. 120.
Wilson, Edmund. "The Boys in the Back Room," The New
Republic, November 11, 1940, pp. 665-666; November
T§, "1940, pp. 697-698; December 9, 1940, pp. 784-
787; December 16, 1940, pp. 839-840.
"The Writer-Director," What's Happening in Hollywood, Febru
ary 16, 1946. Department of Studio and Public Ser
vice, Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.
"The Writer's Vice," Time, October 5, 1970, p. 59.
Wylie, Philip. "Writing for the Movies," Harper's Magazine,
November, 1933, pp. 715-726.
Manuscripts
Lokke, Virgil L. "The Literary Image of Hollywood." Unpub
lished Ph.D. dissertation, State University of Iowa,
1955.
See, Carolyn. "The Hollywood Novel: An Historical and
Critical Study." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of California at Los Angeles, 1963.
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A P P E N D I X E S
362
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APPENDIX A
THE EASTERN WRITER IN HOLLYWOOD
363
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The Eastern Writer in Hollywood*
Stayed— Wrote Few or No Periodic Employment— Did Write
Brief Involvement Works of Their Own Works of Their Own
A . E . Thomas Robert Benchley Clifford Odets
James T. Farrell Dorothy Parker Maxwell Anderson
George S. Kaufman Donald Ogden Stewart Robert E . Sherwood
Paul Green Daniel Fuchs Zoe Akins
Elmer Rice Edwin Justus Mayer William Saroyan
John Dos Passos Samuel Hoffenstein Moss Hart
J. B. Priestly George Oppenheimer Frances Goodrich, Al Hackett
Don Marquis Vincent Lawrence John Patrick
Thornton Wilder Maurine Watkins F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hugh Walpole Arthur Richman Nathanael West
Stephen Vincent Benet Gilbert Emery William Faulkner
Sinclair Lewis Bartlett Cormack Ben Hecht
P . G . Wodehouse Dashiell Hammett Lillian Heilman
Faith Baldwin Herman Mankiewicz John Van Druten
Louis Bromfield Paul Osborn Sidney Howard
Philip Dunning George O'Neil S. N . Behrman
Fannie Hurst Preston Sturges Bella, Samuel Spewack
Ogden Nash Lynn Riggs John O'Hara
John O'Hara Dan Totheroh Gene Fowler
Damon Runyan John Wexley Arthur Kober
Ayn Rand Robert Riskin James M. Cain
Eric Knight Sidney Buchman John Steinbeck
Liam O'Flaherty Talbot Jennings Rose Franken
Bertolt Brecht Laurence Stallings Horace McCoy
Charles Brackett Irwin Shaw
Nunnally Johnson Samson Raphaelson
John Howard Lawson
George Sklar
Raymond Chandler
*These writers have been selectively chosen as representative of the extraordinarily large
number of Eastern writers who wrote for films in the 19j0's and 1940's; most have had careers of
sufficiently rich substance as to yield profitable analysis. A complete list of.Eastern writers
and their film scripts will be found in Appendix C.
364
A P P E N D IX B
EASTERN WRITER ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS AND WINNERS
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Eastern Writer Academy Award Nominations and Winners
3 6 6
To illustrate that many authors who had earned their reputa
tions in essentially non-movie fields were artistically successful by
film industry standards, regardless of the subsequent fate of their
independent writing careers, the following is a list of those Academy
nominations and awards won by Eastern writers. The listings are for
the years 1927-1950, the span of time most properly applicable, very
broadly considered, to the employment of the Eastern writer in Holly
wood. ^denotes winner. Mco-" means the credit is shared.
1927/18
The Last Command. Paramount. LaJos Biro (Original Story)
The Patent Leather Kid, First National. Rupert Hughes (Original Story)
* Underworld. Paramount. Ben Hecht (Original Story)
1928/1929
In Old Arizona. Fox. Tom Barry (Achievement)
The Valiant, Fox, Tom Barry (Achievement)
1929/1930
The Divorcee. MGM. John Meehan (Achievement)
Street of Chance. Paramount. Howard Estabrook (Achievement)
All Quiet on the Western Front. Universal. George Abbott, Maxwell
Anderson (co-Achievement)
1930/1931
♦Cimarron. RKO Radio. Howard Estabrook (Adaptation)
Little Caesar. Warner Bros. Francis Faragoh (Adaptation)
♦The Dawn Patrol. Warner Bros.-First National. John Monk Saunders
(Original Story)
Laughter, Paramount. Donald Ogden Stewart (Co-Original Story)
The Public Enemy. Warner Bros.-First National. John Bright
(Co-Original Story)
1931/1932
♦Bad Girl. Fox. Edwin Burke (Adaptation)
Arrowsmith. Goldwyn, UA. Sidney Howard (Adaptation)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Paramount. Samuel Hoffenstein (Co-Adaptation)
What Price Hollywood. RKO Radio. Adela Rogers St. Johns (Original
Story)
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3 6 7
1932/1933
Lady for a Day. Columbia. Robert Riskin (Adaptation)
State Fair. Fox. Paul Green and Sonya Levien (Co-Adaptation)
Rasputin and the Empress. MGM. Charles MacArthur (Original Story)
♦One-Way Passage. Warner Bros. Robert Lord (Original Story)
193^
♦It Happened One Night. Columbia. Robert Riskin (Adaptation)
The Thin Man, MGM. Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett (Adaptation)
Viva Villa. MGM. Ben Hecht (Adaptation)
♦Manhattan Melodrama. MGM. Arthur Caesar (Original Story)
The Richest Girl in the World. RKO Radio. Norman Krasna (Original
Story)
1935
Broadway Melody of 1936, MGM. Moss Hart (Original Story)
♦The Scoundrel, Paramount. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (Original
Story)
Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Paramount. John L. Balderston, Achmed
Abdullah (Co-Screenplay)
Mutiny on the Bounty. MGM. Talbot Jennings (Co-Screenplay)
1936
Fury. MGM. Norman Krasna (Original Story)
The Great Ziegfield, MGM. William Anthony McGuire (Original Story)
♦The Story of Louis Pasteur, Warner Bros. Sheridan Gibney ♦(Co-
Original Story)
After the Thin Man. MGM. Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett
(Screenplay)
Dodsworth, Goldwyn, UA. Sidney Howard (Screenplay)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Columbia. Robert Riskin (Screenplay)
My Man Godfrey. Universal. Morris Ryskind (Co-Screenplay)
♦The Stoiy of Louis Pasteur. Warner Bros. Sheridan Gibney ♦(Co-
Screenplay)
1937
Black Legion. Warner Bros. Robert Lord (Original Story)
In Old Chicago. 20th Century-Fox. Niven Busch (Original Story)
The Life of Emile Zola, Warner Bros. Geza Herczeg (Co-Original Story)
♦A Star Is Born. Selznick, UA. Robert Carson (Co-Original Story)
The Awful Truth. Columbia. Vina Delmar (Screenplay)
Captains Courageous. MGM. Marc Connelly (Co-Screenplay)
Stage Door. RKO Radio. Morrie Ryskind (Co-Screenplay)
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368
A Star Is Born. Selznick, UA. Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker
(Co-Screenplay)
The Life of Emile Zola. Warner Bros. *Geza Hervzeg, Norman Reilly
Raine (Co-Screenplay)
1938
Blockade, Wanger, UA. John Howard Lawson (Original Story)
Test Pilot. MGM. Frank Wead (Original Story)
You Can*t Take It with You. Columbia. Robert Riskin (Screenplay
*Pygmalion. MGM (British) George Bernard Shaw (Screenplay)
Boys Town. MGM. John Neehan (Co-Screenplay)
The Citadel. MGM (British). Frank Wead (Co-Screenplay)
1939
Ninotchka. MGM. Melchior Lengyel (Original Story)
Love Affair. RKO Radio. Mildred Cram (Co-Original Story)
*Gone with the Wind. Selznick, MGM. Sidney Howard (Screenplay)
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Columbia. Sidney Buchman (Screenplay)
Goodbye Mr. Chips. MGM (British). R. C. Sherriff (Co-Screenplay)
Ninotchka. MGM. Charles Brackett (Co-Screenplay)
Wuthering Heights. Goldwyn, UA. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
(Co-Screenplay)
19^0
My Favorite Wife. RKO Radio. Bella Spewack, Samuel Spewack (Co-
Original Story)
Angels Over Broadway. Columbia. Ben Hecht (Original Screenplay)
♦The Great McGinty. Paramount. Preston Sturges (Original Screenplay)
The Grapes of Wrath. 20th Century-Fox.Nunnally Johnson (Screenplay)
♦The Philadelphia Story. MGM. Donald Ogden Stewart (Screenplay)
Rebecca. Selznick, UA. Robert E. Sherwood (Co-Screenplay)
19^1
The Lady Eve. Paramount. Monckton Hoffee (Original Story)
*Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Columbia. Harry Segal (Original Story)
Meet John Doe. Warner Bros. Richard Connell and Robert Presnell
(Co-Original Story)
The Devil and Miss Jones. RKO Radio. Norman Ke.-,sna (Original
Screenplay)
♦Citizen Kane. Mercury, RKO Radio. Herman J. Mankiewicz (Co-Original
Screenplay)
♦Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Columbia. Sidney Buchman (Co-Screenplay)
The Little Foxes, Goldwyn, RKO Radio. Lillian Heilman (Screenplay)
Hold Back the Dawn. Paramount. Charles Brackett (Co-Screenplay)
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3 6 9
19^2
The Pride of the Yankees. Goldwyn, RKO Radio. Paul Gallico
(Original Story)
The Pride of the Yankees. Goldwyn, RKO Radio. Herman J. Mankiewicz,
Jo Swerling (Screenplay)
The War Against Mrs. Hadley. MGM. George Oppenheimer (Original
Screenplay)
Wake Island. Paramount. W. R. Burnett (Co-Original Screenplay)
Mrs. Miniver. MGM. James Hilton, George Froeschel, Arthur Wimperis
(Co-Screenplay)
The Talk of the Town, Columbia. Irwin Shaw and Sidney Buchman
(Co-Screenplay)
The Invaders. Ortus, Columbia (British). Rodney Ackland (Co-
Screenplay)
Random Harvest. MGM. George Froeschel, Arthur Wimperis (Co-Screenplay)
1943
Destination Tokyo, Warner Bros. Steve Fisher (Original Story)
Action in the North Atlantic, Warner Bos. Guy Gilpatic (Original
Story)
*The Human Comedy. MGM. William Saroyan (Original Story)
In Which We Serve Two Cities. UA (British). Noel Coward (Original
Screenplay
The North Star. Goldwyn, RKO Radio. Lillian Heilman (Original
Screenplay)
*Princess OtRourke, Warner Brow. Norman Krasna (Original Screenplay)
So Proudly We Hail. Paramount. Allan Scott (Original Screenplay)
Holy Matrimony. 20th Century-Fox. Nunnally Johnson (Screenplay)
Watch on the Rhine. Warner Bros. Dashiell Hammett (Screenplay)
1944
Lifeboat, 20th Century-Fox. John Steinbeck (Original Story)
A Guy Named Joe. MGM. David Boehm (Co-Original Story)
Hail the Conquering Hero. Paramount. Preston Sturgess (Original
Screenplay)
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. Paramount. Preston Sturgess (Original
Screenplay)
Two Girls and a Sailor. MGM. Richard Connell (Co-Original Screenplay)
Double Indemnity. Paramount. Raymond Chandler (Co-Screenplay)
gaslight, MGM. John L. Balderston, John Van Druten (Co-Screenplay)
Laura» 20th Century-Fox* Samuel HofFenstein, Jay Dratler (Co-
Screenplay)
Meet Me in St. Louis. MGM. Fred F. Finkelhoffe (Co-Screenplay)
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19^5
3 7 0
A Medal for Benny, Paramount. John Steinbeck (Co-Original Story)
Pride of the Marines. Warner Bros. Albert Maltz (Screenplay)
*The Lost Weekend. Paramount. Charles Brackett (Co-Screenplay)
The Story of G. I. Joe, Cowan, UA. Leopold Atlas, Guy Endore
(Co-Screenplay)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 20th Century-Fox. Tess Slesinger
(Co-Screenplay)
19^6
*Vacation From Marriage, London Films, MGM (British). Clemence Dane
(Original Story)
The Stranger. International, RKO Radio. Victor Trivas (Original
Story)
To Each His Own, Paramount. Charles Brackett (Original Story)
The Blue Dahlia, Paramount. Raymond Chandler (Original Screenplay)
Notorious, RKO Radio. Ben Hecht (Original Screenplay)
*The Best Years of Our Lives, Goldwyn, RKO Radio. Robert E. Sherwood
(Screenplay)
Anna and the King of. Siam. 20th Century-Fox. Sally Benson and Talbot
Jennings (Co-Screenplay)
Miracle on 3^th Street, 20th Century-Fox. Valentine Davies
(Original Story)
Smash-up— The Story of a Woman. Wanger, U-I. Dorothy Parker (Original
Story)
Gentleman*s Agreement, 20th Century-Fox. Moss Hart (Screenplay)
19^8
A Foreign Affair, Paramount. Charles Brackett (Co-Screenplay)
The Snake Pit, 20th Century-Fox. Millen Brand (Co-Screenplay)
19^9
Jolson Sings Again. Columbia. Sidney Buchman (Story and Screenplay)
Sands of Iwo Jima, Republic. Harry Brown (Motion Picture Story)
Come to the Stable, 20th Century-Fox. Clare Boothe Luce (Motion
Picture Story)
It Happens Every Spring. 20th Century-Fox. Valentine Davis
(Co-Motion Picture Story)
The Fallen Idol. London Films, SR0 (British). Graham Greene
(Screenplay)
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1950
♦Sunset Boulevard. Paramount. Charles Brackett (Co-Story and
Screenplay)
Father of the Bride. MGM. Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett
(Screenplay)
Broken Arrow. 20th Century-Fox. Michael Blankfort (Screenplay)
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APPENDIX C
EASTERN WRITER FILMOGRAPHIES
372
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3 7 3
Eastern-Writer Filmographies
The following filmographies, are meant to be a comprehensive
compilation of the feature film credits earned by Eastern writers who
worked in Hollywood. The lists include only those films for which a
writer performed a specific screenwriting function; thus, films are
excluded which were based on or adapted from a writer’s work in
another medium, and for which the writer’s only connection was
through the source material.
These filmographies do not reflect the total number of
film projects on which an individual writer may have worked, as many
screenplays went unfilmed, and often screenwriter contributions were
insufficient to earn screen credit. This explains why certain
famous authors (e.g., Arnold Bennett, Rex Beach, or Maurice Master-
linck from the silent era; James T. Farrell, John Marquand, George
Kelly, Katherine Anne Porter, I. A. R. Wylie, and others from the
sound period) are not included in these lists; in spite of time spent
in the studios, their efforts on film projects never yielded actual
screen credits.
Whenever collateral sources (biographies, memoirs,
critical studies) indicate writer involvement on a particular film,
however, the film title and writer function are included, followed
by the notation "uncredited." With 1950 as a broadly considered
outer boundary for Eastern-writer involvement in Hollywood, no author
whose film credits begin after that date is included-— except where
the credits of a notable writer would seem to be of especial interest,
e.g., those of William Inge, Tennessee Williams, etc.
One limitation of the filmographies is that there is no
adequate documentation of screenwriting credits for films made be
fore 1921. Thus, these lists are deficient in information regarding
the film work of authors during those early years. Fortunately that
period was not the richest for the Eastern-writer presence in Holly
wood, so the following material is substantially representative of the
authors• efforts•
With the exception of a few filmographies which were publish
ed in the Winter 1970-1971 issue of Film Comment (and the subsequent
re-printing of this information in an augmented format, The Hollywood
Screenwriters, edited by Richard Corliss, 1972), the following compila
tion contains reference material which is unavailable in any other
source.
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3 7 4
Abbreviations
adapt — adaptation, adapt
cont ~ continuity
dial — dialogue
dir — director, direction
prod — producer, produced
ss/story — screen story
seen — scenario, scenarist
scr — screenplay
supv — supervisor, supervision
titl — titler, titles
writ — written, writer
"CO-" means the credit is shared with
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
GEORGE ABBOTT
1929 - HALF-WAY TO HEAVEN, dir., adapt,
THE SATURDAY NIGHT KID, co-story.
WHY BRING THAT UP, dir., scr.
1930 - ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, co-scr.
MANSLAUGHTER, dir., adapt.
THE SEA GOD, dir., adapt., dial.
1931 - SECRETS OF A SECRETARY, dir., adapt.
1957 ~ THE PAJAMA GAME, co-scr., co-dir.
1958 - DAMN YANKEES, scr., co-dir.
ACHMED ABDULLAH
192? - CHANG, titl.
1935 - LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER, co-scr.
co-dial.
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RODNEY ACKLAND
1939 - SMILING ALONG, dial.
19^1 - THE INVADERS, co-scr.
CONTINENTAL EXPRESS, co-scr., story,
19^3 - UNCENSORED, co-scr.
19^6 - LADY SURRENDERS, additional dial.
19^9 - TEMPTATION HARBOR, co-scr.
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3 7 7
GEORGE ADE
1922 - BACK HOME AND BROKE, story, adapt.
OUR LEADING CITIZEN, story, adapt.
1923 - WOMAN PROOF, story.
1924 - THE CONFIDENCE MAN, titl.
1925 - OLD HOME WEEK, story.
1936 - FRESHMAN LOVE, story.
ZOE AKINS
1930 - ANYBODY'S WOMAN, co-scr., dial.
THE RIGHT TO LOVE, scr.
SARAH AND SON, adapt., dial.
1931 - WOMEN LOVE ONCE, scr.
GIRLS ABOUT TOWN, story.
ONCE A LADY, co-scr., adapt.
WORKING GIRLS, scr.
1933 - CHRISTOPHER STRONG, scr.
1932 * - OUTCAST LADY, scr.
NO MORE YESTERDAYS, co-scr.
1937 * * CAMILLE, co—scr.
1938 - THE TOY WIFE, scr.
ZAZA, scr.
19^7 - DESIRE ME, co-scr.
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3 78
ERIC AMBLER
1946 - THE WAY AHEAD, scr., story, co-scr.
1948 - THE HANGMAN'S NOOSE (AKAi THE OCTOBER MAN), scr., story, scr.
1949 - ONE WOMAN'S STORY, scr.
1951 - HIGHLY DANGEROUS, scr., story, scr.
1952 - THE MAGIC BOX, scr.
ENCORE, (Sequel to Trio), Gigolo and Gigolette, scr.
Winter Cruise, Arthur MacRae, scr.
The Ant and the Grasshopper, scr.
T. E. B. Clark, scr.
THE PROMOTOR, scr.
1953 - SHOOT FIRST, scr.
THE CRUEL SEA, scr.
1955 - THE PURPLE PLAIN, scr.
1956 - LEASE OF LIFE, scr.
195? - BATTLE HELL, story, scr.
1958 - A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, scr.
1959 - THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE, scr.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
1930 - ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, co-scr., co-dial.
1932 - RAIN, scr.
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND, story.
1934 - DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY, co-scr.
WE LIVE AGAIN, co-adapt.
1935 - RED THE ROSE, co-scr.
1948 - JOAN OF ARC, co-scr., from his play, Joan of Lorraine.
1957 - THE WRONG MAN, story, co-scr.
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3 7 9
ROBERT ARDREY
19AO - THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED, scr.
19*0 - A LADY TAKES A CHANCE, scr.
19^6 - THE GREEN YEARS, co-scr.
19^7 - SONG OF LOVE, co-scr.
19*1-8 - THE THREE MUSKETEERS, scr.
19*»9 - THE SECRET GARDEN, scr.
19^9 - MADAME BCVARY, scr.
1955 - QUENTIN DURWARD, scr.
1956 - THE POWER AND THE PRIZE, scr.
1959 - THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY, scr.
1962 - THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, co-scr.
1966 - KHARTOUM, scr., scr. story.
GERTRUDE FRANKLIN ATHERTON
1921, - DON'T NEGLECT YOUR WIFE, story.
LEOPOLD ATLAS
1935 - A NOTORIOUS GENTLEMEN, co-scr.
MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, co-adapt.
19^5 - TOMORROW THE WORLD, co-scr.
19^6 - HER KIND OF MAN, co-scr.
THE STORY OF G. I . JOE, co-scr.
19^8 - RAW DEAL, co-scr.
1951 - MY FORBIDDEN PAST, adapt.
1961 - HAND IN HAND (English), adapt.
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JOHN L. BALDERSTON
3 8 0
1931 - FRANKENSTEIN, adapt.
1932 - THE MUMMY, scr.
1933 - BERKELEY SQUARE, co-scr., from his play.
1934 - MAD LOVE, co-scr.
1935 - THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, co-scr.
THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER, co-scr.
THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, co-scr.
1936 - BELOVED ENEMY, story, co-scr.
THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, co-scr.
1937 - THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, co-scr.
ROMANCE AND RICHES, scr.
19^0 - LITTLE OLD NEW YORK, adapt.
VICTORY, scr.
19^1 - SCOTLAND YARD, co-scr.
SMILIN* THROUGH, co-scr.
19^2 - STAND BY FOR ACTION, co-scr.
TENNESSEE JOHNSON, co-scr.
19^ - GASLIGHT, co-scr.
1952 - RED PLANET MARS, co-story, co-scr.
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, remake of his 1937 script.
FAITH BALDWIN
1937 - PORTIA ON TRIAL, ss.
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VICKI BAUM
1933 - THE WOMAN ACCUSED, co-story.
193^ - I GIVE MY LOVE, story.
1935 - THE NIGHT IS YOUNG, story
mo - DANCE, GIRL DANCE, ss.
m i - UNFINISHED BUSINESS, co-scr.
19^2 - POWDER TOWN, story idea.
GIRL TROUBLE, co-sctory.
19^6 - HONEYMOON, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
3 8 2
S. N. BEHRMAN
1930 - LILIOM, dial., co-scr. wi th Sonya Levien
LIGHTIN', co-scr. and co-dial, with Sonya Levien.
1931 - DADDY LONG LEGS, co-dial, with Sonya Levien.
THE BRAT, co-scr. with Sonya Levien and co-dial, with Sonya
Levien and another writer.
SURRENDER, co-scr. and co-dial, with Sonya Levien.
1932 - REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM, co-scr. and co-dial, with Sonya
Levien.
TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY, co-scr. with Sonya Levien and
another writer.
1933 - BRIEF MOMENT, from his play My Lips Betray, dial.
HALLEUJAH I'M A BUM, scr,
QUEEN CHRISTINA, dial.
193^ - AS HUSBANDS GO, co-scr. with Sonya Levien.
1935 - ANNA KARENINA, co-scr. with Sonya Levien.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES, co-scr.
1937 - CONQUEST, co-scr. with Salka Viertel and other writers.
PARNELL, co-scr.
1938 - THE COWBOY AND THE LADY, co-scr. with Sonya Levien.
19^0 - NO TIME FOR COMEDY, from his play Waterloo Bridge, co-scr.
19^1 - TWO FACED WOMAN, co-scr. with Salka Viertel and other writers.
1951 - QUO VADIS, co-scr. with Sonya Levien and another writer.
1956 - GABY, remake of Waterloo Bridge.
1958 - ME AND THE COLONEL, adapt,, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
ROBERT BENCHLEY
1932 - SPORT PARADE, dial, (uncredited).
SKY DEVILS, co-dial, (uncredited).
193** - THE GAY DIVORCEE, contrib. to dial, (uncredited).
1935 - MORDER ON A HONEYMOON, co-scr.
1940 - FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, contrib. to scr.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
1930 - ABRAHAM LINCOLN, co-cont., co-dial., adapt.
19*H - ALL THAT MONEY CAN BOY, story, co-scr.
(AKA 1 THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER)
CHEERS FOR MISS BISHOP, adapt.
SALLY BENSON
19*1-3 - SHADOW OF A DOUBT, co-scr.
19^6 - ANNA AND KING OF SIAM, co-scr.
19*1-9 - LITTLE WOMEN, contrib. to scr,
COME TO THE STABLE, co-scr.
1950 - NO MAN OF HER OWN, co-scr.
CONSPIRATOR, co-adapt., scr.
1953 - THE FARMER TAKES A WIFE, co-scr.
1963 - SOMMER MAGIC, scr.
196*1- - VIVA LAS VEGAS, ss., scr.
1965 - SIGNPOST TO MORDER, scr.
JOY IN THE MORNING, co-scr.
1966 - THE SINGING NON, co-scr.
KONRAD BERCOVICI
1923 - THE LAW OF THE LAWLESS, story, from his short story (1921).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
3 8 4
LAJOS BIRO
1927 - THE WAY OF ALL FLESH, adapt.
1928 - ADORATION, story.
THE HAUNTED HOUSE, co-scr.
THE LAST COMMAND, story.
THE NIGHT WATCH, cont.
THE YELLOW LILY, story, adapt.
1930 - WOMEN EVERYWHERE, co-scr., co-dial.
1933 - THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII, co-story, co-dial.
193^ - CATHERINE THE GREAT, co-story, co-dial.
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN, co-story, co-dial.
1935 - THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL, co-cont., co-dial.
SANDERS OF THE RIVER, co-scr., co-cont., co-dial.
1938 - DRUMS, adapt.
19^0 - THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, scr., story.
19^8 - AN IDEAL HUSBAND, scr.
1956 - STORM OVER THE NILE, co-additional dial.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
GUY BOLTON
3 85
1925 - GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE, adapt.
1929 - THE LOVE DOCTOR, co-adapt., dial.
THE LOVE PARADE, libretto
1931 - YELLOW TICKET, co-dial.
DELICIOUS, story, co-adapt.
AMBASSADOR,BILL, story, dial.
TRANSATLANTIC, story.
THE LADY REFUSES, co-story.
1932 - DEVIL'S LOTTERY, scr.
CARELESS LADY, scr.
THE WOMAN IN ROOM 13, scr.
ALMOST MARRIED, co-scr.
THE PAINTED WOMAN, co-scr.
1933 - PLEASURE CRUISE, scr.
193^ - THE LADY IS WILLING, scr.
LADIES SHOULD LISTEN, adapt, from play by Bolton and Savoir.
1935 - THE MURDER MAN, co-story.
MORALS OF MARCUS, co-adapt.
MISTER HOBO, scr.
19^5 - WEEKEND AT THE WALDORF, adapt.
19^6 - TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY, ss.
19^8 - WORDS AND MUSIC, co-ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
CHARLES BRACKETT
193^ - ENTER MADAME, co-scr,
1935 - COLLEGE SCANDAL, co-scr.
THE LAST OUTPOST, co-scr.
WITHOUT REGRET, co-scr.
1936 - ROSE OF THE RANCHO, co-scr.
PICADILLY JIM, co-scr.
WOMAN TRAP, story.
THE JUNGLE PRINCESS, co-scr. (uncredited).
1937 - WILD MONEY, co-scr. (uncredited).
LIVE, LOVE AND LEARN, co-scr.
1938 - BLUEBEARD*S EIGHTH WIFE, co-scr. , with Billy Wilder.
1939 - WHAT A LIFE, co-scr. with Billy Wilder.
MIDNIGHT, co-scr. with Billy Wilder.
NINOTCHKA, co-scr. with Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch.
19^0 - ARISE MY LOVE, co-scr. with Billy Wilder.
19^1 - HOLD BACK THE DAWN, co-scr. with Billy Wilder.
BALL OF FIRE, co-scr. with Billy Wilder.
19^2 - THE MAJOR AND TEE MINOR, co-scr. with Billy Wilder.
19^3 - FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO, co-scr. with Billy Wilder, prod.
19^5 - THE LOST WEEKEND, co-scr. with Billy Wilder, prod.
19^6 - TO EACH HIS OWN, story, co-scr., prod,
19^8 - THE EMPEROR WALTZ, co-story and co-scr. with Billy Wilder, prod.
A FOREIGN AFFAIR, co-scr. with Richard Breen, prod.
MISS TATLOCK'S MILLIONS, co-scr. with Richard Breen, prod.
1950 - SUNSET BOULEVARD, co-scr. with Billy Wilder and another writer,
prod.
1951 - THE MATING SEASON, co-scr. with Richard Breen and Walter Reisch,
prod.
THE MODEL AND THE MARRIAGE BROKER, co-scr. with Richard Breen
and Walter Reisch, prod.
1953 - NIAGARA, co-story and co-scr. with Richard Breen and Walter
Reisch, prod,
TITANIC, co-story and co-scr. with Richard Breen and Walter
Reisch, prod.
1955 - THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING, co-story and co-scr. with
co-story and co-scr. with Walter Reisch, prod.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
1956
1959
387
CHARLES BRACKETT (Continued)
TEENAGE REBEL, co-scr. with Walter Reisch, prod.
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, co-scr. with Walter Reisch,
prod.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
MAX BRAND
388
1939 - CALLING DR. KILDARE, ss.
19^0 - DR. KILDARE’S STRANGE CASE, co-ss.
DR. KILDARE GOES HOME, co-ss.
DR. KILDARE’S CRISIS, co-ss.
19^1 - THE PEOPLE VS. DR. KILDARE, co-ss. (based on characters
created by Max Brand).
19^1 - THE DESPERADOES, ss.
19^ - UNCERTAIN GLORY, co-scr.
MILLEN BRAND
19^7 - THE SNAKE PIT, co-scr.
BERTOLT BRECHT
19^3 - HANGMEN ALSO DIE, co-ss., co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
389
JOHN BRIGHT
1932 - UNION DEPOT, co-dial.
TAXI, co-adapt., co-dial.
THE CROWD ROARS, co-adapt., co-dial.
THREE ON A MATCH, co-story.
IF I HAD A MILLION, co-scr.
1933 - SHE DONE HEM WRONG, co-scr.
1936 - THE ACCUSING FINGER, co-scr.
GIRL OF THE OZARKS, co-scr.., story
193? - SAN QUENTIN, co-scr., story.
1939 - BACK DOOR TO HEAVEN, co-scr.
19^0 - GLAMOUR FOR SALE, scr., scr. story.
19^2 - BROADWAY, co-scr.
19A5 - WE ACCUSE, scr., scr. story.
19^8 - PALOOKA NAMED JOE (FIGHTING MAD), scr.
I WALK ALONE, co-adapt.
CLOSE-UP, co—scr.
1949 - THE KID FROM CLEVELAND, co-story, scr.
1951 - THE BRAVE BULLS, scr.
LOUIS BROMFIELD
19^0 - BRIGHAM YOUNG-FRONTIERSMAN, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
HARRY BROWN
19^5 - the TRUE GLORY, co.-scr., co-story.
19^7 - THE OTHER LOVE, co-scr.
19^8 - ARCH OF TRIUMPH, co-scr.
WAKE OF THE RED WITCH, co-scr.
19^9 - SANDS OF IWG JIMA, story, co-scr.
MAN ON THE EIFFEL TOWER, scr.
1950 - KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE, scr.
1951 - A PLACE IN THE SUN, co-scr.
ONLY THE VALIANT, co-scr.
BUGLES IN THE AFTERNOON, co-scr.
1952 - THE SNIPER, scr.
EIGHT IRON MEN, scr., from his play A Sound of Hunting.
1953 - ALL THE BROTHERS WERE VALIANT, scr.
1955 - MANY RIVERS TO CROSS, co-scr.
THE VIRGIN QUEEN, co-scr.
1956 - D-DAY, THE SIXTH OF JUNE, co-scr.
1957 - BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL, scr.
1958 - THE DEEF SIX, co-scr.
THE FIEND WHO WALKED THE VEST, co-scr.
I960 - OCEAN’S ELEVEN, co-scr.
390
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
SIDNEY BUCHMAN
1927 - MATINEE LADIES, co-story
1931 - DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON, dial.
BELOVED BACHELOR, dial.
1932 - NO ONE MAN, adapt., dial.
THUNDER BELOW, adapt.
THE SIGN OF THE CROSS, adapt., dial.
IF I HAD A MILLION, co-scr.
1933 - FROM HELL TO HEAVEN, co-scr.
RIGHT TO ROMANCE, co-scr.
1934 - ALL OF ME, co-scr.
WHOM THE GODS DESTROY, co-scr.
HIS GREATEST GAMBLE, co-scr.
BROADWAY BILL, co-scr. (uncredited).
1935 - I'LL LOVE YOU ALWAYS, co-scr.
LOVE ME FOREVER, co-scr.
SHE MARRIED HER BOSS, scr.
1936 - THE KING STEFS OUT, scr.
THEODORA GOES WILD, scr.
ADVENTURE IN MANHATTAN, scr.
1937 - THE AWFUL TRUTH, co-scr. (uncredited).
LOST HORIZON, co-scr. (uncredited).
1938 - HOLIDAY, co-scr.
1939 - MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, scr.
1940 - THE HOWARDS OF VIRGINIA, scr.
1941 - HERE COMES MR. JORDAN, co-scr.
1942 - THE TALK OF THE TOWN, co-scr.
1943 - SAHARA, co-scr. (uncredited).
19i4-5 - A SONG TO REMEMBER, scr., prod.
OVER 21, scr., prod.
1946 - THE JOLSON STORY, co-story (uncredited).
1948 - TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, co-scr. (uncredited).
1949 - JOLSON SINGS AGAIN, story, scr., prod.
39 1
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
392
SIDNEY BUCEMAN (Continued)
1951 - SATURDAY'S HERO, co-scr.
1961 - THE MARK, co-scr.
1963 - CLEOPATRA, co-scr.
1966 - THE GROUP, scr., prod.
1972 - LA MAISON SOUS LES ARBRES, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
39 3
DANA BURNET
1929 - LOVE, LIVE AND LAUGH, seen.
SEVEN FACES, seen,, dial.
1930 - HIGH SOCIETY BLUES, story.
1931 - STOLEN HEAVEN, story.
1939 - THE GREAT COMMANDMENT, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
394
W. R. BURNETT
1931 - FINGER POINTS, co-story.
1932 - BEAST OF THE CITY, story.
SCARFACE, co-scr., co-dial,
19^1 - THE GET-AWAY, co-scr.
HIGH SIERRA, co-scr, from his novel.
19te - THIS GUN FOR HIRE, co-scr.
WAKE ISLAND, co-story, co-scr.
19^3 - BACKGROUND TO DANGER, scr.
CRASH DIVE, story.
ACTION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC, co-additional dial.
19^5 - SAN ANTONIO, co-story, co-scr,
19^6 - NOBODY LIVES FOREVER, scr. from his novel.
19^8 - BELLE STARR'S DAUGHTER, story, scr.
YELLOW SKY, story.
1950 - VENDETTA, scr.
195& - DANGEROUS MISSION, co-scr.
1955 - CAPTAIN LIGHTFOOT, story, co-scr.
I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES, scr. from his novel High Sierra.
ILLEGAL, co-scr.
1956 - ACCUSED OF MURDER, co-scr. from his novel Vanity Row.
1957 - SHORT CUT TO HELL, from his scr. This Gun For Hire.
I960 - SEPTEMBER STORM, scr.
1962 - SERGEANTS THREE, story, scr.
1963 - THE GREAT ESCAPE, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
395
NIVEN BUSCH
1932 - THE CROWD ROARS, co-scr.
SCARLET DAWN, co-scr., co-dial.
MISS PINKERTON, co-scr., co-dial.
1933 - COLLEGE COACH, co-scr.
193*1- - THE MAN WITH TWO FACES, co-scr.
HE WAS HER MAN, co-scr.
THE BIG SHAKEDOWN, co-scr.
1935 - THREE KIDS AND A QUEEN, co-scr. (uncredited).
LADY TUBBS, co-scr. (uncredited).
1939 - OFF THE RECORD, co-scr.
ANGELS WASH THEIR FACES, co-scr,
19*4-0 - THE WESTERNER, co-scr.
19fcl - BELLE STARR, story.
19*46 - THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, co-scr.
19* 4 - 7 - DUEL IN THE SUN, from his novel Moss Rose,scr.
PURSUED, story, scr.
1950 - THE FURIES, from his novel The Capture, scr.
1951 - DISTANT DRUMS, story
1953 - THE MAN FROM THE ALAMO, co-scr.
THE MOONLIGHTER, story, scr.
1955 - THE TREASURE OF PANCHO VILLA, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
RACHEL BARTON BUTLER
1928 - MUST WE MARRY?, story, titl.
1929 - BROKEN HEARTED, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
397
ARTHUR CAESAR
1924 - HIS DARKER SELF, story.
1929 - THE AVIATOR, co-scen., co-dial.
THE LONG STORY, eo-adapt., co-dial.
1930 - DIVORCE AMONG FRIENDS, co-scen., co-dial,
THE LIFE OF THE PARTY, scr., dial.
SHE COULDN’T SAY NO, co-scen., co-dial.
THIS MAD WORLD, co-dial.
THREE FACES EAST, co-scr., co-dial.
WIDE OPEN, co-scen., co-dial.
1930 - SOLDIER’S PLAYTHING, dial.
1931 - SIDE SHOW, co-scr.
GOLD DUST GERTIE, dial.
HER MAJESTY LOVE, co-adapt.
1932 - FIREMAN, SAVE MY CHILD, co-story, co-adapt.
HEART OF NEW YORK, adapt., dial.
THE TENDERFOOT, co-adapt.
1933 - OBEY THE LAW, scr.
NO MARRIAGE TIES, co-dial.
THE CHIEF, co-scr.
1934 - MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, story.
THEIR BIG MOMENT, co-scr.
1935 - TRANSIENT LADY, co-scr.
MC FADDEN’S FLATS, co-scr.
ALIAS MARY DOWN, co-scr.
1936 - ALONG CAME LOVE, add. dial.
1939 - TWO THOROUGHBREDS, eontrib. to scr.
THE STAR MAKER, co-story, co-scr.
1940 - LITTLE MEN, co-scr.
1941 - ADVENTURE IN WASHINGTON, co-scr.
1942 - THE LOVES OF EDGAR ALLEN POE, add. dial.
NORTHWEST RANGERS, story.
1943 - TONIGHT WE RAID CALAIS, eontrib. to scr.
PISTOL PACKIN’ MAMA, eo-ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
39 8
ARTHUR CAESAR (Continued)
19*14 - ATLANTIC CITY, ss.
1945-1 ACCUSE MY PARENTS, ss.
1949 - ARSON INC., co-ss., co-scr.
1951 - ANNE OF THE INDIES, co-scr.
JAMES M. CAIN
1938 - ALGIERS, add. dial.
1939 - STAND UP AND FIGHT, co-scr.
WHEN TOMORROW COMES, story.
1944 - GYPSY WILDCAT, co-scr.
1949 - EVERYBODY DOES IT, story.
ERSKINE CALDWELL
1943 - MISSION TO MOSCOW, eontrib. to treatment.
EDWARD CHILDS CARPENTER
1921 - PARDON MY FRENCH, story from his Polly in the-Pantry
1935 - THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN, scr., from his play.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
39 9
ROBERT CARSON
1937 - THE LAST GANGSTER, co- s s .
A STAR IS BORN, co-ss., co-scr,
1938 - MEN WITH WINGS, scr., ss.
1939 - BEAU GESTE, scr.
19^0 - THE LIGHT THAT FAILED, scr.
19^1 - WESTERN UNION, scr.
19^2 - THE DESPERADOES, scr.
THE TUTTLES OF TAHITI, co-scr.
19^9 - ONCE MORE, MY DARLING, story, scr.
1952 - JUST FOR YOU, scr.
195^ - A STAR IS BORN, (Remake), co-ss., co-scr.
1956 - BUNDLE OF JOY, co-scr.
1957 - ACTION OF THE TIGER, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
VERA. CASPAR!
1932 - THE NIGHT OF JUNE 13, story
1935 - I’LL LOVE YOU ALWAYS, scr.
1937 - EASY LIVING, stoiy.
1938 - SCANDAL STREET, story.
SERVICE DELUXE, co-ss.
19*4-0 - SING, DANCE, PLENTY HOT, co-ss.
19*42 - LADY BODYGUARD, co-ss.
19*4-6 - CLAUDIA AND DAVID, adapt.
19*4-7 - BEDELIA, story, co-scr.
OUT OF THE BLUE, co-scr., ss.
19*49 - LETTER TO THREE WIVES, adapt.
1950 - THREE HUSBANDS, co-scr., ss.
1951 - I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE, adapt.
1953 - BLUE GARDENIA, story, from her short story "Gardenia".
1957 - LES GIRLS, ss.
1961 - BACHELOR IN PARADISE, story.
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
1922 - CARDIGAN, adapt., front his Cardigan (1901).
192*4- - AMERICA, story.
BETWEEN FRIENDS, seen., fron his Between Friends (191*4-).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
RAYMOND CHANDLER
19^ - DOUBLE INDEMNITY, co-scr.
AND NOW TOMORROW, co-scr.
19^5 - THE UNSEEN, co-scr.
19^6 - THE BLUE DAHLIA, story, scr.
1951 - STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
402
LESLIE CHARTERIS
1933 - THE MIDNIGHT, co-scr.
19*4-1 - THE SAINT IN PALM SPRINGS, ss.
THE SAINT'S VACATION’ , co-scr,, co-ss,-
19**5 - RIVER GANG, scr.
LADY ON A TRAIN, ss.
19*4-6 - TWO SMART PEOPLE, scr.
19*4-7 - TARZAN AND THE HUNTRESS, eontrib. to scr.
MARY CHASE
1950 - HARVEY, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
PADDY CHAYEFSKY
1951 - AS YOUNG AS YOU FEEL, story,
1955 - MARTY, scr, from his television play,
1957 - THE BACHELOR PARTY, scr. from his television play.
1958 - THE GODDESS, story, scr,.
1959 - MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, scr. from his play.
1964 - THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY, scr.
1969 - PAINT YOUR WAGON, adapt.
1971 - THE HOSPITAL, story, scr.
403
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
EDWARD CHODOROV
1933 - THE MAYOR OF HELL, scr.
CAPTURED!, scr.
THE WORLD CHANGES, scr.
1934 - MADAME DUBARRY, story and scr.
1938 - YELLOW JACK, scr.
WOMAN AGAINST WOMAN, scr.
1939 - SPRING MADNESS, scr.
1941 - RAGE IN HEAVEN, eontrib.
1946 - UNDERCURRENT, scr.
1947 - THE HUCKSTERS, co-adapt.
1948 - ROAD HOUSE, scr.
1951 - KIND LADY, co-scr.
JEROME CHODOROV
1935 - CASE OF THE LUCKY LEGS, adapt.
1937 - DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND, co-scr.
1936 - GENTLEMAN FROM LOUISIANA, co-scr.
DANCING FEET, co-scr.
1937 - REPORTED MISSING, co-scr.
ALL OVER TOWN, co-scr.
1938 - RICH MAN, POOR GIRL, co-scr.
1939 - CONSPIRACY, scr.
1940 - DULCY, co-scr.
TWO GIRLS ON BROADWAY, co-scr.
1941 - LOUISIANA PURCHASE, co-scr.
BLONDE INSPIRATION, eontrib.
1942 - MURDER IN THE BIG HOUSE, story.
1945 - THOSE ENDEARING YOUNG CHARMS, scr.
1948 - MAN FROM TEXAS, co-scr.
1942 - MI SISTER EILEEN, co-scr., based on his play.
1959 - HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
405
JOHN COLLIER
1936 - SYLVIA SCARLETT, co-scr.
1937 - ELEPHANT BOY, scr.
19^2 - HER CARDBOARD LOVER, co-scr.
19^6 - DECEPTION, co-scr.
19^9 - ROSEANA MCCOY, scr.
1953 - TEE STORY OF THREE LOVES:
EQUILIBRIUM, scr.
JEALOUS LOVER, scr., ss.
1955 - I AM A CAMERA, scr.
1965 - THE WAR LORD, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
406
JOHN COLTON
1921 - ALL DOLLED UP, story.
THE DANGEROUS MOMENT, Story (?) (Notej Working title
DAMGEROUS MOMENTS. Universal records indicate that he may have
been author of the original story.)
1923 - THE EXCITERS, co-scr.
1927 - CAPTAIN SALVATION, titl.
THE ENEMY, titl.
MAN, WOMAN, AND SIN, title
1928 - THE COSSACKS, titl.
DIVINE WOMAN, titl.
FORBIDDING HOURS, titl.
TELLING THE WORLD, co-filmed.
TWO LOVERS, titl.
WHITE SHADOWS IN THE SOUTH SEAS, titl.
THE WIND, titl.
1929 - WILD STORY, story.
1930 - CALL OF THE FLESH, story.
THE ROGUE SONG, co-scr.
1931 - CUBAN LOVE SONG, co-dial.
1934 - LAUGHING BOY, co-scr.
1935 - WEREWOLF OF LONDON, scr.
1936 - THE INVISIBLE RAY, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
407
RICHARD CONNELL
1929 - DARK STREETS, story.
1936 - OUR RELATIONS, co-scr.
1938 - DR. RHYTHM, co-scr.
1939 - BALALAIKA, co-contrib. to scr. construe.
19*K> - HIRED WIFE, co-scr.
19^1 - NICE GIRL?, co-scr.
MEET JOHN DOE, co-ss.
19^2 - RIO RITA, co-scr.
PRESENTING LILY MARS, co-scr.
19^ - TWO GIRLS AND A SAILOR, co-scr.v co-ss.
19^5 “ THRILL OF A ROMANCE, co-scr., co-ss.
HER HIGHNESS AND THE BELLBOY, co-scr., co-ss.
19^6 - THE KID FROM BROOKLYN, co-scr.
19^8 - LUXURY LINER, co-scr.
1956 - RUN FOR THE SUN, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
MARC CONNELLY
1926 - EXIT SMILING, story.
1933 - CRADEL SONG, scr.
1936 - GREEN PASTURES, scr., co-dir., from his play of same name.
1937 - CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS, co-scr.
19^0 - VICTORY, eontrib. to scr. construction
19^2-1 MARRIED A WITCH, co-scr.
REUNION IN FRANCE, co-scr.
19W- - THE IMPOSTER, add'l. dial.
1957 - CROWDED PARADISE, added scenes
408
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
409
BARTLETT CORMACK
1928 - THE RACKET, adapt, from his A Racket, a play (1928)
1929 - GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS, scr.
THE GREENE MURDER CASE, dial.
THE LAUGHING LADY, co-adapt.
WOMAN TRAP, scr., dial.
1930 - THE BENSON MURDER CASE, scr., dial.
THE SPOILERS, adapt., dial,
1932 - IS MY FACE RED?, dial.
THIRTEEN WOMEN, co-scr.
THE PHANTOM OF CRESTWOOD, co-story, scr.
1933 - THIS DAY AND AGE, story.
193*4- - FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE, co-scr.
THE TRUMPET BLOWS, scr.
CLEOPATRA, adapt.
1935 - DOUBTING THOMAS, adapt.
ORCHIDS TO YOU, co-scr.
1936 - FURY, co-scr.
1939 - THE BEACHCOMBER, scr.
19^1 - UNHOLY PARTNERS, co-scr.
NOEL COWARD
1933 - BITTER SWEET, scr., music, lyrics.
W 3 - IN WHICH WE SERVE (British), story, scr.
19^6 - BRIEF ENCOUNTER (British), adapt., co-prod.
19**? - THIS HAPPY BREED (British), scr.
1950 - THE ASTONISHED HEART, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
MILDRED CRAM
1932 - SINKERS IN THE SUN, story.
1935 - STARS OVER BROADWAY, story.
1939 - LOVE AFFAIR, c o-s s .
19*H) - BEYOND TOMORROW, co-story.
1957 - AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, co-ss.
FRANK CRAVEN
1929 - THE VERY IDEA, dial. dir.
1932 - HANDLE WITH CARE, co-scr.
1933 - SONS OF THE DESERT, story.
193** - THAT’S GRATITUDE, dire., story, scr.
1935 - ANNAPOLIS FAREWELL, co-scr.
RACHEL CROTHERS
1935 - SPLENDOR, adapt., scr.
RUSSEL CROUSE
1937 - MOUNTAIN MUSIC, co-scr.
ARTISTS AND MODELS, co-contrib. to scr., co-adapt,
1938 - ARTISTS AND MODELS ABROAD, co-ss., co-scr.
1939 - THE GREAT VICTOR HERBERT, co-scr.
195^ - WOMAN’S WORLD, co-add*l. dial.
410
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
411
HOMER CROY
1932 - DOWN TO EARTH, story.
1933 - THE COHENS AND KELLYS IN TROUBLE, story.
1936 - THE HARVESTER, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
412
JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
1921 - THE GIRL FROM PORCUPINE, story, seen,
THE GOLDEN SNARE, adapt, froa his The Golden Snare (1921)
1926 - A CAPTAIN’S COURAGE, orlg. story.
1927 - THE SLAVER, story.
1928 - THE OLD CODE, story.
1929 - THE YELLOWBACK, story.
1930 - RIVER’S END, story.
CLEMENCE DANE
1935 - ANNA KARENINA, co-scr.
THE TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL, add'l. dial.
1936 - THE AMATEUR GENTLEMAN, co-scr., dial.
1937 _ FIRE OVER ENGLAND, co-scr.
19^0 - SIDEWALKS OF LONDON (British), story, scr.
19^6 - VACATION FROM MARRIAGE (British), ss., co-scr.
19^9 - BRIDE OF VENGENANCE, add’l. dial.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
413
VALENTINE DAVIES
19^2 - SYNCOPATION, ss.
19^6 - THREE LITTLE GIRLS IN BLUE, scr.
19^7 - MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET, ss.
19^8 - YOU WERE MEANT FOR ME, co-ss., co-scr.
19^9 - CHICKEN EVERY SUNDAY, co-scr.
IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING, co-ss., scr.
1951 - ON THE RIVIERA, co-scr.
1953 - SAILOR OF THE KING, scr.
195^ - THE GLENN MILLER STORY, co-scr., co-ss.
1955 - THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI, scr.
STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND, co-scr.
1956 - THE BENNY GOODMAN STORY, scr., ss.
1959 - IT STARTED WITH A KISS, ss.
1961 - BACHELOR IN PARADISE, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
414
OWEN DAVIS, SR.
1925 - HOW BAXTER BUTTED IN, seen.
1927 - BLIND ALLEYS, story.
1928 - CHINATOWN CHARLIE, story.
1929 - FROZEN JUSTICE, dial.
THEY HAD TO SEE PARIS, dial.
TONIGHT AT TWELVE, titl from his TONIGHT AT 12.
1930 - SO THIS IS LONDON, adapt., dial.
1936 - THREE MARRIED MEN, ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
415
VINA DELMAR
1930 - A SOLDIER'S PLAYTHING, story.
1933 - CHANCE AT HEAVEN, story.
193^ - SADIE McKEE, story.
1935 - HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE, story.
1936 - KING OF BURLESQUE, story.
1937 - MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW, scr.
THE AWFUL TRUTH, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
416
JACQUES DEVAL
1937 - CAFE METROPOLE, scr.
1939 - BALALAIKA, co-scr.
1940 - NEW MOON, : co-scr.
1942 - HER CARDBOARD LOVER, co-scr., from his play.
1944 - SEVEN DAYS ASHORE, story.
JOHN DOS PASSOS
1936 - THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN, adapt.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
JAY DRATLER
417
1940 - LA CONGA NIGHTS, co-scr., co-ss.
GIRLS UNDER 21, co-scr., co-ss.
WHERE DID YOU GET THAT GIRL?, co-scr., ss.
1941 - MEET BOSTON ELACKIE, scr., ss.
CONFESSIONS OF BOSTON BLACKIE, co-ss.
1942 - FLY BY NIGHT, scr.
THE WIFE TAKES A FLYER, co-scr.
GET HEP TO LOVE, scr.
IT COMES UP LOVE, co-ss.
1944 - HIGHER AND HIGHER, co-scr.
LAURA, co-scr.
1945 - IT'S IN THE BAG, co-scr.
1946 - THE DARK CORNER, co-scr.
1948 - CALL NORTHSIDE 77?, co-scr.
1949 - THAT WONDERFUL URGE, scr.
IMPACT, cb-scr., co-ss.
1950 - DANCING IN THE DARK, additional dial.
1952 - THE LAS VEGAS STORY, ss.
WE'RE NOT MARRIED, co-story.
1955 - THE DESPERATE HOURS, eontrib. to scr. construe.
I960 - I AIM AT THE STARS, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
418
PHILIP DUNNING
1928 - SHOW FOLKS, story.
GILBERT EMERY
193^ - GALLANT LADY, co-story.
GUY ENDORE
1935 - RUMBA, co-story idea
MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, co-scr.
HAD LOVE, adapt.
1936 - THE DEVIL-DOLL, co-scr.
1937 - THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN, co-scr.
1938 - CAREFREE, co-story idea.
19^1 - LADY FROM LOUISIANA, co-scr.
19^ - SONG OF RUSSIA, co-story
19^9 - G. I . JOE, co-scr.
19^8 - THE VICIOUS CIRCLE co-scr.
19^9 - JOHNNY ALLEGRO, co-scr.
1951 - TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY, co-scr., ss.
HE RAN ALL THE WAY, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
419
JOHN FANTE
1935 - DINKY, co-story.
19^0 - EAST OF THE RIVER, co-story.
1944 - YOUTH RUNS WILD, co- s s . , scr.
1952 - MY MAN AND I, co-ss., co-scr.
1956 - FULL OF LIFE, story, scr., from his novel.
1957 - JEANNE EAGLES, co-scr.
1962 - THE RELUCTANT SAINT, co-ss,, co-scr.
WALK ON THE WILD SIDE, co-scr.
1963 - MY SIX LOVES, co-scr.
1966 - MAYA, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
420
FRANCIS E. FARAGOH
1929 - HER PRIVATE AFFAIR, seen., dial., co-adapt.
1930 - BACK PAY, seen., dial.
LITTLE CAESAR, scr. version, dial.
1931 - TOO YOUNG TO MARRY, scr.
THE IRON MAN, scr., dial.
1932 - PRESTIGE, scr.
THE LAST MAN, co-scr.
UNDER-COVER MAN, co-scr.
1934 - HAT, COAT AND GLOVES, scr.
1935 - CHASING YESTERDAY, scr.
BECKY SHARP, scr,
THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM, scr.
1936 - DANCING PIRATE, co-scr.
19^1 - LADY FROM LOUISIANA, co-ss.
1942 - THE MAD MARTINDALES, scr.
19^3 - MY FRIEND FLICKA, adapt.
19^6 - RENEGADES, co-scr.
EASY COME, EASY GO, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
1933 - TODAY WE LIVE, story and dial.
1936 - ROAD TO GLORY, co-scr., co-ss,
BANJO ON MY KNEE, co-scr, (uncredited)
1937 - SLAVE SHIP, addt*l. dial.t reviews attrifc. ss. to him.
1938 - SUBMARINE PATROL, co-dial, (uncredited)
1939 - GUNGA DIN, co-scr. (uncredited).
19^3 - DRUMS ACROSS THE MOHAWK, co-scr. (uncredited).
AIR FORCE, contrib. to scr. (uncredlted).
NORTHERN PURSUIT, co-scr. (uncredited).
19*4-5 - TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, co-scr.
ESCAPE IN THE DESERT, co-scr. (uncredited).
THE SOUTHERNER, co-scr. (uncredited).
19^6 - THE BIG SLEEP, co-scr.
1955 - LAND OF THE PHARAOHS, co-ss., co-scr.
421
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
MICHAEL FESSIER
1935 - SOCIETY DOCTOR, co-scr.
1936 - EXCLUSIVE STORY, scr.
WOMEN ARE TROUBLE, scr.
1936 - SPEED, scr.
1937 - SONG OF THE CITY, scr., ss.
1938 - VALLEY OF THE GIANTS, co-scr.
1939 - WINGS OF THE NAVY, scr., ss.
ANGELS WASH THEIR FACES, co-scr.
ESPIONAGE AGENT, co-scr.
19*0 - IT ALL CAME TRUE, co-scr.
HE STAYED FOR BREAKFAST, co-scr.
19*1 - KNOCKOUT, ss.
YOU'LL NEVER GET RICH, eo-ser., co-ss.
19*2 - YOU WERE NEVER LOVLIER, co-scr.
19*3 - HER PRIMITIVE MAN, co-scr.
FIRED WIFE, co-scr.
19M* - GREENWICH VILLAGE, co-adapt.
SAN DIEGO, I LOVE YOU, co-scr.
THE MERRY MONAHANS, co-scr., co-ss.
19*5 - THAT NIGHT WITH YOU, co-scr.
THAT'S THE SPIRIT, co-scr., co-ss.
19*6 - FRONTIER GAL, co-scr., co-ss.
LOVER COME BACK, co—scr.
19*7 - SLAVE GIRL, co-scr., co-ss.
195** - THE BOY FROM OKLAHOMA, story.
RED GARTERS, scr., ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
423
JOSEPH FIELDS
1931 - THE BIG SHOT, co-scr,, co-dial,
193^ - LIGHTENING STRIKES TWICE, co-scr.
1935 - $1,000 A MINUTE, scr.
WATERFRONT LADY, addt'l. dial.
ANNIE OAKLEY, story.
1936 - THAT GIRL FROM PARIS, adapt.
GRAND JURY, co-scr.
GENTLEMAN FROM LOUISIANA, co-scr,
PALM SPRINGS, co-scr.
1937 - REPORTED MISSING, co-scr.
WHEN LOVE IS YOUNG, co-scr.
1938 - RICH MAN, POOR GIRL, co-scr.
FOOLS FOR SCANDAL, co-scr.
1939 - TWO THOROUGHBREDS, co-scr., ss.
THE GIRL AND THE GAMBLER, co-scr.
THE GIRL FROM MEXICO, co-scr.
19^0 - MEXICAN SPITFIRE, co-scr., ss.
DULCY, co-scr.
TWO GIRLS ON BROADWAY, co-scr.
19W - LOUISIANA PURCHASE, co-scr.
BLONDE INSPIRATION, contrlb. to.
19^2 - MY SISTER EILEEN, co-scr., from his play.
19^6 - A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA, co-scr., co-ss.
19^7 - LOST HONEYMOON, scr., ss.
19^8 - MAN FROM TEXAS, co-scr.
19^9 - BRIDE FOR SALE, co^ss.
1953 - FARMER TAKES A WIFE, co-scr.
1958 - THE TUNNEL OF LOVE, scr.
1959 - HAFPY ANNIVERSARY, co-scr.
1961 - FLOWER DRUM SONG, scr., from his musical play.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
424
FRED F. FINKELHOFFE
19*40 - BROTHER RAT AND BABY, co-scr., co-ss,
STRIKE UP THE BAND, co-scr., co-ss.
19*4-2 - BABES ON BROADWAY, co-scr., ssi
FOR ME AND MY GAL, co-scr.
GIRL CRAZY, scr.
19*43 - BEST FOOT FORWARD, co-scr.
19*4*4 - MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, co-scr.
19*46 - MR. ACE, scr., ss.
19*47 - THE EGG AND I, co-scr.
19*48 - WORDS AND MUSIC, scr.
1951 - AT WAR WITH THE ARMY, scr.
1953 - THE STOOGE, co-scr., co-ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
425
STEVE FISHER
19^0 - TYPHOON, s s .
19^2 - TO THE SHORES OF TRIPOLI, ss.
BERLIN CORRESPONDENT, co-scr., co-ss.
19^2 - DESTINATION TOKYO, ss.
19*+5 - JOHNNY ANGEL, scr.
19^6 - LADY IN THE LAKE, scr.
DEAD RECKONING, co-scr.
19^7 - THAT’S MY MAN, co-scr., co-ss.
SONG OF THE THIN MAN, co-scr.
19^8 - THE HUNTED, scr., ss.
I WOULDN’T BE IN YOUR SHOES, scr.
19^9 - TOKYO JOE, story.
1950 - A LADY WITHOUT A PASSPORT, contrib.
1951 - ROADBLOCK, co-scr.
1952 - WHISPERING SMITH VS. SCOTLAND YARD, c
BATTLE ZONE, scr,, ss.
FLAT TOP, scr., ss.
1953 - SAN ANTONE, scr.
WOMAN THEY ALMOST LYNCHED, scr.
THE MAN FROM THE ALAMO, sc-scr.
THE BIG FRAME, co-scr.
CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS, scr., ss.
SEA OF LOST SHIPS, scr.
TERROR STREET, scr., ss.
NIGHT FREIGHT, scr., ss.
195^ - HELL’S HALF ACRE, scr., ss.
THE SHANGHAI STORY, co-scr.
1955 - THE BIG TIP-OFF, scr., ss.
LAS VEGAS SHAKEDOWN, scr., ss.
TOP GUN, co-scr., ss.
SILENT FEAR, scr., ss. .
1956 - TOUGHEST MAN ALIVE, scr., ss.
BETRAYED WOMEN, scr.
1957 - RESTLESS BREED, scr., ss.
COURAGE OF BLACK BEAUTY, scr.
scr. (uncredited),
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
STEVE FISHER (Continued)
1959 - I, MOBSTER, scr.
1961 - SEFTEMBER STORM, story from his The Sea Nymph.
196k - LAW OF THE LAWLESS, scr., ss.
THE QUICK GUN, ss,
1965 - IOUNG FURY, co-story, scr.
BLACK SPURS, scr., ss.
1966 - JOHNNY RENO, co-ss., scr.
WACO, scr.
196? - RED TOMAHAWK, co-ss., scr.
FORT UTAH, co-ss., scr.
1968 - HOSTILE GUNS, co-scr.
ARIZONA BUSHWACKERS, co-ss., scr.
ROGUE'S GALLERY, co-ss., scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
1938 - A YANK AT OXFORD, co-scr, (uncredited).
THREE COMRADES, co-scr.
1939 - THE WOMEN, co-scr. (uncredited).
GONE WITH THE WIND, contrib. to scr. (uncredited).
WINTER CARNIVAL, contrib. to treatment (uncredited).
19^0 - RAFFLES, contrib. to scr. (uncredited)
19^3 - MADAME CURIE, contrib. to scr. (uncredited).
MARTIN FLAVIN
1930 - THE BIG HOUSE, co-addt'l. dial.
PASSION FLOWER, adapt., dial.
1932 - THE AGE OF CONSENT, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
428
COREY FORD
1929 - THE SOPHOMORE, story.
1932 - THE SPORT PARADE, co-scr.
THE HALF NAKED TRUTH, co-scr.
1933 - HER BODYGUARD, story.
1939 - REMEMBER, co-scr., co-ss.
TOPPER TAKES A TRIP, co-scr.
ZENOBIA, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
GENE FOWLER
429
1932 - UNION DEPOT, co-story.
ROADHOUSE MURDER, additional dial.
STATE'S ATTORNEY, co-scr., co-dial.
WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD?, co-adapt.
1933 - THE WAY TO LOVE, co-scr.
1935 - CALL OF THE WILD, co-scr.
1936 - PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER, co-scr.
CAREER WOMAN, story.
WHITE FANG, co-scr.
HALF ANGEL, co-scr.
1937 - ALI BABA GOES TO TOWN, co-ss.
LOVE UNDER FIRE, co-scr.
NANCY STEELE IS MISSING, co-scr.
19^0 - EARL OF CHICAGO, co-ss.
1941 - BILLY THE KID, scr.
1949 - BIG JACK, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
430
ROSE FRANKEN
193^ - ELINOR NORTON, co-scr.
1935 - ALIAS MARY DOW, co-scr.
1936 - BELOVED ENEMY, co-scr.
NEXT TIME WE LOVE, contrib. to scr.
1939 - MADE FOR EACH OTHER, story idea.
19^6 - CLAUDIA AND DAVID, co-scr.
THE SECRET HEART, co-adapt., co-ss. from her Holiday (play)
and Twenty-Two (short story).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
431
KETTI FRINGS
191*3 - LADY OF BURLESQUE, additional dial.
191*5 - GUEST IN THE HOUSE, scr.
191*8 - THE ACCUSED, scr.
1950 - THELMA JORDAN, scr.
1951 - THE COMPANY SHE KEEPS, scr., ss.
THE DARK CITY, adapt.
1952 - BECAUSE OF YOU, scr.
COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA, scr.
1951* - ABOUT MRS. LESLIE, co-scr.
1955 - FOXFIRE, scr.
THE SHRIKE, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
432
GEORGE FROESCHEL
1940 - THE MORTAL STORM, co-scr.
WATERLOO BRIDGE, co-scr.
1942 - MRS. MINIVER, co-scr.
WE WERE DANCING, co-scr.
RANDOM HARVEST, co-scr.
19*14 - WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER, co-scr.
1948 - COMMAND DECISION, co-scr.
1950 - THE MINIVER STORY, co-scr., co-ss.
1951 - THE UNKNOWN MAN, co-scr., co-ss.
1952 - SCARAMOUCHE, co-scr.
1953 - THE STORY OF THREE LOVES: Equilibrium, co-adapt., and
Mademoiselle. co-scr.
NEVER LET ME C-0, co-scr.
1954 - ROSE MARIE, co-scr.
BETRAYED, co-scr., co-ss.
1955 - QUENTIN DURWARD, adapt.
1958 - ME AND THE COLONEL, co-scr.
I960 - I AIM AT THE STARS, co-ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
433
DANIEL FUCHS
1939 - THE DAY THE BOOKIES WEPT, story.
194-1 - THE BIG SHOT, co-scr., co-ss.
THE HARD WAY, co-scr.
1944 - BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, scr.
1947 - THE GANGSTER, story, scr. from his novel Low Company (1937).
1948 - HOLLOW TRIUMPH, scr.
1949 - CRISS CROSS, scr.
1950 - STORM WARNING, co-scr., co-ss.
PANIC IN THE STREETS, adapt.
1933 - TAXI, co-scr.
1954 - THE HUMAN JUNGLE, co-scr.
1955 - LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, co-scr., ss.
1957 - INTERLUDE, co-scr.
JEANNE EAGLES, ss., co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
434
PAUL GALLICO
1936 - WEDDING PRESENT, scr., ss.
19^2 - PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, ss,
1952 - ASSIGNMENT — PARIS, co-ss.
1953 - LILI, ss.
1958 - BITTER VICTORY, adapt.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
435
ELINOR GLYN
1921 - THE GREAT MOMENT, story,
1922 - THE WORLD'S A STAGE, story.
192^ - HIS HOUR, supv. seen.
HOW TO EDUCATE A WIFE, story.
THREE WEEKS, seen, from her novel (1907).
1925 - MAN AND MAID, seen, from her novel (1922).
THE ONLY THING, pers. supv., story, adapt.
1926 - LOVE'S BLINDNESS, pers. supv., adapt, from her novel (1925).
1927 - IT, adapt, from her short story (1927).
RITZY, story.
1928 - THREE WEEK-ENDS, story.
1929 - THE MAN AND THE MOMENT, story.
1930 - SUCH MEN ARE DANGEROUS , story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
FRANCES GOODRICH and ALBERT HACKETT
1933 - THE SECRET OF MADAME BLANCHE; adapt.
PENTHOUSE, adapt.
1934 - FUGITIVE LOVERS, co-scr.
THE THIN MAN, scr.
HIDE-OUT, scr.
1935 - NAUGHTY MARIETTA, co-scr.
AH, WILDERNESS I, adapt., scr.
1936 - ROSE MARIE, co-scr.
AFTER THE THIN MAN, scr.
1937 - THE FIREFLY, co-scr.
1939 - SOCIETY LAWYER, co-scr.
ANOTHER THIN MAN, scr.
1944 - LADY IN THE DARK, scr.
THE HITLER GANG, story, scr.
1946 - THE VIRGINIAN, co-scr.
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, co-scr.
1948 - THE PIRATE, scr.
EASTER PARADE, story, co-scr.
1950 - FATHER OF THE BRIDE, scr.
1951 - FATHER'S LITTLE DIVIDEND, story.
TOO YOUNG TO KISS, scr.
1953 - GIVE A GIRL A BREAK, scr.
1954 - THE LONG LONG TRAILER, scr.
SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, co-scr.
1956 - GABY, co-scr.
1958 - A CERTAIN SMILE, scr.
1959 - THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, scr. from their play.
1962 - FIVE FINGER EXERCISE, scr.
436
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
437
PAUL GREEN
1932 * CABIN IN THE COTTON, scr.
1933 - STATE FAIR, eo-scr.
VOLTAIRE., eo-scr.
DR. BULL, scr.
ZANE GREY
1928 - THE VANISHING PIONEER, story.
HARRY W. GRIBBLE
1932 - A BILL OF DIVORCEMENT, scr.
1933 - OUR BETTERS, co-scr.
193b - NANA, co-adapt.
1937 - STELLA DALLAS, co-dramatization
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
FRANK GRUBER
438
19*43 - NORTHERN PURSUIT, co-scr.
19^ - MASK OF DIMITRIOS, scr.
19*1-5 - JOHNNY ANGEL, adapt.
19^6 - THE FRENCH KEY, story, scr. from his novel
TERROR BY NIGHT, scr.
ACCOMPLICE, story, co-scr. from his novel Simon Lash.
Detective In Old Sacramento, adapt,
DRESSED TO KILL, adapt.
19*47 - BULLDOG DRUMMOND AT BAY, scr.
19*4-8 - THE CHALLENGER, co-scr.
19*49 - FIGHTING MAN OF THE PLAINS, story, scr. from his novel
Fighting-Mah.
1950 - THE CARIBOU TRAIL, scr.
DAKOTA LIL, ss.
THE TEXAS RANGERS, ss.
1951 - THE GREAT MISSOURI RAID, ss., from his novel Broken Lance.
WARPATH, story, scr. from his novel Broken Lance.
SILVER CITY, scr.
1952 - THE FLAMING FEATHER, additional dial.
THE DENVER AND RIO GRANDE, scr., ss,
HURRICANE SMITH, scr.
1953 - PONY EXPRESS, scr.
1955 - RAGE AT D AW N , ss.
1961 - TWENTY PLUS TWO, scr., story,from his novel.
1965 - TOWN TAMER, scr., story,from his novel.
ARIZONA RAIDERS, co-ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
1953
1955
1921
A. B. GUTHRIE, JR.
scr.
• THE KENTUCKIAN, scr.
COSMO HAMILTON
» WEALTH, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
440
DASHIELL HAMMETT
1931 - CITY STREETS, story.
1935 - MISTER DYNAMITE, story.
1937 - AFTER THE THIN MAN, story.
1939 - ANOTHER THIN MAN, ss.
19^3 - WATCH ON THE RHINE, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
4 4 1
MOSS HART
1932 - FLESH, dial.
1933 - THE MASQUERADER, dial.
1935 - THE BROADWAY MELODY OF 1936, story.
1936 - FRANKIE AND JOHNNIE, scr.
19^ - WINGED VICTORY, scr., from his play.
19^7 - GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT, scr.
1952 - HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON, scr.
195^ - A STAR IS BORN, scr.
PRINCE OF PLAYERS, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
442
ERNEST HAYCOCX
1$2 - APACHE TRAIL, ss.
19^6 - CANYON PASSAGE, scr. from his novel Canyon Passage.
19^7 - HEAVEN ONLY KNOWS, adapt,
1950 - MONTANA, ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
443
BEN HECHT
1927 - UNDERWORLD, story.
1928 - THE BIG NOISE, co-scr.
1929 - UNHOLY NIGHT, story.
THE GREAT GABBO, story.
1930 - ROADHOUSE NIGHTS, story.
1931 - UNHOLY GARDEN, co-scr.
1932 - SCARFACE, story.
BACK STREET, co-scr. (uncredited)
1933 - HALLELUJAH, I’M A BUM, story.
TOPAZE, scr.
TURN BACK THE CLOCK, co-story, co-scr.
DESIGN FOR LIVING, scr.
QUEEN CHRISTINA, co-scr. (uncredited).
1934 - UPPEHWORLD, story.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, co-sere
CRIME WITHOUT PASSION, co-dir., co-story, co-scr.
VIVA VILLA!, scr,
1935 - ONCE IN A BLUE MOON, co-dir., co-story, co-scr.
THE SCOUNDREL, co-dir., co-scr,
BARBARY COAST, co-story, co-scr.
1936 - SOAK TEE RICH, co-dir., co-scr.
1937 - NOTHING SACRED, scr.
THE HURRICANE, co-scr. (uncredited).
1938 - THE GOLDWYN FOLLIES, story, scr.
1939 - LET FREEDOM RING, story, scr.
IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD, scr., co-story.
LADY OF THE TROPICS, story, scr.
GUNGA DIN, co-scr.
WUTBERING HEIGHTS, co-scr.
GONE WITH THE WIND, co-scr. (uncredited).
19^ - HIS GIRL FRIDAY, co-scr. (uncredited).
ANGELS OVER BROADWAY, co-dir., story, scr.
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, co-story, co-scr, (uncredited)
COMRADE X, co-scr.
THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, co-scr. (uncredited)
19^1 - LYDIA, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
444
BEN HECHT (Continued)
19*U - TALES OF MANHATTAN, co-story, co-scr.
THE BLACK SWAN, co-scr.
CHINA GIRL, prod., scr.
ROXIE HART, co-scr. (uncredited).
19**3 - THE OUTLAW, story (uncredited)
19**5 - SPELLBOUND, scr.
19^6 - SPECTER OF THE ROSE, co-dir., scr.
NOTORIOUS, story, scr.
GILDA, co-scr. (uncredited).
19**? - HER HUSBAND'S AFFAIRS, co-story, co-scr.
KISS OF DEATH, co-scr.
RIDE THE PINK HORSE, co-scr.
DISHONORED LADY, co-scr. (uncredited).
THE PARADINE CASE, co-scr. (uncredited).
19*4-8 - THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS, co-scr.
ROPE, co-scr. (uncredited).
19**9 - WHIRLPOOL, co-scr.
LOVE HAPPY, co-scr. (uncredited).
1950 - WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS, scr.
1951 - THE THING, co-scr. (uncredited).
1952 - ACTORS AND SIN, dir., prod., scr.
MONKEY BUSINESS, co-scr.
1953 - ROMAN HOLIDAY, co-scr. (uncredited).
1955 - ULYSSES, eo-scr.
THE INDIAN FIGHTER, co-scr.
THE COURT-MARSHALL OF BILLY MITCHELL, courtroom scenes
(uncredited)
1956 - MIRACLE IN THE RAIN, scr.
THE IRON PETTICOAT, story, scr.
1957 - LEGEND OF THE LOST, story, scr.
A FAREWELL TO ARMS, scr.
196** - CIRCUS WORLD, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
445
LILLIAN HELLMAN
1935 - THE DARK ANGEL, co-scr.
1936 - THESE THREE, scr., from her play The Children's Hour.
1937 - DEAD END, ser.
19^1 - the LITTLE FOXES, scr., from her play,
1943 - WATCH ON THE RHINE, scenes, addt'l. dial, from her play.
THE NORTH STAR, scr., ss.
1946 - THE SEARCHING WIND, scr. from her play.
1961 - THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, story, adapt., from her play.
1966 - THE CHASE, scr.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
1937 - THE SPANISH EARTH, (Documentary), story, scr., narration.
1958 - THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, contrib. to scr. (uncredited).
JAMES HILTON
1936 - CAMILLE, eo-scr,
1939 - WE ARE NOT ALONE, story, co-scr, from his novel.
1942 - THE TUTTLES OF TAHITI, adapt.
MRS. MINIVER, co-scr.
1944 - FOREVER AND A DAY, eo-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
446
SAMUEL HOFFENSTEIN
1931 - AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, scr.
1932 - DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, co-scr.
SINNERS IN THE SUN, co-scr.
LOVE ME TONIGHT, co-scr.
THE MIRACLE MAN, co-dial.
1933 - the SONG OF SONGS, co-scr.
WHITE WOMAN, co-scr.
193^ - WHARF ANGEL, co-scr.
ALL MEN ARE ENEMIES, co-scr., co-dial.
CHANGE OF HEART, additional dial.
THE FOUNTAIN, dial.
THE GAY DIVORCEE, musical adapt.
1935 r ENCHANTED APRIL, co-scr.
PARIS IN SPRING, co-scr.
1937 - CONQUEST, co-scr.
1938 - THE GREAT WALTZ, co-scr.
1939 - BRIDAL SUITE, scr.
19^1 - LYDIA, co-scr.
THAT NIGHT IN RIO, additional dial.
19^2 - THE LOVES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE, co-scr., co-ss.
TALES OF MANHATTAN, co-scr., co-ss.
19^3 - FLESH AND FANTASY, co-scr.
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, co-scr.
19AA - HIS BUTLER'S SISTER, co-scr., co-ss.
LAURA, co-scr.
19^6 - SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY, co-scr.
CLUNY BROWN, co-scr.
19^8 - GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROADWAY, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
447
SIDNEY HOWARD
1929 - BULLDOG DRUMMOND, co-scen., scr. dial,
CONDEMNED, scr., dial.
1930 - A LADY TO LOVE, seen., dial, from his They Knew What They Wanted
a play in three acts.
RAFFLES, scr.
ONE HEAVENLY NIGHT, adapt.
1931 - ARROWSMITH, adapt.
1932 - THE GREEKS HAD A WORD FOR THEM, adapt.
1936 - DODSWORTH, scr.
1939 - RAFFLES, co-scr.
GONE WITH THE WIND, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
RUPERT HUGHES
448
1921 - DANGEROUS CURVE AHEAD, story.
FROM THE GROUND UP, adapt, from his From the Ground Up, story in
Cosmopolitan, 1921.
THE OLD NEST, seen, from his The Old Nest Saturday Evening
Post, 1911.
1922 - COME ON OVER, story, seen,
REMEMBRANCE, dir,, writ.
THE WALL FLOWER, dir., writ.
1923 - GIMME, dir., seen., story.
LOOKING YOUR BEST, dir., story, cont.
RENO, dir., writ.
SOULS FOR SALE, prod., dir., adapt, from his Souls for Sale.
1922.
1924 - TRUE AS STEEL, dir., story, seen, from his True as Steel.
Cosmopolitan, 1923*
1925 - EXCUSE ME, adapt., seen, from his Excuse Me, 1911.
1926 - MONEY TALKS, story.
OLD IRONSIDES, titl.
1929 - CHINA SLAVER, story.
1933 - TILLIE AND GUS, story.
193^ - MISS FANE'S BABY IS STOLEN, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
449
WILLIAM HURLBUT
1921 - MADE IN HEAVEN, story.
1923 - TRIMMED IN SCARLET, story from his Trimmed in Scarlet (1920).
1924 - THAT FRENCH LADY, story.
1930 - THE CAT CREEPS, co-dial.
1931 - GOOD SPORT, scr.
1933 - SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM, scr.
LADIES MOST LOVE, story.
ONLY YESTERDAY, co-scr.
193^ - MADAME SPY, scr.
THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW, scr,
ONE EXCITING ADVENTURE, co-scr.
IMITATION OF LIFE, scr.
1935 - BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, scr., adapt.
DARING YOUNG MAN, scr.
ORCHIDS TO YOU, co-scr.
WAY DOWN EAST, co-scr.
1936 - RAINBOW ON THE RIVER, co-scr.
1938 - LETTER OF INTRODUCTION, add'tl. dial.
19^0 - ADAM HAD FOUR SONS, co-scr.
FANNIE HURST
1929 - THE YOUNGER GENERATION, story.
1930 - LUMMOX, dial, from her Lummox (1923).
1933 - HELLO EVERYBODY, story.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
19^0 - PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, co-scr.
19^ - JANE EYRE, co-scr.
19^7 - A WOMAN'S VENGENANCE, story, scr. from his story
"The Gioconda Smile".
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
450
WILLIAM INGE
1961 - SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, ss., scr.
1962 - ALL FALL DOWN, scr.
196k - BOS RHEY IS BACK IN TOWN, ss., scr.
CHRISTOPHER ISHEKWOOD
193k - LITTLE FRIEND, co-scen., co-dial.
19kl - RAGE IN HEAVEN, co-scr.
1944 - FOREVER AND A DAY, co-scr.
I949 - ADVENTURE IN BALTIMORE, co-ss.
THE GREAT SINNER, co-scr.
1956 - DIANE, ss., scr,
1965 - THE LOVED ONE, co-scr.
1968 - THE SAILOR JR£H GIBRALTAR (British), co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
451
TALBOT JENNINGS
1935 - MUTINY ON TEE BOUNTY, co-scr.
1936 - ROMEO AND JULIET, scr.
1937 - THE GOOD EARTH, co-scr.
1938 - SPAWN OF THE NORTH, co-scr.
1939 - RULERS OF THE SEA, co-ss., co-scr.
19^+0 - NORTHWEST PASSAGE, co-scr.
EDISON, THE MAN, co-scr.
19^1 - SO ENDS OUR NIGHT, scr.
191*4 - FRENCHMAN'S CREEK, scr.
19^6 - ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM, co-scr.
1950 - THE BLACK ROSE, scr.
1951 - ACROSS THE.WIDE MISSOURI, co-ss., scr.
1953 - KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE, co-scr.
1955 - ESCAPE TO BURMA, co-scr.
UNTAMED, co-scr,, eo-adapt.
PEARL OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC, add'tl. dial.
1957 - GUNSIGHT RIDGE, co-ss., co-scr.
1959 - THE NAKED MAJA (Italian-Araerican), co-ss.
1965 - THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
452
NUNNALLY JOHNSON
1933 - A BEDTIME STORY, co-adapt.
MOMMA LOVES POPPA, scr.
1934 - THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD, scr.
BULLDOG DRUMMOND STRIKES BACK, scr.
MOULIN ROUGE, scr.
KID MILLIONS, author
1935 - the MAN WHO BROKE THE BANK AT MONTE CARLO, scr., prod.
THANKS A MILLION, scr.
BABY FACE HARRINGTON, scr. with Edwin W. Knopf
1936 - THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND, story, scr.
BANJO ON MY KNEE, scr.
1939 - JESSE JAMES, story, scr., assoc, prod.
ROSE OF WASHINGTON SQUARE, scr., prod.
WIFE, HUSBAND AND FRIEND, scr., prod.
I9A0 - THE GRAPES OF WRATH, scr., assoc, prod.
CHAD HANNA, scr., assoc, prod.
1941 - TOBACCO ROAD, scr.
1942 - ROXIE HART, scr., prod.
THE PIED PIPER, scr., prod.
LIFE BEGINS AT 8j30, scr., prod.
1943 - THE MOON IS DOWN, scr., prod.
HOLY MATRIMONY, scr., prod.
I9AA - THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, scr., prod.
CASANOVA BROWN, scr., prod.
KEYS OF THE KINGDOM, co-scr.
1945 - ALONG CAME JONES, scr.
1946 - THE DARK MIRROR, scr., prod.
1948 - MR. PEABODY AND THE MERMAID, scr., prod.
1949 - EVERYBODY DOES IT, scr., prod., remake of Wife. Husband
and Friend.
1950 - THREE CAME HOME, scr., prod.
THE MUDLARK, scr., prod.
1951 - THE DESERT FOX, scr., prod.
THE LONG DARK HALL, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
453
1952 - PHONE CALL FROM A STRANGER, scr., prod.
WE’RE NOT MARRIED, scr., prod.
MY COUSIN RACHEL, scr., prod.
0. HENRY’S FULL HOUSE: "Ransom of Red Chief" episode, scr.
1953 - HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, scr., prod.
1954 - NIGHT PEOPLE, scr., prod.
BLACK WIDOW, scr., prod.
1955 - HOW TO BE VERY VERY POPULAR, scr., prod.
1956 - THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT, scr.
1957 - THE TRUE STORY OF JESSE JAMES, remake of Jesse James.
OH, MENI OH, WOMEN, scr. (uncredited).
TEE THREE FACES OF EVE, scr., prod.
1959 - THE MAN WHO UNDERSTOOD WOMEN, scr., prod.
1960 - THE ANGEL WORE RED, scr.
FLAMING STAR, co-scr.
1962 - MR. HOBBS TAKES A VACATION, scr.
1963 - TAKE HER, SHE’S MINE, scr.
1964 - THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT, co-scr.
1967 - THE DIRTY DOZEN, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
454
ABEN KANDEL
1935 - MANHATTAN MOON, adapt,
SHE GETS HER MAN, co-story, scr.
1936 - HOT MONEY, story idea.
COME CLOSER FOLKS, story.
MORE THAN A SECRETARY, co-ss.
1937 - THUNDER IN THE CITY, co-scr.
THEY WON'T FORGET, co-scr.
1939 - RIO, co-scr.
THE ROAD BACK, co-narrative
19^1- - THREE RUSSIAN GIRLS, co-scr.
THE IRON MAJOR, co-scr.
19^7 - HIGH CONQUEST, ss.
19^8 - BIG CITY, contrib. to dial.
1952 - THE FIGHTER, co-scr.
1956 - TIMETABLE, scr.
1959 - HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, co-scr., co-ss.
1961 - KONGA, co-scr., co-ss.
196^ - BLACK ZOO, co-scr., co-ss,
1968 - BERSERK, co-scr., co-ss.
1970 - TROG, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
GEORGE S. KAUFMAN
1933 - ROMAN SCANDALS, co-story.
1935 - A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, co-scr.
455
MbcKINLAY kantor
19*+6 - THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, story.
1953 - GUN CRAZY, co-scr. from his story.
HANNAH LEE, story, co-scr, from his novel Wicked Water.
MARGARET KENNEDY
193^ - THE CONSTANT NIMPH, co-dial.
LITTLE FRIEND, co-scen.. co-dial.
1935 - ESCAPE ME NEVER, co-scr.
1939 - STOLEN LIFE, scr.
PRISON WITHOUT BARS, dial
19^5 - YOU CAN'T DO WITHOUT LOVE, co-contrlb. to dial.
19^6 - THE MAN IN GREY, co-scr.
19^8 - TAKE MY LIFE, addt'l. dial.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
456
CHARLES KENYON
1931 - UNDER EIGHTEEN, co-scr, and co-dial.
1932 - MAN WANTED, adapt.
STREET OF WOMEN, eo-adapt., co-dial.
CROONER, scr,
1933 - THE WORKING MAN, co-scr.
I LOVED A WOMAN, co-scr.
193^ - MANDALAY
JOURNAL OF A CRIME, co-scr.
193^ - DR. MONICA, scr., adapt.
THE FIREBIRD, scr.
1935 - GIRL FROM 10th AVENUE, scr., adapt.
GOOSE AND THE GANDER, story, scr.
MIDSUMMER NIGHT*S DREAM, eo-arranged for the scr.
1936 - LADIES IN LOVE, contrib. to scr.
PETRIFIED FOREST, co-scr.
THE GOLDEN ARROW, scr.
1937 - CRACK-UP, co-scr.
ONE HUNDRED MEN AND A GIRL, co-scr.
THE ROAD BACK, co-scr.
SLIM, contrib. to treat,
1938 - ROAD TO RENO, co-ss.
THE LADY OBJECTS, co-ss., co-scr.
19M - THE LADY WITH RED HAIR, co-scr.
HIGHWAY WEST, co-scr.
19^2 - IT COMES UP LOVE, co-scr.
19^ - THE UNWRITTEN CODE, co-scr., co-ss.
19^5 - THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET, scr.
PHANTOM OF THE PLAINS, co-scr., co-ss.
19^6 - STRANGE JOURNEY, co-scr., ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
457
BASIL KING
1922 - THE DUST FLOWER, story.
1924 - DAMAGED HEARTS, story.
SIDNEY KINGSLEY
1948 - HOMECOMING, ss.
CHARLES KLEIN
1928 - THE LION AND THE MOUSE, story.
ERIC M. KNIGHT
1935 - UNDER THE PAMPAS MOON, contrib. to treat.
DARING YOUNG MAN, contrib. to treat.
EDWARD KNOBLOCK
1921 - APPEARANCES, story.
THE LOST ROMANCE, story.
THE THREE MUSKETEERS, adapt.
1922 - ROBIN HOOD, literary consultant.
1923 - RQSITA, adapt., seen.
1924 - THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, consultant
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
ARTHUR KOBER
458
1932 - MAKE ME A STAR, co-scr.
GUILTY AS HELL, co-scr.
HAT CHECK GIRL, co-scr.
ME AND MY GAL, scr.
1933 - BROADWAY BAD, co-scr.
INFERNAL MACHINE, scr.
BONDAGE, eo-scr.
IT’S GREAT TO BE ALIVE, dial.
HEADLINE SHOOTER, addt’l. dial.
MAMA LOVES PAPA, co-scr.
MEET THE BARON, co-dial.
193^ - PALOOKA, co-scr.
HOLLYWOOD PARTY, co-story, co-scr.
1935 - THE GREAT HOTEL MURDER, scr.
CALM YOURSELF, scr.
GINGER, story, scr.
1936 - EARLY TO BED, scr.
BIG BROADCAST OF 1937, co-ss.
1938 - HAVING WONDERFUL TIME, scr.
19*H - THE LITTLE FOXES, addt’l. dial., scenes
19^3 - WINTERTIME, ss.
191*4 - in THE MEANTIME, DARLING, co-ss., co-scr.
19^5 - DON JUAN QUILLIGAN, co-scr.
19^9 - MY OWN TRUE LOVE, adapt.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
NORMAN KRASNA
459
1932 - HOLLYWOOD SPEAKS, story, co-scr., co-dial.
THAT’S MY BOY, scr.
1933 - PAROLE GIRL, story, adapt., dial.
SO THIS IS AFRICA, story, adapt.
LOVE, HONOR AND OH, BABYI, co-adapt.
MEET THE BARON, co-story
193^ - THE RICHEST GIRL IN THE WORLD, story, adapt., scr.
ROMANCE IN MANHATTAN, co-story.
1935 - FOUR HOURS TO KILL, scr. from his play Small Miracle .
HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE, co-scr.
1936 - WIFE VERSUS SECRETARY, co-scr.
FURY, story.
1937 - THE KING AND THE CHORUS GIRL, co-story, co-scr.
AS GOOD AS MARRIED, story.
THE BIG CITY, story, prod.
1938 - THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS, story, prod.
YOU AND ME, story, adapt.
1939 - BACHELOR MOTHER, scr.
19^0 - IT’S A DATE, scr.
19^1 - THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES, story, scr., co-prod.
MR. AND MRS. SMITH, story, scr.
THE FLAME OF NEW ORLEANS, story, scr.
IT STARTED WITH EVE, co-scr.
19^3 - PRINCESS O'ROURKE, story, scr.
19^ - BRIDE BY MISTAKE, story.
PRACTICALLY YOURS, story, scr.
1950 - THE BIG HANGOVER, story, scr., prod.
1956 - THE AMBASSADOR’S DAUGHTER, scr., prod.
BUNDLE OF JOY, co-scr., remake of Bachelor Mother.
1958 - INDISCRETT, scr.,, from his play Kind Sir.
I960 - WHO WAS THAT LADY?, prod., scr. from his play Who Was That
Lady I Saw You With?
LET’S MAKE LOVE, story, scr.
1962 - MY GEISHA, story, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
NORMAN KRASNA
1963 - SUNDAY IN NEW YORK, scr. from his play.
196^ - I'D RATHER BE RICH, co-scr. remake of It Started With Eve.
CLARE KUMMER
1929 - PLEASURE CRAZED, dial.
1930 - HARMONY AT HOME, adapt., cont.
ONE MAD KISS, co-songs.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
461
1935 - THE CRUSADES, co-scr.
1937 - THE PLAINSMEN, co-scr.
1938 - THE BUCCANEER, co-scr.
1951 - THE GOLDEN HORDE, story,
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
NOEL LANGLEY
1937 - MAYTIME, scr.
1938 - QUEER CARGO, story.
1939 - WIZARD OF OZ, co-scr., adapt.
19^0 - FLORIAN, scr.
19^1 - UNEXPECTED UNCLE, co-scr.
19^7 - SHADOWS OF FIRE, adapt.
19^8 - THE VICIOUS CIRCLE, adapt.
19^9 - I BECAME A CRIMINAL (AKAt THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE), scr.
1950 - ADAM AND EVALYN, scr., ss.
TRIO, co-scr.
1951 - A CHRISTMAS CAROL, scr.
1952 - TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS, scr.
IVANHOE, scr.
PRISONER OF ZENDA, co-scr.
1953 - KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE, co-scr.
1955 - THE ADVENTURES OF SADIE, story, scr., dir. from his novel
The Cautious Amorist.
THE PICKWICK PAPERS, scr., dir., co-prod.
SVENGALI, scr., dir.
1956 - THE VAGABOND KING, co-scr.
THE SEARCH FOR BR3DY MURPHY, scr., dir.
1961 - SNOW WHITE AND THE THREE STOOGES, co-scr., dir.
462
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
BINS LARDNER, SR.
1926 - THE NEW KLONDIKE, orig, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
46 4
JONATHAN LATIMER
1939 - THE LONE WOLF SPY HUNT, scr.
1940 - PHANTOM RAIDERS, ss.
1941 - TOPPER RETURNS, co-scr., co-ss.
A NIGHT IN NEW ORLEANS, scr.
1942 - THE GLASS KEY, scr.
1946 - THEY WON’T BELIEVE ME, scr.
NOCTURNE, scr.
1947 - THE BIG CLOCK, scr.
1948 - THE SEALED VERDICT, scr.
BEYOND GLORY, co-scr., co-ss.
NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES, scr.
1949 - ALIAS NICK BEAL, scr.
1950 - COPPER CANYON, scr.
1951 - THE REDHEAD AND THE COWBOY, co-scr.
SUBMARINE COMMAND, scr., ss.
I953 - BOTANY BAY, scr.
PLUNDER OF THE SUN, scr.
1956 - BACK FROM ETERNITY, scr.
1957 - THE UNHOLY WIFE, scr.
1958 - THE WHOLE TRUTH, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
ARTHUR LAURENTS
19^8 - ROPE, scr.
THE SNAKE PIT, co-scr. (uncredited).
19^9 - HOME OF THE BRAVE, co-scr., from his play Anna Lucasta.
CAUGHT, scr.
1956 - ANASTASIA, scr.
1958 - BONJOUR TRISTESSE, scr.
1973 ~ THE WAY WE WERE, co-scr..from his novel.
465
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
466
EMMET LAVERY
19^2 - ARMY SURGEON, co-scr.
HITLER’S CHILDREN, scr.
19^3 - BEHIND THE RISING SUN, scr., ss.
19*J4 - FOREVER AND A DAY, co-scr.
19^6 - A NIGHT IN PARADISE, adapt.
1950 - GUILTY OF TREASON, scr.
MAGNIFICENT YANKEE, scr.
1951 - THE FIRST LEGION, scr. from his play
1953 - BRIGHT ROAD, scr.
1955 - THE COURT-MARSHALL OF BILLY MITCHELL, co-scr., co-ss„
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
VINCENT LAWRENCE
467
1930 - MONTE CARLO, addt'l. dial,
LE PETIT CAFE, co-adapt.
PLAYBOY OF PARIS, scr.
1931 - THE MAGNIFICENT LIE, co-scr.
I TAKE THIS WOMAN, adapt.
SCANDAL SHEET, co-scr.
JUNE MOON, co-dial.
1932 - MOVIE CRAZY, dial., scr.
NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, scr.
1934 - GOOD DAME, co-scr.
NOW AND FOREVER, co-scr.
CLEOPATRA, co-scr.
BEHOLD MY WIFE, co-scr.
1935 - HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE, co-scr.
PETER IBBETSON, co-scr.
ONE WAY TICKET, co-scr.
1936 - TROUBLE FOR TWO, co-addt'l. dial.
1937 - MAN PROOF, co-scr.
HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT, co-addt'l. dial.
JOHN MEADE'S WOMAN, co-scr.
1938 - TEST PILOT, co-scr.
1939 “ BALALAIKA, co-contrib. to scr., construe.
LUCKY NIGHT, co-scr,
19^1 - MOON OVER MIAMI, co-scr.
19^2 - GENTLEMAN JIM, co-scr.
19^6 - ADVENTURE, co-scr.
SEA OF GRASS, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
46 8
JOHN HOWARD LAWSON
1928 - DREAM OF LOVE, co-titl.
1929 - DYNAMITE, co-dial,
THE PAGAN, titl.
1930 - OUR BLUSHING BRIDES, co-cont., co-dial.
THE SEA BAT, co-scr,, co-dial.
THE SHIP FROM SHANGHAI, scr.
1931 - BACHELOR APARTMENT, story.
1933 - GOODBYE LOVE, co-scr,, co-dial.
1934 - SUCCESS AT ANY PRICE, co-scr., from his play.
TREASURE ISLAND, contrib. to treat, (uncredited).
1935 - PARTY WIRE, co-scr.
1938 - BLOCKADE, scr., ss.
ALGIERS, scr.
1939 - THEY SHALL HAVE MUSIC, co-scr.
19^0 - EARTHBOUND, co-scr.
FOUR SONS, scr.
191*3 - ACTION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC, scr.
SAHARA, scr.
19^5 - COUNTERATTACK, scr.
19^7 - SMASH UP-TEE STORY OF A WOMAN, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
CHARLES LEDERER
1931 - THE FRONT PAGE, co-dial.
1932 - COCK OF THE AIR, dial., co-story, co-scr.
1933 - TOPAZE, co-scr. (uncredited).
I937 - DOUBLE OR NOTHING, co-scr.
MOUNTAIN MUSIC, co-scr.
1939 - BROADWAY SERENADE, scr.
WITHIN THE LAW, scr.
19^0 - HIS GIRL FRIDAY, scr.
COMRADE X, co-scr.
I LOVE YOU AGAIN, co-scr.
19W - LOVE CRAZY, co-scr.
19^3 - SLIGHTLY DANGEROUS, scr.
THE YOUNGEST PROFESSION, co-scr.
19^7 - KISS OF DEATH, co-scr. with Ben Hecht.
RIDE THE PINK HORSE, co-scr. with Ben Hecht.
HER HUSBAND*S AFFAIRS, co-story and co-scr. with Ben Hecht.
19^9 - I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE, co-scr.
RED, HOT AND BLUE, story.
1950 - WABASH AVENUE, co-story, co-scr.
1951 - THE THING, scr.
1952 - FEARLESS FAGAN, scr.
MONKEY BUSINESS,, co-scr. with Ben Hecht and I. A. L. Diamond.
1953 - GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, scr.
1955 - KISMET, co-scr. from his and Luther Davis* Broadway musical
adaptation of Edward Knoblock’s play.
1956 - GABY, co-scr.
1957 - THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS, adapt.
TIP O N A DEAD JOCKEY, scr.
1958 = > THE FIEND WHO WALKED THE WEST, remake of Kiss-.of Death.
1959 - NEVER STEAL ANYTHING SMALL, story,scr.
IT STARTED WITH A KISS, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
CHARLES LEDERER (Continued)
470
I960 - CAN-CAN, co-scr.
OCEAN'S ELEVEN, co-scr.
19& - FOLLOW THAT DREAM, scr.
MUTINY ON TEE BOUNTY, scr.
196^ - A GLOBAL AFFAIR, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
471
ALAN LEMAY
1940 - NORTHWEST MOUNTED POLICE, co-ss., co-scr.
1941 - REAP THE WILD WIND, co-scr.
1944 - ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN, scr.
STORY OF DR. WASSELL, co-scr.
1945 _ SAN ANTONIO, co-scr., co-ss.
1947 - CHEYENNE, co-scr.
GUNFIGHTERS, scr., ss.
1948 - TAP ROOTS, scr.
1949 - THE WALKING HELLS, scr., ss.
1950 - ROCKY MOUNTAIN, co-scr., ss.
HIGH LONESOME, scr., ss., dir.
THE SUNDOWNERS, story, scr. from his novel Thunder in the Dust..
1951 - QUEBEC, scr., ss.
1952-1 DREAM OF JEANNIE, scr., ss.
BLACKBEARD THE PIRATE, scr.
1953 - FLIGHT NURSE, scr., ss.
1955 - THE VANISHING AMERICAN, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
472
MELCHIOR LENGYEL
1929 - STRANGE CARGO, co-story.
193^ - CATHERINE THE GREAT, co-story, co-dial.
THE CARAVAN, story.
1939 - NINOTCHKA, ss.
19^2 - TO BE OR NOT TO BE, co-ss.
19^ - DAYS OF GLORY, ss.
1957 - SILK STOCKINGS, ss., based on his ss of Ninotchka.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
473
SONYA LEVIEN
1919 - WHO WILL MARRY ME, story.
1922 - FIRST LOVE, story.
THE TOP OF NEW YORK, story.
PINK GODS, co-scr.
1923 - THE SNOW BRIDE, co-story, scr.
THE EXICTERS, co-scr.
1926 - THE LOVE TOY, scr.
1928 - A SHIP COMES IN, co-scr.
POWER OF THE PRESS, co-scr.
1929 - YOUNGER GENERATION, scr.
TRIAL MARRIAGE, story, scr.
BEHIND THAT CURTAIN, co-scr. (uncredited).
LUCKY STAR, scr.
THEY HAD TO SEE PARIS, scr.
SOUTH SEA ROSE, scr.
FROZEN JUSTICE, scr.
1930 - SONG O* MY HEART, co-scr.
LIGHTIN*, co-scr. and co-dial, with S. N. Behrman.
SO THIS IS LONDON, co-scr. (uncredited).
LILIOM, co-scr. with S. N. Behrman.
THE BRAT, co-scr. and co-dial, with S. N. Behrman.
SURRENDER, co-scr. and co-dial, with S. N. Behrman.
DELICIOUS, co-scr.
DADDY LONG LEGS, scr., co-dial, with S. N. Behrman.
1932 - SHE WANTED A MILLIONAIRE, story.
AFTER TOMORROW, scr., dial.
REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM, co-scr. and co-dial, with
S. N. Behrman.
TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY, co-scr. with S. N. Behrman and
others.
1933 - STATE FAIR, co-scr.
CAVALCADE, co-adapt.
WARRIOR'S HUSBAND, co-adapt.
BERKELEY SQUARE, co-adapt.
MR. SKITCH, co-adapt., co-dial,
193^ - AS HUSBANDS GO, co-scr. with S. N. Behrman.
CHANGE OF HEART, co-scr.
THE WHITE PARADE, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
474
1935 - HERE'S TO ROMANCE, co-story.
NAVY WIFE, scr.
1936 - THE COUNTRY DOCTOR, scr.
REUNION, co-scr.
1938 - IN OLD CHICAGO, co-scr.
KIDNAPPED, co-scr.
FOUR MEN AND A PRAYER, co-scr.
THE COWBOY AND THE LADY, co-scr. with S. N. Behrman.
1939 - DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, co-scr.
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, co-scr.
19^1 - ZIEGFIELD GIRLS, co-scr.
19^3 - THE AMAZING MRS. HOLLIDAY, story.
19^5 - THE VALLEY OF DECISION, co-scr.
RHAPSODY IN BLUE, story.
STATE FAIR, remake from her co-scr.
19^6 - THE GREEN YEARS, co-scr.
19^7 - CASS TIMBERLANE, co-adapt.
19^8 - THREE DARLING DAUGHTERS, co-scr.
1951 - THE GREAT CARUSO, co-scr. with William Ludwig.
1952 - THE MERRY WIDOW, co-scr. with William Ludwig.
195^ - THE STUDENT PRINCE, co-scr. with William Ludwig.
1955 - HIT THE DECK, co-scr. with William Ludwig.
INTERRUPTED MELODY, co-story, co-scr. with William Ludwig,
OKLAHOMA!, co-scr. with William Ludwig.
1956 - BHOWANI JUNCTION, co-scr.
1957 - JEANNE EAGLES, co-scr.
i960 - PEPE, story.
1962 - STATE FAIR, remake from her co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
475
HOWARD LINDSAY
1936 - SWING TIME, co-scr.
193? - ARTISTS AND MODELS, co-contrib. to scr., dial.
1938 - ARTISTS AND MODELS ABROAD, co-scr., co-ss.
195^ - WOMAN'S WORLD, co-adapt.
ELEAZAR LIPSKY
19^7 - KISS O F DEATH, ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
476
STEPHEN LONGSTREET
W - THE IMPOSTER, a d a p t.
19^5 - UNCLE HARRY, scr.
19^6 - JOLSON STORY, scr., ss.
STALLION ROAD, story, scr. from his novel.
19^8 - SILVER RIVER, story, co-scr. from his novel.
1956 - THE FIRST TRAVELING SALESLADY, co-scr., co-ss.
1957 - UNTAMED YOUTH, ss.
THE HELEN MORGAN STORY, co-scr., co-ss.
1963 - RIDER ON A DEAD HORSE, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
477
FREDERICK LONSDALE
1931 - DEVIL TO PAY, dial., scr.
1932 - LOVERS COURAGEOUS, story.
1934 - THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN, co-story, co-dial.
193? - ANGEL, contrib. to scr. construe.
19^ - FOREVER AND A DAY, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
478
BARRE LYNDON
19^1 - SUNDOWN, story, scr., from his Saturday Evening Post story.
.19^3 - THE LODGER, scr.
19^5 - HANGOVER SQUARE, scr.
THE HOUSE ON 92ND STREET, co-scr.
19^8 - NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES, co-scr.
1950 - TO PLEASE A LADY, co-scr., co-ss.
1952 - THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, co-scr.
1953 - THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, scr.
195^ - MAN IN THE ATTIC, co-scr,
SIGN OF THE PAGAN, co-scr.
1955 - CONQUEST OF SPACE, co-adapt.
1956 - OMAR KHAYYAM, scr., ss.
1961 - THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME, scr.
1966 - DARK INTRUDER, scr., ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
CHARLES MacARTHUR
479
1930 - THE GIRL SAID NO, dial.
BILLY THE KID, additional dial,
WAY FOR A SAILOR, co-scr., additional dial.
1931 - PAID, co-scr., dial.
THE UNHOLY GARDEN, co-story, co-scr., co-dial, with Ben Hecht,
THE NEW ADVENTURES OF GET RICH QUICK WALLINGFORD, scr., dial.
1932 - RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS, story, scr.
193^ - THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, co-scr. from his, Ben Hecht»s and
Charles Milholland's play.
CRIME WITHOUT PASSION, co-story, co-scr,, co-prod, with
Ben Hecht.
1935 - ONCE IN A BLUE MOON, co-story, co-scr., co-prod, with
Ben Hecht.
THE SCOUNDREL, co-scr., co-prod, with Ben Hecht.
BARBARY COAST, co-story, co-scr. with Ben Hecht.
1936 - SOAK THE RICH, co-scr., co-prod, with Ben Hecht, from his and
Ben Hecht's play.
1939 - GUNGA DIN, co-scr, with Ben Hecht, Joel Sayre and Fred Guial.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS, co-scr. with Ben Hecht,
19^0 - I TAKE.THIS WOMAN, story.
19^7 - THE SENATOR WAS INDISCREET, scr.
19^8 - LULU BELLE, co-scr. from his and Edward Sheldon's play.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
PHXLIF MACDONALD
480
193^ - THE MYSTERY OF MR. X, adapt., from his novel.
CHARLIE CHAN IN LONDON, scr.
1935 - MYSTERY WOMAN, scr.
CHARLIE CHAN IN PARIS, story.
THE LAST OUTPOST, scr.
1936 - YOURS FOR THE ASKING, co-scr.
THE PRINCESS COMES ACROSS, ss.
1938 - MYSTERIOUS MR. MOTO, co-scr., co-ss.
MR. MOTO»S LAST WARNING, co-scr., co-ss.
MR. MOTO TAKES A VACATION, co-scr., co-ss.
1939 - BLIND ALLEY, co-scr.
19^0 - REBECCA, so-adapt.
19^2 - WHISPERING GHOSTS, ss.
STREET OF CHANCE, contrib. to scr.
19^3 - SAHARA, ss.
19^ - ACTION IN ARABIA, co-scr., co-ss.
19^5 - THE BODY SNATCHER, co-scr.
STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT, ss.
DANGEROUS INTRUDER, co-ss.
19^7 - LOVE FROM A STRANGER, scr.
19^9 - THE DARK PAST, co-scr.
1951 - THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF, co-scr.
CIRCLE OF DANGER, story, scr.
MASK OF THE AVENGER, co-adapt.
195^ - RING OF FEAR, co-scr., co-ss.
TOBOR THE GREAT, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
481
HORACE MCCOY
1933 - DANGEROUS CROSSROADS, scr.
FURY OF THE JUNGLE, story.
HOLD THE PRESS ? scr.
193^ - SPEED WINGS, story, scr.
1936 - POSTAL INSPECTOR, co-ss., scr.
PAROLE!, co-scr.
TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE, co-adapt.
1938 - DANGEROUS TO KNOW, co-scr.
HUNTED MEN, co-scr.
KING OF THE NEWSBOYS, co-ss.
1939 - PERSONS IN HIDING, co-scr,
PAROLE FIXER, co-scr.
TELEVISION SPY, co-scr.
ISLAND OF LOST MEN, co-scr.
UNDERCOVER DOCTOR, co-scr.
19^0 - WOMEN WITHOUT NAMES, co-scr.
WESTERN UNION, contrib. to dial.
QUEEN OF THE MOB, co-scr.
19^1 - TEXAS, co-scr.
19^2 - VALLEY OF THE SUN, scr.
GENTLEMAN JIM, co-scr.
19^3 - FLIGHT FOR FREEDOM, story.
APPOINTMENT IN BERLIN, co-scr.
THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT A SOLDIER, co-ss., co-scr.
19^7 - THE FABULOUS TEXAN, co-scr.
1949 - 1953 - MONTANA BELLE, co-scr.
1950 - THE FIREBALL, co-scr., co-ss.
1952 - BRONCHO BUSTER, co-scr.
THE LUSTY MEN, scr.
WORLD IN HIS ARMS, additional dial.
1953 - THE TURNING POINT, story.
195^ - SAD FOR EACH OTHER, story, co-scr., from his novel Scalpel.
DANGEROUS MISSION, co-scr., co-ss.
1955 - RAGE AT DAWN, scr.
ROAD TO DENVER, co-scr.
TEXAS LADY, scr., ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
WILLIAM ANTHONY MCGUIRE
482
1932 - SHE WANTED A MILLIONAIRE, scr.
DISORDERLY CONDUCT, story, dial.
OKAY AMERICA, scr.
1933 - THE KID FROM SPAIN, co-scr.
OUT ALL NIGHT, scr.
THE KISS BEFORE THE MIRROR, scr.
KING FOR A NIGHT, story, scr.
ROMAN SCANDALS, adapt.
1934-1 BELIEVED IN YOU, story idea.
LITTLE MAN, WHAT NOW?, scr.
EMBARRASSING MOMENTS, scr.
1936 - THE GREAT ZIEGFIELD, ss., scr.
1939 - RISKY BUSINESS, ss.
1940 - LILLIAN RUSSELL, ss., scr.
1941 - ZIEGFIELD GIRL, ss.
ST. CLAIR MCKELWAY
194? - SLEEP, MY LOVE, co-scr.
1948 - THE MATING OF MILLIE, co-scr.
JOHN MCNULTY
1946 - EASY COME, EASY GO, from sketches of his.
1953 - THE BIG LEAGUER, co-ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
4 83
ALBERT MALTZ
19^2 - THIS GUN FOR HIRE, c o -s c r.
19^3 - DESTINATION TOKYO, co-scr.
19^5 - THE HOUSE I LIVE IN, scr.
PRIDE OF THE MARINES, scr.
19^6 - CLOAK AND DAGGER, co-scr.
19^8 - THE NAKED CITY, co-scr.
1970 - TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA, scr.
1971 - THE BEGUILED, sco-scr. (uncredited).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
FRANK MANDEL
1930 - QUEEN HIGH, co-prod., scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
HERMAN J. MANKIEWICZ
485
1926 - STRANDED IN PARIS, scr.
1927 - FASHIONS FOR WOMEN, co-adapt.
A GENTLEMAN OF PARIS, titl.
FIGURES DON'T LIE, titl.
THE SPOTLIGHT, titl.
THE CITY GONE WILD, titl.
THE GAY DEFENDER, co-titl.
HONEYMOON HATE, co-titl.
1928 - TWO FLAMING YOUTHS, titl.
GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, co-titl.
THE LAST COMMAND, titl.
LOVE AND LEARN, titl.
A NIGHT OF MYSTERY, titl.
ABIE'S IRISH ROSE, co-scr.
SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS, titl.
HIS TIGER LADY, titl.
THE DRAG NET, titl.
THE MAGNIFICENT FLIRT, titl.
THE BIG KILLING, titl.
THE WATER HOLE, titl.
THE MATING CALL, titl.
AVALANCHE, co-scr., titl.
THE BARKER, titl.
THREE WEEK ENDS, co-titl.
WHAT A NIGHT!, titl.
1929 - MARQUIS PREFERRED, titl.
THE DUMMY, scr., dial.
THE CANARY MURDER CASE, titl.
THE MAN I LOVE, story, dial,
THUNDERBOLT, dial.
MEN ARE LIKE THAT, co-ecr., dial.
THE LOVE DOCTOR, titl.
THE MIGHTY, titl.
1930 - THE VAGABOND KING, scr., dial.
HONEY, scr., dial.
LADIES LOVE BRUTES, co-scr., co-dial.
TRUE TO THE NAVY, dial.
LOVE AMONG THE MILLIONAIRES, dial.
THE ROYAL FAMILY OF BROADWAY, co-scr.
1931 - LADIES* MAN, scr., dial.
MAN OF THE WORLD, story, scr.
1932 - DANCERS IN THE DARK, co-scr.
GIRL CRAZY, co-scr., dial.
THE LOST SQUADRON, co-dial.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
486
1933 - MEET THE BARON, co-story.
DINNER AT EIGHT, co-scr.
ANOTHER LANGUAGE, co-scr.
193*4- - THE SHOW-OFF, scr.
STAMBOUL QUEST, scr.
1935 - AFTER OFFICE HOURS, scr.
ESCAPADE, scr.
IT'S IN THE AIR, co-scr. (uncredited).
1937 - THE EMPEROR*S CANDLESTICKS, co-scr. (uncredited).
MY DEAR MISS ALDRICH, story, scr.
JOHN MEADE'S WOMAN, co-scr.
1939 - IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD, co-story.
19*4-1 - CITIZEN KANE, story, scr.
RISE AND SHINE, scr.
KEEPING COMPANY, story.
19^2 - THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, co-scr.
19*43 - STAND BY FOR ACTION, co-scr.
19*44 - CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY, scr.
19*4-5 - THE SPANISH MAIN, co-scr.
19*4-9 - A WOMAN'S SECRET, scr.
1952 - THE PRIDE OF ST. LOUIS, scr.
Mankiewicz also co-scripted (without credit) and produced the following
films1
1930 - LAUGHTER
1931 - MONKEY BUSINESS
1932 - HORSE FEATHERS
MILLION DOLLAR LEGS
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
487
JOSEPH MONCURE MARCH
1930 - HELL'S ANGELS, dial.
JOURNEY'S END, eont., dial.
A MAN FROM WYOMING, co-story.
1932 - SKY DEVILS, co-story, co-scr.
HOT SATURDAY, co-adapt.
1933 - MADAM BUTTERFLY, co-scr.
JENNIE GERHARDT, co-scr.
HOOP-LA, co-scr., co-dial.
1934 - TWO ALONE, co-scr.
TRANSATLANTIC MERRY-GO-ROUND, co-addt'l. dial., scenes.
JEALOUSY, co-scr.
1935 - LET 'EM HAVE IT, co-story, co-scr.
1936 - AND SUDDEN DEATH, scr.
HIDEAWAY GIRL, co-scr.
1938 - FLIRTING WITH FATE, co-scr.
HER JUNGLE LOVE, co-scr.
1939 - WOMAN DOCTOR, scr.
19^0 - SCATTERBRAIN, eontrib. to treat.
WAGON WESTWARD, co-ss., co-scr.
THREE FACES WEST, co-ss., co-scr.
FORGOTTEN GIRLS, co-scr.
LONE STAR RAIDERS, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
MAX MARCIN
488
1925 - THE TOWER OF LIES, co-scen.
1926 - MAN OF THE FOREST, adapt.
1927 - ROUGH HOUSE ROSIE, adapt.
1929 - THREE LIVE GHOSHS, prod., adapt., dial., from his and
Frederic Stewarts Three Live Ghosts» A Comedy in Three Acts
(1922).
1930 - BE YOURSELF, co-adapt.
THE BIG FIGHT, co-story.
DERELICT, dial.
SHADOW OF THE LAW, story.
1931 - THE LAWYER'S SECRET, scr., dir.
SILENCE, story, co-scr., co-dir.
SCANDAL SHEET, co-scr.
CITY STREETS, adapt.
1932 - THE STRANGE CASE OF CLARA DEANE,scr., dir.
1933 - KING OF THE JUNGLE, adapt., co-dir.
GAMBLING SHIP, co-scr., co-dir., prod.
1936 - THE JUNGLE PRINCESS, ss., contrib. to scr.
19t K> - SLIGHTLY TEMFTED, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
DON MARQUIS
1936 - CAPTAIN JANUARY, contrib. to scr.
SOMERSET MAUGHAM
1922 - THE ORDEAL, story
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
490
EDWIN JUSTUS MAYER
1927 - WOMEN LOVE DIAMONDS, titl.
THE LOVE MART, titl.
THE DEVIL DANCER, titl.
HUSBANDS FOR RENT, story
1928 - BLUE DANUBE, co-titl.
MIDNIGHT MADNESS, titl.
THE WHIP WOMAN, titl.
MAN-MADE WOMAN, titl.
SAL OF SINGAPORE, titl.
NED McCOBB*S DAUGHTER, titl.
THE DIVINE LADY, co-titl.
UNHOLY NIGHT, scr.
LOVES OF CASANOVA, titl.
1930 - NOT SO DUMB, dial.
REDEMPTION, dial.
IN GAY MADRID, co-scr., co-dial.
THE LADY OF SCANDAL, dial.
OUR BLUSHING BRIDES, co-dial.
ROMANCE, co-scr., co-dial.
NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET, scr., dial.
PHANTOM OF PARIS, co-dial.
1932 - MERRILY WE GO TO HELL, scr., dial.
WILD GIRL, co-scr., co-dial.
1933 - TONIGHT IS OURS, scr., dial.
193^ - I AM SUZANNE, co-scr.
THIRTY DAY PRINCESS, co-scr.
HERE IS MY HEART, co-scr.
1935 - SO RED THE ROSE, co-scr.
1936 - GIVE US THIS NIGHT, co-scr.
DESIRE, co-scr.
•TIL WE MEET AGAIN, co-scr.
WIVES NEVER KNOW, co-scr. (uncredited),
1938 - THE BUCANEER, co-scr.
1939 - EXILE EXPRESS, story.
MIDNIGHT, co-story.
RIO, co-scr.
19^1 - UNDERGROUND, co-story.
THEY MET IN BOMBAY, co-scr.
19^2 - TO BE OR NOT TO BE, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
491
EDWIN JUSTUS MAYER (Continued)
19^5 - A ROYAL SCANDAL, scr.
MASQUERADE IN MEXICO, remake of Midnight.
1958 - THE BUCANEER, co-scr., remake of the 1938 film.
SAMUEL MERWIN
1921 - HUSH MONEY, story.
1928 - JAZZLAND, story.
ALICE DUER MILLER
1922 - THE MAN WITH TWO MOTHERS, story.
1933 - BIG EXECUTIVE, story.
1936 - COLLEGIATE, sto ry.
WIFE VS. SECRETARY, co-scr.
19*K) - AND ONE WAS BEAUTIFUL, story.
IRENE, scr.
191*4 - FOREVER AND A DAY, co-scr.
R. J. MINNEY
1935 - CLIVE OF INDIA, co-story, contrib. to treat.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
492
ELICK MOLL
192^. - PASSAGE TO MARSEILLES, contrib. to scr.
19^6 - WAKE UP AND DREAM, scr.
19^8 - YOU WERE MEANT FOR ME, scr., ss.
1950 - THE HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL, co-scr.
1952 - NIGHT WITHOUT SLEEP, story, co-scr.
1956 - STORM CENTER, co-scr., co-ss.
1957 - SPRING REUNION, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
493
JOHN MONKS, JR.
19^0 - BROTHER RAT AND BABY, co-scr., co-ss.
STRIKE UP THE BAND, co-scr., co-ss.
191*5 - HOUSE ON 92ND STREET, co-scr.
191*6 - 13 RUE MADELEINE, co-scr., co-ss.
191*7 - WILD HARVEST, scr.
191+9 - KNOCK ON ANY DOOR, co-scr.
1950 - THE WEST POINT STORY, co-scr.
DIAL 1119, scr.
1951 - the PEOPLE AGAINST O'HARA, scr.
1952 - WHERE'S CHARLEY?, scr.
1953 - SO THIS IS LOVE, scr.
1962 - NO MAN IS AN ISLAND, co-scr., co-ss., co-dir., co-prod.
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
1921 - THE ACE OF HEARTS, story.
A TALE OF TWO WORLDS, story.
THE WILD GOOSE, story, from his"The Wild Goose" (1918).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
JANE MURFIN
494
1919 - THE RIGHT TO LIE, scr.
MARIE, LTD., scr.
1921 - THE SILENT CALL, prod., scr.
1922 - BRAWN OF THE NORTH, prod., scr.
1924 - FLAPPER WIVES, scr.
THE LOVE MASTER, prod., scr.
1925 - WHITE FANG, prod., scr.
1926 - THE SAVAGE, scr.
MEET THE PRINCE, scr.
1927 - NOTORIOUS LADY, scr.
THE PRINCE OF HEADWAITERS, scr.
1929 - HALF MARRIAGE, scr.
STREET GIRL, scr.
SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE, scr.
1930 - DANCE HALL, co-scr., co-dial.
RUNAWAY BRIDE, scr., dial.
LAWFUL LARCENT, scr., dial.
THE PAY OFF, scr., dial.
LEATHERNECKING, co-scr.
1931 - TOO MANY COOKS, scr.
WHITE SHOULDERS, adapt.
FRIENDS AND LOVERS, co-scr.
1932 - WAY BACK HOME, story, scr., dial.
YOUNG BRIDE, co-dial,
WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD, co-dial.
ROCKABYE, co—scr,
1933 - OUR BETTERS, adapt.
THE SILVER-CORD, adapt.
DOUBLE HARNESS, adapt.
ANN VICKERS, adapt.
AFTER TONIGHT, story, adapt.
193^ - CRIME DOCTOR, scr.
SPITFIRE, co-scr.
THIS MAN IS MINE, scr.
THE LIFE OF VERGIE WINTERS, scr.
THE FOUNTAIN._©o-s cr.
ROMANCE IN. MANHATTAN, co-scr.
LITTLE MINISTER, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
495
JANE MURFIN
1935 - ROBERTA, co-scr.
ALICE ADAMS, co-scr.
1936 - COME AND GET IT, co-scr.
THAT GIRL FROM PARIS, story
1937 - I’LL TAKE ROMANCE, co-scr.
1938 - THE SHINING HOUR, co-scr.
1939 - STAND UP AND FIGHT, co-scr.
THE WOMEN, co-scr.
19*K) - PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, co-scr.
19M - ANDY HARDY'S PRIVATE SECRETARY,
19^ - DRAGON SEED, co-scr.
(Continued)
co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
496
N. RICHARD NASH
1946 - NORA PRENTISS, scr.
WELCOME STRANGER, co-adapt.
1948 - THE SAINTED SISTERS, co-scr.
1950 - DEAR WIFE, co-scr., co-ss.
VICIOUS YEARS, scr., ss.
1951 - FLYING MISSLE, co-ss.
MOLLY, co-scr.
1952 - MARA MARU, co-scr.
1955 - TOP OF THE WORLD, co-scr., co-ss.
1956 - HELEN OF TROY, co-adapt.
THE RAINMAKER, scr., from his play.
1959 - PORGY AND BESS, scr.
OGDEN NASH
1937 - THE FIREFLY, adapt.
1938 - THE SHINING HOUR, co-scr.
1941 - THE FEMININE TOUCH, co-scr., co-ss*,
ROBERT NATHAN
1944 - THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER, addt’l. poetry
1945 - THE CLOCK, co-scr.
1948 - TENTH AVENUE ANGEL, contrib. to scr. (uncredited).
1950 - PAGAN LOVE SONG, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
KENYON NICHOLSON
1929 - HIGH VOLTAGE, co-scr.
1930 - CHASING RAINBOWS, co-dial.
1932 - UNION DEPOT, co-adapt. (uncredited).
TAXI, ss. (uncredited).
1936-13 HOURS BY AIR, adapt.
KATHLEEN NORRIS
1923 - LUCRETIA LOMBARD, story, from her novel (1922).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
ELLIOTT NUGENT
1929 - NAVY BLUE, co-dial.
WISE GIRLS, co-adapt., stage dir., dial., from his and J. C
Nugent’s Kempy (1922).
1930 - SINS OF THE CHILDREN, co-dial., from his and J. C. Nugent’s
Father’s Day.
THE UNHOLY THREE, co-cont., co-dial.
1933 - WHISTLING IN THE DARK, dir., scr.
19^1 - WHISTLING IN THE DARK, contrib.
498
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
499
FRANK S. NUGENT
19^8 - FORT APACHE, scr.
THREE GODFATHERS, co-scr.
19^9 - TULSA, co-scr.
SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, co-scr.
1950 - WAGONMASTER, co-story, co-scr.
TWO FLAGS WEST, co-story, co-scr.
1952 ~ THE QUIET MAN, scr.
1953 - ANGEL FACE, co-scr.
195^ - THE PARATROUFER, co-scr.
TROUBLE IN THE GLEN, scr.
THEY RODE WEST, co-scr.
1955 - MISTER ROBERTS, co-scr.
THE TALL MEN, co-scr.
1956 - THE SEARCHERS, scr.
1957 - THE RISING OF THE MOON, scr.
1958 - GUNMAN’S WALK, scr.
THE LAST HURRAH, scr.
1960 - FLAME OVER INDIA, remake of Wagonmaster.
1961 - TWO RODE TOGETHER, scr.
1963 - DONOVAN’S REEF, co-scr.
1966 - INCIDENT AT PHANTOM HILL, co-scr.
J. C. NUGENT
1929 - NAVY BLUES, co-dial.
WISE GIRLS, co-adapt., stage dir., dial,, from his and
Elliott Nugent’s Kempy (1922).
1930 THE UNHOLY THREE, co-cont., dial.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
CLIFFORD ODETS
1936 - THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN, scr.
I9I 14 - NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART, scr., dir.
19^6 - DEADLINE AT DAWN, scr.
HUMORESQUE, co-scr.
I957 - SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, eo-ser.
1960 - THE STORY ON PAGE ONE, scr., ss.f dir.
1961 - WILD IN THE COUNTRY, scr.
LIAM 0’FLAHERTY
1937 - DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, co-scr.
JOHN O’HARA
19^0 - HE MARRIED HIS WIFE, co-scr.
I WAS AN ADVENTURESS, co-scr.
19^2 - MOONTIDE, scr.
1956 - THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE, story.
HARVEY J. O’HIGGENS
1921 - THE LOVE CHARM, story.
1926 - THE STILL ALARM, adapt.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
501
GEORGE O'NEIL
1933 - ONLY YESTERDAY, co-scr.
193^ - BELOVED, co-scr.
UNCERTAIN LADY, co-scr.
1935 - MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, co-scr.
1936 - I'D GIVE MY LIFE, scr.
SUTTER'S GOLD, co-scr.
193? - HIGH, WIDE AND HANDSOME, adapt.
1939 - INTERMEZZO, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
502
GEORGE OPPENHEIMER
1933 - ROMAN SCANDALS, addt'l. dial, and material.
1935 - RENDEZVOUS, co-scr.
NO MORE LADIES, contrib. to dial.
1936 - LIBELED LADY, co-scr.
WE WENT TO COLLEGE, co-ss.
1937 - MAN-PROOF, co-scr.
I'LL TAKE ROMANCE, co-scr.
LONDON BY NIGHT, scr.
MARRIED BEFORE BREAKFAST, co-scr.
A DAY AT THE RACES, co-scr.
THE LAST OF MRS. CHEYNEY, adapt.
1938 - PARADISE FOR THREE, co-scr.
A YANK AT OXFORD, co-scr.
THE CROWD ROARS, co-scr.
THREE LOVES HAS NANCY, co-scr.
19*40 - BROADWAY MELODY OF 19^0, co-scr.
I LOVE YOU AGAIN, co-scr.
19*41 - THE FEMININE TOUCH, co-scr., co-ss.
TWO FACED WOMAN, co-scr., co-ss.
19*42 - A YANK AT ETON, co-scr., ss.
THE WAR AGAINST MRS. HADLEY, scr., ss.
PACIFIC RENDEZVOUS, co-scr.
19^3 - SLIGHTLY DANGEROUS, co-scr.
THE YOUNGEST PROFESSION, co-scr.
19*47 - KILLER MCCOY, co-ss.
19*4-9 - THE ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN, co-scr.
1950 - BORN TO BE BAD, addt'l. dial.
PERFECT STRANGERS, adapt.
1952 - ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN, co-scr.
1953 - TONIGHT WE SING, co-scr.
DECAMERON NIGHTS, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
503
SAMUEL ORNITZ
1929 - THE CASE OF LENA SMITH, story.
1930 - SINS OF THE CHILDREN, adapt.
1932 - HELL'S HIGHWAY, co-story, co-ss.
SECRETS OF THE FRENCH POLICE, scr., from his The Lost Empress.
MEN OF AMERICA, co-scr.
1933 - ONE MAN'S JOURNEY, co-scr.
193*+ - THE MAN WHO RECLAIMED HIS HEAD, co-scr.
1936 - FOLLOW YOUR HEART, co-scr.
FATAL LADY, scr.
1937 - TWO WISE MAIDS, scr.
PORTIA ON TRIAL, scr.
IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU, co-scr.
THE HIT PARADE, co-scr.
A DOCTOR'S DIARY, co-ss.
1938 - LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE, co-scr., co-ss.
ARMY GIRL, co-scr.
KING OF THE NEWSBOYS, co-ss.
19*+0 - MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET, co-ss.
THREE FACES WEST, co-scr., co-ss.
19^ - THEY LIVE IN FEAR, co-scr.
LITTLE DEVILS, scr.
19*+5 - CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, adapt.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
504
PAUL OSBORN
1938 - THE YOUNG IN HEART, scr.
19*1-2 - MRS. MINIVER, contrib. to scr.
19*4-3 - MADAME CURIE, co-scr.
19*4*1- - CRY HAVOC, scr.
19*46 - THE YEARLING, scr.
19*48 - THE HOMECOMING, scr.
PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, co-scr.
1952 - INVITATION, scr.
1955 - EAST OF EDEN, scr.
1957 - SAYONARA, scr.
1958 - SOUTH PACIFIC, scr.
I960 - WILD RIVER, scr.
(uncredited).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
505
JO PAGANO
1938 - TARNISHED ANGEL, scr.
1939 - ALMOST A GENTLEMAN, co-scr.
THEY MADE HER A SPY, co-scr.
THE ROOKIE COP, co-scr.
19*42 - THE LEATHER BURNERS, scr.
19^5 - THE MAN I LOVE, co-addit'l. dial.
TOO YOUNG TO KNOW, scr.
HOTEL BERLIN, co-scr.
19^8 - ADVENTURES IN SILVERADO, co-scr.
JUNGLE GODDESS, scr., ss.
19*49 - THUNDER IN THE PINES, ss.
1951 - TRY AND GET ME, story, scr., from her novel The Condemned.
1953 - MURDER WITHOUT TEARS, story, co-scr., from her story
Double Jeopardy.
195*4- - SECURITY RISK, co-scr.
1955 - JUNGLE MOON MEN, co-scr., ss.
1957 - YAQUI DRUMS, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
DOROTHY PARKER
506
1934 - HERE IS MI HEART, contrib. to dial, (uncredited).
ONE HOUR LATE, contrib. to dial, (uncredited).
1935 - MARY BURNS, FUGITIVE, contrib. to dial, (uncredited).
HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE, contrib. to scr, construe, (uncredited).
THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1936 - co-lyrics (uncredited).
PARIS IN SPRING, contrib. to treat, (uncredited).
1936 - SUZY, co-scr.
THREE MARRIED MEN, co-scr.
THE MOON’S OUR HOME, co-addt’l. dial.
LADY BE CAREFUL, co-scr.
1937 - A STAR IS BORN, co-scr.
1938 - TRADE WINDS, co-scr.
SWEETHEARTS, co-scr.
19*4-1 - THE LITTLE FOXES, addt’l. scenes.
WEEKEND FOR THREE, co-scr.
19*42 - SABOTEUR, co-ss., co-scr.
19*4? - SMASH-UP, THE STORY OF A WOMAN, co-ss.
19*49 - THE FAN, co-scr.
SIR GILBERT PARKER.
1921 - A WISE FOOL, adapt, from his The Money Master (1915)*
1922 - THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING, adapt, from his The Lane That
Had No Turning and Other Tales Concerning the People_j?f
Pontiac (1900).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
JOHN PATRICK
50 7
1936 - 15 MAIDEN LANE, co-scr.
36 HOURS TO KILL, co-scr.
HIGH TENSION, co-scr.
EDUCATING FATHER, co-scr., co-ss.
1937 . THE HOLY TERROR, co-scr., co-ss.
BIG TOWN GIRL, co-scr.
DANGEROUSLY YOURS, co-scr., co-ss.
LOOK OUT, MR. MOTO, co-scr.
BORN RECKLESS, co—scr.
SING AND BE HAPPY, co-scr., co-ss.
ONE MILE FROM HEAVEN, co-scr.
MIDNIGHT TAXI, co-scr.
TIME OUT FOR ROMANCE, co-scr.
1938 - INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT, co-scr.
UP THE RIVER, co-scr.
FIVE OF A KIND, co-scr., co-ss.
THE BATTLE OF BROADWAY, co-scr.
19^8 - ENCHANTMENT, scr.
1953 - THE PRESIDENT*S LADY, s cr.
195^ - THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN, scr.
1955 - LOVE IS A MANX SPLENDORED THING, scr.
1956 - HIGH SOCIETY, scr.
THE TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON, scr. from his play
1957 - LES GIRLS, scr.
1958 - SOME CAME RUNNING, co-scr.
I960 - THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG, scr.
1962 - GIGOT, scr.
1963 - THE MAIN ATTRACTION, scr., ss., prod.
1968 - THE SIDES OF THE FISHERMAN, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
508
ELLIOT PAUL
19*1 - A WOMAN'S FACE, co-scr.
19^5 - RHAPSODY IN BLUE, co-scr.
IT'S A PLEASURE, co-scr., co-ss.
GUEST IN THE HOUSE, addt'l. dial, (uncredited).
19*7 - NEW ORLEANS, co-scr., co-ss,
1953 - MY HEART GOES CRAZY, co-scr.
S. J. PERELMAN
1932 - HOLD 'EM JAIL, co-scr.
HORSE FEATHERS, co-story.
1933 - SITTING PRETTY, co-scr.
1935 - THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1936, contrib. to treat, (uncredited).
1936 - FLORIDA SFECIAL, co-scr.
EARLY TO BED, contrib. to scr. (uncredited).
1939 - BOY TROUBLE, co-scr.
AMBUSH, co-scr.
19*0 - THE GOLDEN FLEECING, co-scr.
1956 - AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, co-scr.
GENE STRATTON PORTER
192* - A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST, seen., from his novel (1909).
J. B. PRIESTLY
1939 - JAMAICA INN, dial.
1950 - LAST HOLIDAY, scr., ss., co-prod.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
5 0 9
NORMAN REILLY RAINE
1933 - TUGBOAT ANNIE, from his novel, dial.
1936 - GOD’S COUNTRY AND THE WOMAN, scr.
1937 - THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA, co-scr.
THE PERFECT SPECIMEN, co-scr.
MOUNTAIN JUSTICE, co-story, co-scr.
1938 - THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, co-story, co-scr.
MEN ARE SUCH FOOLS, co-scr.
1939 - EACH DAWN I DIE, co-scr.
THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX, co-scr.
19^0 - THE FIGHTING 69TH, co-story, co-scr.
19^2 - CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS, co-scr.
EAGLE SQUADRON, scr.
19^3 - WE’VE NEVER BEEN LICKED, story, co-ser.
19^ - LADIES COURAGEOUS, co-scr.
19^5 - NOB HILL, co-scr.
A BELL FOR ADANO, co-scr.
CAPTAIN KIDD, scr.
1951 - M, co-scr.
1952 - WOMAN OF THE NORTH COUNTRY, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
510
AYN RAND
19^5 - LOVE LETTERS, scr.
YOU CAME ALONG, co-scr.
19^9 - THE FOUNTAINHEAD, story, scr., from her novel.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
SAMSON RAPHAELSQN
5 1 1
1930 - BOUDOIR DIPLOMAT, co-scr. (uncredited).
1931 - THE SMILING LIEUTENANT, co-scr., co-dial.
MAGNIFICENT LIE, scr.,co-dial.
1932 - ONE HOUR WITH YOU, scr.
BROKEN LULLABY, co-scr.
TROUBLE IN PARADISE, scr.
193*1- - THE MERRY WIDOW, co-scr.
CARAVAN, scr.
SERVANT'S ENTRANCE, scr.
1935 - LADIES LOVE DANGER, co-scr.
DRESSED TO THRILL, scr.
1937 - THE LAST OF MRS. CHEYNEY, co-scr.
ANGEL, scr.
19*1-0 - THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, scr.
19*«-1 - SUSPICION, co-scr.
1 9 * 1 - 3 - HEAVEN CAN WAIT, scr.
WITHOUT LOVE, co-scr. (uncredited).
19*1-7 - GREEN DOLPHIN STREET, scr.
19 *1 -8 - THAT LADY IN ERMINE, stoiy, scr.
IN TEE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME, musical remake of THE SHOP AROUND
THE CORNER.
1953 - MAIN STREET TO BROADWAY, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
1929
1930
1933
1935
ARTHUR RICHMAN
THE AWFUL TRUTH, co-scr., co-dial., from his The Awful Truth.
1922.
LAUGHING LADY, co-adapt.
A LADY SURRENDERS, dial.
A LADY'S MORALS, co-dial.
ONLY YESTERDAY (John M. Stahl), co-scr.
HERE'S TO ROMANCE (Alfred E. Green), co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
513
LYNN RIGGS
193^ - STINGAREE, adapt.
1936 - THE GARDEN OF ALLAH, co-scr.
1937 - THE PLAINSMAN, co-scr.
19^2 - DESTINATION UNKNOWN, co-scr.
MADAME SPY, co-scr.
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE OF TERROR, scr.
SHERLOCK HOLMES IN WASHINGTON, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
QUENTIN REYNOLDS
191*. 8 - MIRACLE OF THE BELLS, co-scr.
514
ELMER RICE
1922 - DOUBLING FOR ROMEO, story.
RENT FREE, adapt.
1933 - COUNSELLOR AT LAW, scr., fran his play.
19^2 - HOLIDAY INN, adapt.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
1927 -
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
A FLAME IN THE SKY, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
516
ROBERT RISKIN
1931 - MEN IN HER LIFE, dial., co-scr.
PLATINUM BLONDE, dial.
1932 - THREE WISE GIRLS, dial.
BIG TIMER, dial.
AMERICAN MADNESS, story, scr., dial.
NIGHTCLUB LADY, scr., dial.
VIRTUE, scr.
SHOPWORN, co-dial.
1933 - ANN CARVER'S PROFESSION, adapt, from his story, Rules for Wives.
LADY FOR A DAY, adapt.
193*+ - IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, scr.
BROADWAY BILL, co-scr.
1935 - CARNIVAL, scr.
THE WHOLE TOWN'S TALKING, co-scr.
1936 - MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, scr.
193? - WHEN YOU'RE IN LOVE, scr.
LOST HORIZON, scr.
1938 - YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU, scr.
19^1 - MEET JOHN DOE, scr.
191 & . - THE THIN MAN GOES HOME, co-story, co-scr.
19^7 - MAGIC TOWN, co-story, scr., prod.
1950 - MISTER, scr.
RIDING HIGH, remake of Broadway Bill.
1951 - HALF ANGEL, scr.
HERE COMES THE GROOM, co-story.
1956 - YOU CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM IT, remake of It Happened One Night.
1961 - POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES, remake of Lady For A Day.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
MOERIE RYSKIND
1929 - THE COCOANUTS, scr. from his and George S. Kaufman's play.
1930 - ANIMAL CRACKERS, co-scr., co-dial, from his and George S.
Kaufman's play.
1931 - PALMY DAYS, co-scr,, co-dial.
1935 - A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, co-scr. from his and George S.
Kaufman's play.
CEILING ZERO, co-scr. (uncredited).
1936 - MY MAN GODFREY, co-scr.
RHYTHM ON THE RANGE, co-adapt.
1937 - STAGE DOOR, co-scr.
1938 - ROOM SERVICE, scr.
THERE'S ALWAYS A WOMAN, co-scr.
1939 - MAN ABOUT TOWN, scr.
19*41 - PENNY SERENADE, scr.
19^3 - CLAUDIA, scr.
19*+5 - WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?, co-story.
19*4-6 - HEART BEAT, adapt.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
DANIEL N. RUBIN
1930 - THE TEXAN, scr.
DAMON RUNYON
193^ - A VERY HONORABLE GUY, story.
1936 - PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
519
ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS
1925 - LADY OF THE NIGHT, story.
RED KIMONO, story.
1926 - THE WISE GUY, adapt.
1927 - THE ARIZONA WILDCAT, story.
THE BRONCHO TWISTER, story.
THE PATENT LEATHER KID, adapt.
1928 - THE HEART OF A FOLLIES GIRL, story.
1932 - WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD?, story.
193^ - MISS FANE’S BABY IS STOLEN, scr.
19^1 - THE GREAT MAN’S LALY, co-ss.
19^6 - THAT BRENNAN GIRL, ss.
19^8 - SMART WOMAN, adapt.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
ELLIS ST. JOSEPH
1939 - RENO, ss.
19^3 - FLESH AND FANTASY, co-story, co-scr.
19^ - IN OUR TIME, co-scr., co-ss.
19*6 - SCANDAL IN PARIS, scr.
1958 - THE BARBARIAN AND THE GEISHA, story.
RICHARD SALE
1937 - FIND THE WITNESS, story.
1938 - SHADOWS OVER SHANGHAI, ss.
19^6 - RENDEZVOUS WITH ANNIE, co-story, co-scr., from his novel with
Mary Loos
19*7 - CALENDAR GIRL, co-scr.
NORTHWEST OUTPOST, co-scr.
DRIFTWOOD, co-scr., ss.
19^8 - THE INSIDE STORY, co-scr.
CAMPUS HONEYMOON, co-scr., dir.
THE TENDER YEARS, contrib. to scr.
LADY AT MIDNIGHT, scr., ss.
19^9 - MOTHER IS A FRESHMAN, co-scr., co-ss.
MR. BELVEDERE GOES TO COLLEGE, co-scr., co-ss.
FATHER WAS A FULLBACK, co-scr.
1950 - WHEN WILLIE COMES MARCHING HOME, co-scr.
A TICKET TO TOMAHAWK, co-scr., co-ss., dir.
I'LL GET BY, co-scr., dir.
1951 - MEET ME AFTER THE SHOW, co-scr., dir.
1953 - LET'S DO IT AGAIN, co-scr.
1954 - THE FRENCH LINE, co-scr.
WOMAN'S WORLD, co-scr.
SUDDENLY, scr., ss.
1955 - GENTLEMEN MARRY BRUNETTES, co-scr., co-ss., dir.
1956 - OVER-EXPOSED, co-story.
ABANDON SHIP, story, scr.
1958 - TORPEDO,RUN, story, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
521
JOHN SANFORD
1937 - EXCLUSIVE, co-contrib. to scr. construe, (uncredited).
19^1 - HONKY TONK, co-scr.
WILLIAM SAROYAN
19^3 - THE HOMAN COMEDY, ss.
JOHN MONK SAUNDERS
1928 - THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK, story.
LEGION OF THE CONDEMNED, co-scen.
1929 - SHE GOES TO WAR, dial. tit*l.
WINGS, story.
1931 - THE LAST FLIGHT, scr., from his novel Single Lady.
FINGER POINTS, co-ss., dial.
1933 - THE EAGLE AND THE HAWK, story.
ACE OF ACES, scr., from his story, "The Bird of Prey.w
1935 - DEVIL DOGS OF THE AIR, scr.
WEST POINT OF THE AIR, co-story.
I FOUND STELLA PARRISH, story.
1938 - A YANK AT OXFORD, story idea.
FRED SCHILLER
1939 - THE FLYING DEUCES, co-scr., co-ss.
19^0 - THEY MET ON SKIS, aer., 33.
19^3 - SOMETHING TO SHOUT ABOUT, ss.
PISTOL PACKIN’ MAMA, co-scr.
19« l 4 - THE HEAT'S ON, co-scr., co-ss.
19^5 - BOSTON ELACKIE'S RENDEZVOUS, story.
19^7 - WINTER WONDERLAND, ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
522
BUDD SCHULBERG
1938 - LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE, co-scr.
1939 - WINTER CARNIVAL, ss., co-scr.
19*H - WEEKEND FOR THREE, story,
19^3 - CITY WITHOUT MEN, co-ss.
GOVERNMENT GIRL, adapt.
195^ - ON THE WATERFRONT, scr., ss.
1957 - A FACE IN THE CROWD, story, scr.
1958 - WIND ACROSS THE EVERGLADES, scr., ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
523
ALLAN SCOTT
1934 - BY YOUR LEAVE, ser.
1935 - 1 DREAM TOO MUCH, eontrib. to dial, (uncredited).
ROBERTA, co-scr.
VILLAGE TALE, scr.
TOP HAT, co-scr.
IN PERSON, scr.
1936 - FOLLOW THE FLEET, co-scr.
SWING TIME, co-scr.
193? - QUALITY STREET, co-scr.
WISE GIRL, co-story, scr.
SHALL WE DANCE, co-scr.
1938 - JOY OF LIVING, co-scr.
CAREFREE, co-scr.
1939 - MAN ABOUT TOWN, co-ss.
FIFTH AVENUE GIRL, scr., ss.
PRIMROSE PATH, co-scr.
1940 - LUCKY PARTNERS, co-scr.
1941 - SKYLARK, scr.
REMEMBER THE DAY, co-scr.
1943 - SO PROUDLY WE HAIL, scr., ss.
1944-1 LOVE A SOLDIER, scr., ss.
1945 - HERE COME THE WAVES, co-scr., co-ss,
BLUE SKIES, adapt.
1949 - TELL IT TO THE JUDGE, eontrib.
LET’S DANCE, scr.
1951 - THE GUY WHO CAME BACK, scr.
1952 - WAIT TILL THE SUN SHINES, NELLIE, co-adapt., scr.
1953 - TEE FOUR POSTER, scr.
THE 5000 FINGERS OF DOCTOR T, co-scr.
1957 - TOP SECRET AFFAIR, co-scr., co-ss.
1959 - IMITATION OF LIFE, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
LEROY SCOTT
1921 - THE RIGHT ROSE, story.
1925 - CHILDREN OF THE WHIRLWIND, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
525
MANUEL SEFF
1933 - TERROR ABROAD, co-scr.
THE GIRL IN 1*19. co-scr.
FOOTLIGBT PARADE, co-scr.
COLLEGE COACH, co-scr.
EAST TO LOVE, co-scr.
1934 - BEDSIDE, co-story
SIDE STREETS, scr.
HOUSEWIFE, co-scr.
KANSAS CITY PRINCESS, scr.
19311. - BLOSSOM TIME, co-scr.
1935 - THE NIGHT IS YOUNG, co-scr.
GOLD DIGGERS OF 1935, co-scr.
A NIGHT AT THE RITZ, addt'l. dial.
TRAVELING SALESLADY, co-scr.
RED SALUTE, co-scr.
1936 - LOVE ON THE RUN, co-scr.
TROUBLE FOR TWO, co-scr.
THREE GODFATHERS, co-scr.
1937 - LET'S MAKE A MILLION, co-scr.
WOMAN CHASES MAN, co-scr.
LET'S GET MARRIED, eontrib. to scr.
ESPIONAGE, co-scr,
BREAKING THE ICE, co-scr.
19^0 - YOU CAN'T CHEAT AN HONEST MAN, eontrib. to treat, of scr.
SLIGHTLY TEMPTED, co-ss.
19^1 - MARRIED BACHELOR, ss.
19**3 - BEAUTIFUL BUT BROKE, adapt.
19^ - JAM SESSION, scr.
SAILOR'S HOLIDAY, scr., ss.
KANSAS CITY KITTY, scr., ss.
LOUISIANA HAYR3DE, co-ss.
19^5 - HTTCHIKE TO HAPPINESS, co-ss.
19^6 - THE FALCON'S ALIBI, co-ss.
1950 - UNMASKED, co-story.
WALK SOFTLY, STRANGER, co-ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
HARRY SEGALL
526
1932 - SIX HOURS TO LIVE, additional dial.
1936 - DON'T TURN 'EM LOOSE, co-scr.
FATAL LADY, ss.
1937 - SHE'S GOT EVERYTHING, scr., ss.
FIGHT FOR YOUR LADY, co-scr.
THERE GOES MY GIRL, scr.
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, co-scr.
1938 - EVERYBODY'S DOING IT, co-scr.
BLIND ALIBI, co-scr.
BLOND CHEAT, co-scr.
1939 _ COAST GUARD, co-ss., co-scr.
19^0 - THE LONE WOLF STRIKES, co-scr.
19^1 - SHE KNEW ALL THE ANSWERS, co-scr.
HERE COMES MR. JORDAN, story, from his play Heaven Can Wait.
19**2 - TWO YANKS IN TRINIDAD, co-scr.
THE WIFE TAKES A FLYER, additional dial.
19/ 4 - 3 - THE POWERS GIRL, co-scr.
19^6 - ANGEL ON MY SHOULDER, co-scr., ss.
1952 - MONKEY BUSINESS, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
527
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
1938 - PYGMALION, scr., from his play.
19^1 - MAJOR BARBARA, scr., from his play.
19*4-6 - CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA, scr., from his play.
IRWIN SHAW
1936 - THE BIG GAME, co-scr.
19*42 - THE TALK OF THE TOWN, co-scr.
THE HARD WAY, co-scr.
COMMANDOS STRIKE AT DAWN, scr.
19*49 - TAKE ONE FALSE STEP, story, scr., from David and Irwin Shaw's
story, "Night Call."
EASY LIVING, story.
1951 - I WANT YOU, scr.
1953 - ACT OF LOVE, scr.
1955 * ULYSSES, co-scr.
195? - FIRE DOWN BELOW, scr.
1958 - DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, scr.
TEES ANGRY AGE, co-scr.
1961 - THE BIG GAMBLE, scr., ss.
I963 - IN THE FRENCH STYLE, story, scr., from his two stories, "In the
French Style," and "A Year to Learn the Language*"
1968 - SURVIVAL 1967, scr., ss.
EDWARD BREWSTER SHELDON
1922 - ON THE HIGH SEAS, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
528
R. C. SHERRIFF
1932 - THE OLD DARK HOUSE, dial.
1933 - INVISIBLE MAN, adapt.
193*4- - ONE MORE RIVER, scr.
1937 - THE ROAD BACK, co-scr.
1939 - FOUR FEATHERS, co-scr.
GOODBYE MR. CHIPS, co-scr.
19*4-1 - THAT HAMILTON WOMAN, co-scr.
19*42 - THIS ABOVE ALL, scr.
STAND BY FOR ACTION, co-adapt.
19^3 - FOREVER AND A DAY, co-scr.
19*4? - ODD MAN OUT, co-scr.
19*49 - QUARTET, co-scr.
1950 - TRIO, co-scr.
1951 - NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY, co-scr.
1955 - THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP, scr.
THE DAM BUSTERS, scr.
1956 - STORM OVER THE NILE, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
529
LOUIS SHEHWIN
1921 - DON'T NEGLECT YOUR WIFE, seen.
1923 - THE ELEVENTH HOUR, seen.
1924 - THE CIRCUS COWBOY, story.
1925 - THE WHITE MONKEY, titl.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
ROBERT E. SHERWOOD
530
1926 - THE LUCKY LADY, c o -s c r .
1931 - THE AGE FOR LOVE, dial.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 MINUTES WITH DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS.dial.
1932 - COCK OF THE AIR, co-story, co-scr.
RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS, co-scr. (uncredited).
1933 - ROMAN SCANDALS, co-story.
1935 - THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL, co-scr.
1936 - THE GHOST GOES WEST, scr.
REMBRANDT, co-scr. (uncredited).
1937 - THUNDER IN THE CITY, co-story, co-scr.
TOVARICH, scr. (English version).
1938 - THE ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO, scr.
THE DIVORCE OF LADY X, co-scr.
IDIOT"3 DELIGHT, scr. from his play.
MARIE ANTOINETTE, co-scr. (uncredited).
19^0 - OVER THE MOON, co-story.
REBECCA, co-scr.
ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS, scr. from his play.
19^6 - THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, scr.
19^7 - THE BISHOP'S WIFE, co-scr.
1953 - MAN ON A TIGHT ROPE, scr.
MAIN STREET TO BROADWAY, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
531
SAMUEL SHIPMAN
1925 - A SLAVE OF FASHION, story.
1930 - THE PAY OFF, story.
193^ - GEORGE WHITE*S SCANDALS, co-story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
CUET SIOEMAK
1938 - NON-STOP NEW IQBK, co-scr*
ALWAYS GOODBYE, co-scr*
1940 - THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS, co-scr*, co-ss*
HHE APE, co-scr*
BLACK FRIDAY, co-scr*, co-ss*
1941 - THE INVISIBXE WOMAN, co-ss*
PACIFIC BLACKOUT, co-ss*
ALQMA OF THE SOUTH SEAS, co-story,
1942 - THE WOLF MAN, scr., ss.
LONDON BLACKOUT MURDERS, scr*, ss*
THE INVISIBLE AGENT, scr*, ss*
1943 - 1 WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, co-scr*
FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, scr*, ss*
THE MAN-TRAP, scr*, ss*
SON OF DRACUIA, story Idea*
FALSE FACES, scr*, ss*
THE PURPLE V, co-scr*
1944 - HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, ss*
THE CLIMAX, adapt*, co-scr,
1945 — FRISCO SAL, eo—scr,, CO— S 3 ,
SHADY LADY, co-scr*, co-ss*
1946 - THE RETURN OF MONTE CRISTO, co-ss.
1947 - THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS, Scr.
1948 - THE BERLIN EXPRESS, ss*
1949 - TARZAN'S MAGIC FOUNTAIN, co-scr*, co-ss*
1950 - FOUR DAYS LEAVE, co-scr*
1951 - BRIDE OF THE GORILLA, scr., ss., dir*
1953 - THE MAGNETIC MONSTER, co-scr*, co-ss,, dir*
1954 - RIDERS TO THE STARS, scr,, ss*
1955 - CREATURES WITH THE ATOM BRAIN, scr., ss.
1956 - EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, ss.
CURUCU, BEAST OF THE AMAZON, scr., ss., dir*
1957 - LOVE SLAVES OF THE AMAZON, scr., ss., dir., prod*
1969 - SKI FEVER, co-scr., dir.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
533
GEORGE SKLAR
19M.3 - CITY WITHOUT MEN, eontrib. to dial.
FIRST COMES COURAGE, adapt.
I9I 4. 6 - THE BANDIT OF SHERWOOD FOREST, co-contrib. to dial.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
534
TESS,SLESINGER
1936 - HIS BROTHER'S WIFE, eontrib. dial, (uncredited).
1937 - THE GOOD EARTH, co-scr.
THE BRIDE WORE RED, co-scr.
1938 - GIRL'S SCHOOL, co-scr., ss.
19^0 - DANCE GIRL DANCE, co-scr.
19^1 - REMEMBER THE' DAY, co-scr.
19^2 - ARE HUSBANDS NECESSARY?, co-scr.
I945 . f t TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
535
DODIE SMITH
19£j4 - THE UNINVITED, co-scr.
1951 - DARLING, HOW COULD YOUI, co-scr.
SAMUEL AND BELLA SPEWACK
(The following were authored by Samuel Spewack alone:)
1931 - TERROR BY NIGHT, story, scr.
SECRET WITNESS, scr., from his novel Murder in the Gilded Cage.
(The following were co-authored with wife, Bella Spewack:)
1933 - PRIVATE JONES, co-adapt.
CLEAR ALL WIRES, co-adapt., co-dial., from his and Bella
Spewack*s play.
THE NUISANCE, co-adapt., co-dial.
SHOULD LADIES BEHAVE?, co-scr.
193^ - THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE, co-scr.
THE GAY BRIDE, co-scr.
1935 - RENDEZVOUS, co-adapt.
1937 - WALTER WANGER’S VOGUES OF 1938, co-scr., co-ss.
1938 - BOY MEETS GIRL, co-scr., from his and Bella Spewack's play.
THE CHASER, co-scr.
THREE LOVES HAS NANCY, co-scr.
19^0 - MY FAVORITE WIFE, co-scr., co-ss.
19^5 - WEEKEND AT THE WALDORF, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
536
LAURENCE STALLINGS
192$ - THE BIG PARADE, s to r y .
1926 - OLD IRONSIDES, story.
1928 - SHOW PEOPLE, co-treatment
1930 - BILLY THE KID, dial.
WAY FOR A SAILOR, co-scr., co-dial.
1933 - FAST WORKERS, dial.
BIG EXECUTIVE, scr.
1935 - AFTER OFFICE HOURS, co-story.
SO RED THE ROSE. co-scr.
1938 - TOO HOT TO HANDLE, co-scr.
1939 - STAND UP AND FIGHT, additional dial.
1940 - NORTHWEST PASSAGE, co-scr.
MAN FROM DAKOTA, scr.
1942 - JUNGLE BOOK, scr.
1945 - SALOME, WHERE SHE DANCED, scr.
1947 - CHRISTMAS, co-story, scr.
1948 - A MIRACLE CAN HAPPEN or ON OUR MERRY WAY, co-scr.
1949 - THREE GODFATHERS, co-scr.
SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, co-scr.
1954 - THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
537
LYNN STARLING
1930 - OB, FOR A MANi, co-scr., co-dial.
1931 - TRANSATLANTIC, co-dial, (uncredited).
ALWAYS GOODBYE, cont. and dial.
DON’T BET ON WOMEN, co-scr., co-dial.
1932 - THE FIRST YEAR, scr.
CYNARA, co-adapt.
1933 - TORCH SINGER, co-scr.
193** - LOVE TIME, co-adapt.
YOU BELONG TO ME, eontrib. to scr. construe, (uncredited).
DOWN TO THEIR LAST YACHT, co-scr.
1935 - THE PRESIDENT VANISHES, dial.
1936 - GIVE US TECS NIGHT, co-scr.
PICCADILLY JIM, eontrib. to dial, (uncredited).
1937 - WOMEN OF GLAMOUR, co-scr.
MUSIC FOR MADAME, co-contrib, to scr., construe, (uncredited).
AS GOOD AS MARRIED, co-scr.
LET’S GET MARRIED, eontrib. to scr.
1938 - THANKS FOR TEE MEMORY, scr.
THREE BLIND MICE, co-scr.
1939 - THE CAR AND THE CANARY, co-scr.
19**0 - HE MARRIED HIS WIFE, co-scr.
A NIGHT AT EARL CARROLL’S, scr., ss.
19**1 - MOON OVER MIAMI, co-adapt.
19**2 - FOOTLIGET SERENADE, co-scr.
19*6 - WINTERTIME, co-scr.
19** - THE IMPOSTER, co-addt’l. dial.
THE CLIMAX, co—scr.
19*6 - IT’S A PLEASURE, co-scr., co-ss.
19*+6 - THE TIME, THE PLACE AND THE GIRL, co-scr.
THREE LITTLE GIRLS IN BLUE, co-adapt.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
IRVING STONE
19k6 - MAGNIFICENT DOLL, scr., ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
539
JOHN STEINBECK
19^1 - THE FORGOTTEN VILLAGE (documentary), story, scr.
19^ - LIFEBOAT, ss.
19^5 - MEDAL FOR BENNY, co- s s .
19^8 - THE PEARL, story, co-scr., from his novel
I9I4.9 _ THE RED PONY, story, scr,, from his story.
1952 - VIVA ZAPATA, story, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
540
DONALD OGDEN STEWART
1926 - BROWN OF HARVARD, adapt.
1930 - LAUGHTER, dial.
1931 - TARNISHED LADY, scr.
1932 - SMILIN' THROUGH, co-dial.
1933 - WHITE SISTER, scr.
GOING HOLLYWOOD, scr.
ANOTHER LANGUAGE, co-dial.
DINNER AT EIGHT, additional dial.
193^ - THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET, co-scr.
1935 - NO MORE LADIES, co-scr.
1937 - THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, co-scr.
1938 - HOLIDAY, co-scr.
MARIE ANTOINETTE, co-scr.
1939 - LOVE AFFAIR, co-scr.
19^0 - NIGHT OF NIGHTS, story, scr.
THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, scr.
KITTY FOYLE, co-scr.
19^1 - THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING, scr.
A WOMAN'S FACE, co-scr.
SMILIN' THROUGH, co-scr.
19^2 - TALES OF MANHATTAN, co-scr.
KEEPER OF THE FLAME, scr.
19*6 - FOREVER AND A DAY, co-scr.
19^5 - WITHOUT LOVE, scr.
19^7 - LIFE WITH FATHER, scr.
CASS TIMBERLANE, scr.
19^9 - EDWARD, MY SON, scr.
1952 - EUROPA 51 (THE GREATEST LOVE), dial, for English-language
dubbed version.
1953 - MELBA, additional dial.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
19 55
I960
541
DONALD OGDEN STEWART (Continued)
- ESCAPADE, scr.
- MOMENT OF DANGER, co-scr. (tmeredited).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
PRESTON STURGES
1930 - THE BIG POND, co-dial.
FAST AND LOOSE, dial.
1933 - THE POWER AND THE GLORY, story, scr.
193^ - THIRTY DAY PRINCESS, co-scr.
WE LIVE AGAIN, co-scr.
IMITATION OF LIFE, co-scr. (uncredited)
2935 - THE GOOD FAIRY, scr.
DIAMOND JIM, co-scr.
1936 - NEXT TIME WE LOVE, co-scr. (uncredited).
1937 - HOTEL HAYWIRE, story, scr.
EASY LIVING, scr.
1938 - PORT OF SEVEN SEAS, scr.
IF I WERE KING, scr.
1939 - NEVER SAY DIE, co-scr. with Don Hartman and Frank Butler.
1940 - REMEMBER THE NIGHT, story, scr.
THE GREAT McGINTY. storv, scr.
CHRISTMAS IN JULY, story, scr.
1941 - THE LADY EVE, scr.
SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, story, scr.
19^2 - THE PALM BEACH STORY, story, scr.
1944 - THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK, story, scr.
HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO, story, scr.
THE GREAT MOMENT, scr.
1947 - I'LL BE YOURS, from his scr. The Good Fairy.
MAD WEDNESDAY, (THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK), story, scr.
1948 - UNFAITHFULLY YOURS, story, scr.
1949 - THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND, scr.
1956 - THE BIRDS AND THE BEES, scr. The Lady Eve.
1957 - LES CARNETS DU MAJOR THOMPSON (THE FRENCH, THEY ARE A FUNNY
RACE), scr.
1958 - ROCK-A-BYE BABY, scr. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
543
HENRY SUCHER
1942 - MIRACLE KID, co-ss., co-scr.
MUG TOWN, co-scr,
THE MUMMY'S TOME, co-scr.
194-3 - CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN, co-scr.
1944 - THE MUMMY'S GHOST, ec=scr.. co-ss.
JUNGLE WOMAN, ss., co-scr/
1945 - THE FROZEN GHOST, co-ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
544
19^+
ISM
19^8
19**9
1950
1951
1952
1961
FRANCIS SWANN
SHINE ON, HARVEST MOON, co-scr.
MAKE YOUR OWN BED, co-scr.
THE TIME, THE PLACE AND THE GIRL, co-scr.
TEAT WAY WITH WOMEN, adapt.
LOVE AND LEARN, co-scr.
THE GAY INTRUDERS, co-ss., scr.
JUNGLE PATROL, scr.
COVER-UP, adapt.
BELLE OF OLD MEXICO, co-scr., co-ss.
711 OCEAN DRIVE, co-scr., co-ss.
THE BAREFOOT MAILMAN, co-scr.
TARZAN*S PERIL, co-ss., scr.
ONE BIG AFFAIR, adapt.
- FORCE OF IMPULSE, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
JO STERLING
545
1930 - LADIES OF LEISURE, scr,, dial.
AROUND THE CORNER, story, scr.
. SISTERS, scr., dial.
HELL'S ISLAND, scr.
LADIES MUST PLAY, dial.
RAIN OR SHINE, co-scr., co-dial.
MADONNA OF THE STREETS, scr., dial.
1931 - LAST PARADE, scr.
DIRIGIBLE, co-scr., dial.
TEN CENTS A DANCE, story, scr., dial.
GOOD BAD GIRL, scr., dial.
PLATINUM BLONDE, co-scr.
MIRACLE WOMAN, co-scr., dial.
THE DECEIVER, dial.
1932 - FORBIDDEN, scr., dial.
SHOPWORN, co-dial.
LOVE AFFAIR, co-scr., dial.
BEHIND THE MASK, story, co-scr., dial.
ATTORNEY FOR DEFENSE, scr., dial.
HOLLYWOOD SPEAKS, co-scr., co-dial.
WAR CORRESPONDENT, scr., dial,
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND, scr., dial.
MAN AGAINST WOMAN, scr.
1933 - THE CIRCUS QUEEN MURDER, adapt.
BELOW THE SEA, story, adapt., dial.
THE WOMAN I STOLE, adapt.
AS THE. DEVIL COMMANDS, adapt.
THE WRECKER, adapt., dial.
EAST OF FIFTH AVENUE, adapt.
MAN'S CASTLE, adapt.
193*1- - NO GREATER GLORY, scr.
ONCE TO EVERY WOMAN, scr.
SISTERS UNDER THE SKIN, scr.
THE DEFENSE RESTS, story, scr.
LADY BY CHOICE, scr.
1935 - THE WHOLE TOWN'S TALKING, co-scr.
LOVE ME FOREVER, co-scr.
1936 - THE MUSIC GOES 'ROUND, scr.
PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, scr.
1937 - DOUBLE WEDDING, scr.
1938 - DR. RHYTHM, co-scr.
I AM THE LAW, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
1939 - MADE FOR EACH OTHER, story, scr.
THE REAL GLORY, co-scr.
19^0 - THE WESTERNER, co-scr.
1 9 * 4 - 1 - BLOOD AND SAND, scr.
NEW YORK TOWN, story, co-scr.
CONFIRM OR DENY, scr.
19^2 - THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, co-scr.
19*4-3 - CRASH DIVE, scr.
A LADY TAKES A CHANCE, story.
19** - LIFEBOAT, scr.
LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN, scr.
19*+6 - IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, co-scr. (uncredited).
1953 - THUNDER IN THE EAST, scr.
1961 - KING OF THE ROARING 20*s - THE STORY OF ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
547
BOOTH TARKINGTON
1923 - PENROD AND SAM, titl. suggested by, from his Penrod and Sam
( 1916)
192** - PIED PIPER MALONE, co-titl., story.
1925 - THE MAN WHO FOUND HIMSELF, story.
DWIGHT TAILOR
1932 - ARE YOU LISTENING?, adapt.
1933 - TODAY WE LIVE, co-scr.
IF I WERE FREE, scr.
1931* - LONG, LOST FATHER, scr.
LADY BY CHOICE,story.
1935 - TOP HAT, story, co-scr.
1936 - FOLLOW THE FLEET, co-scr.
1937 - THE AWFUL TRUTH, adapt., contrib. to scr.
HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE, co-adapt.
1939 - WHEN TOMORROW COMES, scr.
EAST SIDE OF HEAVEN, contrib, to scr. construe, (uncradited).
191*0 - THE AMAZING MR. WILLIAMS, co-scr.
RHYTHM ON THE RIVER, scr.
191*1 - KISS THE BOYS GOODBYE, co-scr.
HOT SPOT, scr.
191*2 - NIGHTMARE, scr.
191*5 - CONFLICT, co-scr.
THE THIN MAN GOES HOME, co-scr.
191*7 - THE FOXES OF HARROW, co-contrib. to dial, (uncredited).
1952 - SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR, scr., ss.
WE’RE NOT MARRIED, adapt.
1953 - PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET, ss.
VICKI, scr.
1955 - SPECIAL DELIVERY, co-scr.
1957 - BOY ON A DOLPHIN, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
1936
1937
548
A. E. THOMAS
TROUBLE FOR TWO, co-addt*l, dial.
EVERYBODY#S OLD MA2, co-scr.
THE GOOD OLD SOAK, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
549
DAN TOTHEROH
1929 - RIVER OF ROMANCE, co-adapti
1930 - THE DAWN PATROL, co-adapt., co-dial.
SEVEN DAYS LEAVE, co-scen., co-dial,
1933 - ZOO IN BUDAPEST, co-scr.
1934 - THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, co-scr., co-dial.
1935 - REMEMBER LAST NIGHT, co-scr.
1936 - THE ROBIN HOOD OF EL DORADO, contrib. to dial, (uncredited).
1938 - YELLOW JACK, contrib. to treatment.
THE DAWN PATROL, co-scr.
19^1 - ALL TEAT MONEY CAN BUY, co-scr.
1954 - ROOGIE’S BUMP, co-scr.
JIM TULLY
1928 - BEGGARS OF LIFE, co-scen., from his Beggars of Life. (1924).
1933 - LAUGHTER IN HELL, story.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
550
ERNEST VAJDA
1926 - THE CROWN OF LIES, story.
THE CAT'S PAJAMAS, story.
YOU NEVER KNOW WOMEN, story.
1927 - SERVICE FOR LADIES, story.
SERENADE, story, scr.
1928 - A NIGHT OF MYSTERY, adapt, scr.
HIS TIGER LADY, adapt., scr.
LOVES OF AN ACTRESS, story.
MANHATTAN COWBOY, co-scr.
HIS PRIVATE LIFE, co-story.
MANHATTAN COCKTAIL, story.
1929 - INNOCENTS OF PARIS, adapt., dial., co-scr.
THE LOVE PARADE, adapt.
MARQUIS PREFERRED, co-scr.
1930 - SUCH MEN ARE DANGEROUS, adapt., dial., scr.
MONTE CARLO, scr.
1931 - SON OF INDIA, scr., co-dial, with Claudine West.
THE GUARDSMAN, co-scr. and co-dial, with Claudine West.
TONIGHT OR NEVER, scr.
THE SMILIN' LIEUTENANT, co-ser., co-dial.
1932 - SMILIN' THROUGH, co-scr.
BROKEN LULLABY (THE MAN I KILLED) co-scr., co-dial.
PAYMENT DEFERRED, co-scr. with Claudine West.
1933 - REUNION IN VIENNA, co-scr. with Claudine West.
193^ - THE MERRY WIDOW, co-scr.
THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET, co-scr.
1936 - A WOMAN REBELS, co-scr.
1937 - PERSONAL PROPERTY, co-scr.
THE GREAT GARRICK, story, scr.
1938 - MARIE ANTOINETTE, co-scr. with Claudine West.
DRAMATIC SCHOOL, co-scr.
19^0 - HE STAYED FOR BREAKFAST, co-scr.
19^1 - THEY DARE NOT LOVE, co-scr.
THE CHOCOLATE SOLDIER, remake of The Guardsman.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
551
LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
1921 - BEAU REVEL, story.
1926 - THE KING OF THE TURF, co-adapt.
1929 - THE LONE WOLF'S DAUGHTER, story.
S. S. VAN DINE (WILLIAM HUNTINGTON WRIGHT)
1929 - TEE CANARY MUDER CASE, dial,, from his The Canary Murder
Case (1927).
JOHN VAN DRUTEN
1935 - THE KING OF PARIS, adapt.
1936 - I LOVED A SOLDIER, co-scr.
1937 - PARNELL, co-scr.
NIGHT MUST FALL, scr.
1939 - RAFFLES, co-scr.
1940 - LUCKY PARTNERS, co-scr.
1941 - MY LIFE WITH CAROLINE, co-scr.
1943 - OLD ACQUAINTANCES, co-scr., from his play.
JOHNNY COME LATELY, scr.
1944 - FOREVER AND A DAY, co-scr.
GASLIGHT, co-scr.
1948 - VOICE OF THE TURTLE, scr., from his play.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
H. H. VAN LOAN
552
1921 - THE BREAKING POINT, story.
BRING HIM IN, story.
FIGHTIN' MAD* story, seen.
1922 - THE STAGEBRUSH TRAIL, story, seen.
1923 - THE CLEAN UP, story.
THE DRIVEN' FOOL, adapt.
THE FOG, adapt.
STORMSWEPT, story.
1924 - NELLIE, THE BEAUTIFUL CLOAK MODEL, adapt.
THE SIREN OF SEVILLE, story.
1925 - THE BLOODHOUND, story.
FLATTERY, story.
SPEED WILD, story.
1926 - THE DIXIE FLYER, story, seen.
THE KICK-OFF, story.
A MAN OF QUALITY, story,
THE MIGNIGHT MESSAGE, story, seen.
1927 - THE SHOW GIRL, story, seen.
THE SILENT HERO, story
1928 . DANGER PATROL, story, cc-scen.
THE NOOSE, co-scr.
YOU CAN'T BEAT THE LAW, story.
1929 - THE MISSISSIPPI GAMBLER, eo-dial.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
BAYARD VEILLER
553
1923 - UNDER THE RED ROSE, seen.
UNSEEING EYES, adapt,
1927 - HELD BY THE LAW, story.
1929 * THE TRIAL OF MARY DUGAH, dir., dial., from his The Trial of
Mary Dstgam A Melodrama of New York in Three Acts (1928),
1932 - ARSENE LUPIN, co-dial.
NIGHT COUBT, .eo-ad&pt., co-scr.
UNASHAMED, scr.
1933 - THE WOMAN ACCUSED, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
554
GERTRUDE WALKER
19^3 - DANGER, WOMEN AT WORK, co-ss.
WHISPERING FOOTSTEPS, co-scr., ss.
MYSTERY BROADCAST, co-scr., co-ss.
1944 - END OF THE ROAD, co-scr.
SILENT PARTNERS, scr., ss.
1945 - BEHIND CITY LIGHTS, adapt.
1946 - CRIME OF THE CENTURY, co-scr.
1947 - RAILROADED, ss.
1948 - MY DOG SHEP, co-scr., co-ss.
1950 - THE DAMNED DON’T CRY, ss.
1951 - INSURANCE INVESTIGATORS, co-ss., scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
FRANCIS WALLACE
1936 - ROSE BOWL, contrib. to treat.
19*U - TBE WAGONS ROLL AT NIGHT, story.
HUGE WALPOLE
1935 - DAVID COPPERFIELD, adapt.
VANESSA, HER LOVE STORY, co-scr., from his book.
1936 - LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
556
MAURINE WATKINS
1930 - UP THE RIVER, story, seen., dial.
1931 - DOCTOR'S WIVES, scr., dial.
1932 - PLAY GIRL, scr.
THE STRANGE LOVE OF MOLLY LOUVAIN, story.
1933 - NO MAN OF HER OWN, co-scr.
THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE, co-scr.
PROFESSIONAL SWEETHEART, story, scr.
193^ - SEARCH FOR BEAUTY, co-story.
STRICTLY DYNAMITE, co-scr.
1936 - LIBELED LADY, co-scr.
1938 - UP THE RIVER, ss.
19*1-0 - I LOVE YOU AGAIN, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
(LT. COM.) FRANK WEAD
557
1929 - FLYING FLEET, c o -s to r y ,
1931 - DIRIGIBLE, story.
SHIPMATES, co-scr.
HELL DIVERS, story.
1932 - AIR MAIL, co-story, co-scr., dial.
ALL AMERICAN, co-scr., dial.
1933 - MIDSHIPMAN JACK, co-story, scr., dial.
193*+ - FUGITIVE LOVERS, co-story.
I’LL TELL THE WORLD, co-story.
1935 - WEST POINT OF THE AIR, co-scr.
MURDER IN THE FLEET, co-scr,
CEILING ZERO, scr. from his play.
STORM OVER THE ANDES, co-scr.
THE GREAT IMPERSONATION, co-scr.
1936 - CHINA CLIPPER, story, scr.
193? - SEA DEVILS, co-story, co-scr.
SUBMARINE D-l, story, co-scr.
1938 - TEST PILOT, story.
THE CITADEL, co-scr.
A YANK AT OXFORD, co-scr. (uncredited).
1939 - TAILSPIN, story, ser.
20,000 MEN A YEAR, story
1940 - SAILOR’S LADY, story.
MOON OVER BURMA, co-scr.
1941 - INTERNATIONAL SQUADRON, from his play and screenplay,
Ceiling Zero.
DIVE BOMBER, story, co-scr.
I WANTED WINGS, co-story.
19*+3 - DESTROYER, story, co-scr.
1945 - THEY WERE EXPENDABLE, scr.
1946 - THE HOODLUM SAINT, co-story.
1947 - THE BEGINNING OF THE END, scr.
BLAZE OF NOON, co-scr.
1957 - THE WINGS OF EAGLES, from the biography Wings of Men by him,
and his novels, plys, screenplays and life.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
JOHN V. A. WEAVER
1928 - THE CROWD, co-scen.
1929 - CLOSE HARMONY, co-cial.
POINTED HEELS, co-gdapt., co-dial.
RIVER OF ROMANCE, co-adapt.
THE SATURDAY NIGHT KID, co-story.
THE WILD PARTY, co-dial.
1930 - A MAN FROM WYOMING, co-scr.
1934 - ROMANCE IN THE RAIN, co-addt#l. dial.
1935 - SWEET SURRENDER, scr.
1938 - ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER, scr.
RITA WEIMAN
1921 - THE GRIM COMEDIAN, story.
192^ - BLUFF, story.
LOUIS WEITZENKORN
1932 - MEN OF CHANCE, story.
THE DEVIL IS DRIVING, scr.
1935 - HOLD ’ EM YALE, co-scr.
1936 - F-MAN, co-scr.
THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1936 - contrib. to special sequences
(uncredited)
TWO AGAINST THE WORLD, story idea.
1938 - KING OF THE NEWSBOYS, co-rer.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
JOHN WEXLEY
1935 - EIGHT BELLS, c o n tr ib . to tre a tm e n t (u n c r e d ite d ).
1938 - THE AMAZING DR. CLITTERHOUSE, co-scr.
ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, co-scr.
1939 - CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY, co-scr.
THE ROARING TWENTIES, contrib. to treatment.
19*+0 - CITY FOR CONQUEST, scr.
19M - FOOTSTEPS IN THE DARK, co-scr.
19*4-3 - HANGMEN ALSO DIE, scr.
CITY THAT STOPPED HITLER-HEROIC STALINGRAD, narr.
19*4-6 - CORNERED, story, adapt.
19*4-7 - THE LONG NIGHT, scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
560
NATHANAEL 'WEST
1936 - TICKET TO PARADISE, eo-ser.
FOLLOW YOUR HEART, co-scr.
THE PRESIDENT’ S MYSTERY, co-scr.
1937 - RHYTHM IN THE CLOUDS, adapt.
IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU, ss., co-scr.
JIM HANVEY, DETECTIVE, contrib. to scr. (uncredited).
1938 - BORN TO BE WILD, ss., scr.
GANGS OF NEW YORK, co-scr. (uncredited).
ORPHANS OF THE STREET, contrib. to scr. (uncredited).
1939 - I STOLE A MILLION, scr.
FIVE CAME BACK, co-scr.
SPIRIT OF CULVER, co-scr.
19^0 - MEN AGAINST THE SKY, scr.
LET’S MAKE MUSIC, ss., scr.
STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR, contrib. to scr. (uncredited).
THORNTON WILDER
1935 - THE DARK ANGEL, contrib. to scr, (uncredited)
19*W - OUR TOWN, co-scr., from his play.
19^3 - SHADOW OF A DOUET, co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
1950 - THE GLASS MENAGERIE, co-scr., from his play.
1951 - A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, scr., from his play.
1955 - THE ROSE TATTOO, scr., from his play.
1956 - BABI DOLL, ss., scr.
1959 - SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, co-scr., from his play.
1960 - THE FUGITIVE KIND, co-scr,, from his play Orpheus Descending
1968 - BOOM (Italian), scr., from his plav The Milk Train Doesn't
Stop Here Anymore, based on his story "Man Bring This up Road."
HARRY LEON WILSON
1928 - THE HEAD MAN, story.
WALTER WINCHELL
1933 - BROADWAY THRU A KEYHOLE, story.
P. (Pelham) G. (Grenville) WODENHOUSE
1928 - OH, KAY!, titl., from his and Guy. Bolton's Oh Kavi (1926)
1930 - THOSE THREE FRENCH GIRLS, dial.
1937 - DAMSEL IN DISTRESS, co-story, co-scr.
CORNELL WOOLRICH
19^ - THE MARK OF THE WHISTLER, story idea.
19^8 - RETURN OF THE WHISTLER, ss.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
PHILIP WYLIE
562
1932 - ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, co-scr.
1933 - KING OF THE JUNGLE, co-scr*
MURDERS IN THE ZOO, co-ss.
193^ - COME ON, MARINES, story.
1935 - DEATH FLIES EAST, story.
JACK YELLEN
193^ - HELL IN THE HEAVENS, addt‘1. dial.
1935 * GEORGE WHITE’S 1935 SCANDALS, co-scr.
OUR LITTLE GIRL, co-addt#l. dial.
1937 - LOVE IS NEWS, co-scr.
ALI BABA GOES TO TOWN, co-scr.
YOU CAN*T HAVE EVERYTHING, co-scr.
WAKE UP AND LIVE, co-scr.
1938 - SALLY, IRENE AND MARY, co-scr.
SUBMARINE PATROL, co-scr.
HOLD THAT COED, co-scr.
MY LUCKY STAR, co-scr.
LITTLE MISS BROADWAY, co-ss., co-scr.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Schultheiss, John Edward (author)

Core Title A study of the "eastern" writer in Hollywood in the 1930's

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,theater

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor [illegible] (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member), Kaufman, Edward K. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-233727

Unique identifier UC11349374

Identifier 7331388.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-233727 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 7331388.pdf

Dmrecord 233727

Document Type Dissertation

Rights SCHULTHEISS, JOHN EDWARD

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA