UNEMPLOYMENT 1: Markets for Words by STEPHEN LONGSTREET, with an Editorial Foreword
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Authors' League Statement On Censorship . Page 1 The UNEMPLOYMENT 1: Markets For Words By STEPHEN LONGSTREET, With An Editorial Foreword JOSEPH SISTROM: The Writer-Producer Relationship ROBERT PIROSH: Outside U. S. A. F. HUGH HERBERT: Seeing Red T. E. B. CLARKE: British Writers Speak Out JACK NATTEFORD and LUCI WARD: Economics of the Horse Opera FRANK LAUNDER: Letter From London ERNST LUBITSCH: A Symposium on His Contribution to Motion Pictures By MAURICE CHEVALIER, CHARLES BRACKETT & BILLY WILDER, JEANETTE MacDONALD, HANS KRALY, SAMSON RAPHAELSON, STEFFIE TRONDLE AND DARRYL F. ZANUCK Page 15 Vol. 3, No. 8 January, 1948 25c Editorial Book Reviews News Notes Screen Credits ©C1B 11^33 Letter The From Screen Writer / / London Vol. 3, No. 8 JANUARY, 1948 EDITORIAL COMMITTEE FRANK LAUNDER, British writ- er-producer who was recently a Richard English, Editor SfVG guest at a special seminar at Fran Manning, Associate Editor Lucey's and <who has contributed before to The Screen Writer, sends Robert Ardrey Leo C. Rosten the following letter and London Stephen Morehouse Avery Bernard C. Schoenfeld Times editorial. Mr. Launder is Claude Binyon Leonard Spigelgass President of the British Screen- writers' Association. Taylor Caven Irving Stone David Chandler Leo Townsend THE recent issue of The Screen Richard G. Hubler M. Coates Webster Writer containing the special sec- Stephen Longstreet Margaret Buell Wilder tion on the British tax situation, has been a great success here in England. The magazine has been much in de- CONTENTS mand. I have lent my copies to many people, and more are asking for it. Authors' League of America Statement I enclose a leader from the London UN EMPLOYMENT I Times which I think should be inter- STEPHEN LONGSTREET: Markets for Words esting to people in Hollywood, and which I hope you can reprint. SIf'G Studio Chairmen [The Times editorial follows:] JOSEPH SISTROM: The Writer-Producer Relationship ENGLAND, THEIR ENGLAND T. E. B. CLARKE: British Writers Speak Out 11 "Inexorably, or at least with every Symposium: ERNST LUBITSCH: appearance of inexorability, the day MAURICE CHEVALIER 15 approaches after which we shall see CHARLES BRACKETT and BILLY WILDER 15 no more new American films. British JEANETTE MacDONALD 16 producers will do their best to fill the HANS KRALY 17 gap thus created and we shall bear up SAMSON RAPHAELSOX 18 as manfully as we may ; but it would STEFFIE TRONDLE IS be folly to deny that something will DARRYL F. ZANUCK 20 be missing from our lives. That some- thing will not be the same thing in JACK NATTEFORD and LUCI WARD: every case, for our likes and dislikes Economics of the Horse Opera 21 vary. Some will mourn the entrancing F. HUGH HERBERT: Secuuj Red 25 Mis> Blank; others, strangely invul- nerable to her charms, will sigh prin- ROBERT PIROSH: Outside U. S. A. 27 cipally for the dynamic Mr. Dash. Editorial 30 But a fan bereaved of a star is not Book Reviews 34 necessarily inconsolable, for after all the star may cross the Atlantic and FRANK LAUNDER: Letter From London Inside Front Cover make picture over here, or the fan a News Notes 36 may — such is human inconstancy — Screen Credits 38 transfer his or her idolatry to a Brit- ish player. There is hope, too, for those who feel chiefly the loss of a particu- lar genre. Neither our climate nor PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE SCREEN WRITERS' GUILD, INC., AT 1655 NORTH CHEROKEE, HOLLYWOOD 28, CALIFORNIA. the mouths of our horses are particu- larly well adapted to the making of ALL SIGNED ARTICLES IN THE SCREEN WRITER REPRESENT THE "Westerns," but there is no reason INDIVIDUAL OPINIONS OF THE AUTHORS. EDITORIALS REFLECT OFFICIAL SCREEN WRITERS' GUILD POLICY, AS DETERMINED why we should not have a shot at it. UPON BY THE EXECUTIVE BOARD. As for tremendously bad films about the lives of celebrated musicians, we YEARLY: $2.50; FOREIGN, $3.00; SINGLE COPY 25c; (CANADA AND FOREIGN 30c). \ can turn them out at a pinch, and it may even prove possible to show the CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 'l948 BY THE SCREEN WRITERS' GUILD. (Continued on Page 36) INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Authors League of America Statement on Film Censorship and Blacklisting THE Council of the Authors League protests against the immoderate, un- controlled, and radically harmful form of censorship now being exercised on the entire profession of writing by the Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities. We do not deny the right of Congress to investigate for legislative pur- poses but we stand whole-heartedly opposed to the present practice of this committee on un-American Activities. By denying to an author the accepted democratic safeguard of witnesses in his own defense or the elementary right of cross examination, this Committee has encouraged witnesses to make un- supported public charges which blacken the authors' reputation, and has thus clearly constituted a form of censorship dangerous to the rights and economic subsistence of all authors. Carried to its logical extremity this method of censorship by defamation has already affected not only some of our League members but can affect all who deal in any way with writing for public dis- semination. The motion picture industry has cravenly submitted to this censorship by blacklisting from employment a group of writers for their alleged political beliefs. These are the effects of this sort of arbitrary censorship. The intent of censorship is to deny to the individual author, his publisher, and producer, the right to distribute and sell the product of his intelligence and his art. In the past this has commonly operated only against a work produced and issued to the public, and only to one work at a time. The au- thor so censored has had the opportunity to oppose and refute the specific accusations in courts of law. Here, however, we are faced with a different form of censorship. Here the man himself is proclaimed suspect.. And the Committee has avoided, as probably fatal to its whole malign project, the necessity of impugning the authors' work in detail. Indeed, the whole corpus of a man's work, past and future, is thus declared suspect. It is obvious that any who buy and use the work of that author are to be clearly warned that they may be adjudged col- laborators with a citizen so arbitrarily declared to be subversive, and may thus themselves be subject to the same calumny and suspicion, open to the same grave yet unproven charge of conduct contrary to the interests of their country. We repeat, the motion picture industry has already submitted to this warn- ing. There has thus been established a method and a principle of censorship, fiercely unfair, basically undemocratic, and deeply un-American. We there- fore earnestly and urgently protest this unwarranted and invidious censor- ship with all the power at our command. Unemployment I The screen writer today is faced with the problem of what to do until the agent calls. The total membership of the Screen Writers Guild is 1457—and as we go into the New Year, only 408 are employed by the major and independent studios. The conventional remedy, recommended by agents, story editors, and producers is all too frequently to simply "go home and write down just an idea, we're desperate for originals." Yet between July 1st and November 1st, 1947, only 17 originals were purchased. This, and similar problems will be discussed under this heading each month. But in the meantime, there's the man at the door who can't understand why we don't get into some steady line of business where we can pay our bills. The following article may help you tell that man at the door to go mind his own business. While it will not enable anyone to buy mink coats or that convertible he wants, it is a life-raft that can come in handy. Anyone not interested in drowning will find it informative. EDITOR Markets for Words STEPHEN LONGSTREET, a member of SfVG, is now a member of the Editorial Committee and Book Editor of The Screen Writer, to which he STEPHEN LONGSTREET has previously contributed. He is a novelist, screen writer, cartoonist and playwright. His play High Button Shoes, is a current Broadway hit. grandfather disliked public lectures on any- in his backyard were rough diamonds, and had been MYthing for two reasons: as a young girl my there all the time. This was a pretty fable of the grandmother had fallen in love with Charles Horatio Alger age and inspired our grandparents (all Dickens during his American lecture tour and Gramp except mine) to invest in Graham Bell and Henry Ford was never too sure how far this mutual Victorian and the process of making a seamless bathtub. passion, this damned thing, had gone. Also the most Today with unemployment facing over two-thirds popular lecture of his day was an item billed as Acres of the Hollywood screenwriters, and the future of the Of Diamonds. entire industry wrapped in one of those Delaware Acres Of Diamonds was a story, told with great Corporation moods (which looks too darkly ahead into feeling, about a man who desired to discover a diamond an uncertain future), I think it is time for all of us field, and he left his home and wandered for years, to look in our own front yard for something; if not all over the world, and at last, broken and old, he acres of diamonds, at least some moonstones and lesser came home to his farm and found that the pebbles jewels to keep us working and earning until this MARKETS FOR WORDS unemployment period ends.