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, & , 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

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- : 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, . 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. So, I have certain tried have no fears that the publisher will buy only Madame and tested suggestions to make. Bovary or Moll Flanders or Moby Dick from us.

In all seriousness I would like to offer some fertile

fields for the unemployed screenwriter to root in. I am not peddling vague theories or polite hints on what BEGIN by putting down two or three chapters to do until the telephone rings to tell you that you of a story on paper. Style, an old teacher once are "hot at Paramount." Every device, method and told me, is only one sentence following another sentence, source I shall list kept me and many of my friends and chapters are only a certain number of pages. Char-

alive and kicking for twenty years. I have tested what women, housewives and cigar store clerks have written

I shall suggest, and it works! best selling novels by merely covering two pages of paper with prose a day, and stopping when they finish The average unemployed screenwriter, and some of a ream of paper. As a matter of fact, it is discouraging my best friends these days are screenwriters out of work, to a professional novelist to see how often highly touted sits around the house waiting for the agent's call. Some contests are won by some frustrated housefrau with make an effort to dream up an original, some even get a shabby first novel. M.G.M.'s huge novel contest the original on paper. There is nothing wrong in has yet to turn up a decent book. writing originals—but story editors tell me that the average original is badly written, quickly kicked out Get three chapters of an idea done; don't sluff it to get a story point on paper. An original should be off, work hard on it, make the idea as novel, as witty written carefully, as carefully as a novel or play and or as full of character and love and desire and hope should produce the ache in the mind that all hard as you would a screen idea you are presenting to, say, work does. However I started to write about fields Jerry Wald. The New York publishers have leg men, untapped by most screenwriters—-and I mean untapped those wonderful zombies with checkbooks, stashed scientifically, systematically and with perseverance. away all over this town. If they like your idea you can get up to three or four thousand dollars doled There is first of all the Standard Model T novel. out to you at about a hundred dollars a week until the Now every generation, if it is lucky, produces one or novel is finished. A good novel can be written in two great novelists. A hundred years may produce only anywhere from six weeks to six months. After all a half a dozen , great writers. The rest are craftsmen Voltaire wrote Candide in twenty-four hours, and of talent, and talent is merely the use of craftsmanship, Dostoevski rammed out his novels, sometimes hitting knowledge and procedure. Anybody with enough talent ten thousand words a day. And you ain't Dostoevski. to get a piece of paper into a typewriter can write some Speed never hurt a real writer if he's trying hard. sort of a novel. Publishers, those gay fellows with their baggy tweed suits, their big smelly pipes and the I lived for years on publishers' advances. The con- delightful habit of taking you to Twenty One for temporary novel—remember—is a simple machine-made lunch—many successful writers tell me—don't want thing with lots of heart, character and fun in it, and to discover a new War and Peace, or Vanity Fair, or often pleasant to write. The surprise is that you may

Boswell's Johnson. They want—and again I quote my be writing a great classic and not know it. Three successful friends—the stuff that best sellers are made volumes of my vast output have been admitted into of. The Moneyman, Gentleman's Agreement, Foxes the sacred grooves as literature by the critics (I wish Of Harrow, Proud Destiny, Peace Of Mind, and I could say they lost money to prove a point). works of that sort. I suppose none of these books will Daniel Defoe, the pappy of the modern novel, was mean a thing to anyone next season or the season — a hack writer, his pen for hire to anyone, and he wrote beyond. Yet each is a pocket gold mine to its publisher Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe to get a little fast and its author. or gal who calls himself Any man a cash. He wasn't writing what the men-about-literature screenwriter, I feel, can write a book as good as any call art. He was just setting down something that listed above. is not merely This blowing advice through interested him while unemployed, while waiting for my hat. the demand of political pamphlets to come back. Mark An average motion picture and a popular novel are Twain didn't think of himself as a great author; he really the same thing, product or commodity. Both felt you had to be a New England snob in chin whis- are produced for simple entertainment, and it is a kers, to have touched Harvard, to be a real writer. special talent, but a talent only. The screen has not He wrote Huck Finn and Life on the Mississippi yet produced a Tolstoy or a Henry James or a Balzac, because he needed money to enlarge his house, buy a but neither has Random House or Doubleday or Simon farm and keep his wife in the fashion her father had and Schuster! We are all people of talent so let us raised her in. When he wrote Art with a capital A he — THE SCREEN WRITER

produced Joan of Arc which is practically chloroform people began to take their mental nourishment in in print. Balzac wanted to marry a rich Polish countess motion picture form, the comic strip which used to be and grow pineapples in France and fill a house full funny, became a story telling device for simple souls. of paintings ; he had no idea the stuff he turned out in The millions of people (including me, too) who read reams had any value as literature. Proust produced Ltl Abner every morning outnumber the people who the great Remembrance of Things Past not only as can recite the poems of the Earl of Rochester or the a writer, but also in part because he wanted to show sonnets of Shelley a million to one. certain people who had snubbed him what a bright The creator of LSI Abner is a man of wit, intelli- boy they were turning away. gence and worldly wisdom. He writes his own story

So if you do write a novel, and write it because line. However, not all cartoonists are Milt Gross or you need money while unemployed, don't worn" be- Ralph Barton. Some of them—an art critic once said

cause it isn't art. . . . You may be writing Art against know what a book is, (''It's a thing you place a glass your own wishes. Doctor Johnson said it: ''Only a of gin on to keep it from taking the varnish off the .") fool doesn't write tor money." furniture, you dope . . and many of them can read print, but there are rumors that the most brilliant draftsmen can't write very well. Yet they must turn you don't get that advance from a pub- SUPPOSE out thousands of feet of solid action-packed, character- lisher? The next time you go calling for your -wife filled, exciting story six times a week, and there is the in a beauty- parlor read some of the movie magazines Sunday page. Most of them hire story writers. People that clutter up the waiting room. The interviews with who give them their plot, and there is always a short- the stars are enough to turn any healthy stomach, but age of good story people in the cartoonfield. Don't if it's a hungry stomach, just remember that the mag- try to create a new cartoon character, don't get an azines pay from two to live hundred for a story about artist to draw one for you. There are too many car- Hollywood. Any idiot can write them, one editor told toons now and there is a newsprint shortage (except me ; in fact, idiots have a natural flair for such stuff. in Beverly Hills where I have to wade through a You will just have to lower yourself to a moron's lawn covered with advertising throw-aways every level, he said. So study the samples, call up a few of dawn). Contact either the cartoonist direct, or the the local magazine offices, and go to work. syndicate for which he works. Present your credits The great American goons—to quote my editor and your ideas in a good letter, or over a hot martini friend in detail devour magazines star —who these are with the artist or his agents. There is a little selling happy. They want to know what happens to a star involved. But a good story man can make twenty from the time he opens his baby blue eyes to the mo- thousand dollars a year creating the ideas and plot line ment he gets down on his tailored pajama knees and for a fairly popular cartoon strip. A smash hit makes says his prayers and is tucked in for the night. The Louis Mayer look like a charity case. editor was not kidding actors. The real actor, and Most of those witty" gags under drawings by Peter the one that appears in these fan magazines is. of Arno, Charles Addams and others in The New Yorker course, not the same person. A real actor is human. are not created by those artists. They are bought from

He gets drunk, falls passionately in love with impos- free lance gag men and given to the artist to illustrate. sible dames, and curses his producer in Anglo-Saxon I hope this shatters no illusions—but it's only another —for love and hate are both four-letter words. In example of how writers get no credit. (See—said my this Never Never Land of Fan Magazines there is secretary—the world is just like Hollywood—only real gold for any writer who can write interestingly bigger.) I once shattered the happiness of a Pasadena about the dream world of the movie fan's idea of hostess by telling her that her favorite cartoonist Glamour Puss. You will not win the Pulitzer Prize, couldn't think his way out of a phone booth un- but the landlord will accept the checks. But be sure assisted. The prices for one-line gag ideas run from your models. Don't give Essay on to study them An fifteen dollars to thirty. It's no life of ease—but a good the Focus of the Coated Lens and Low Key Lighting, week can pay the food bills and have a little left over when they want to be told that their favorite actress to buy gasoline for the car on weekends. The best spent the first forty years of her life in a convent study- gags come from twisting newspaper headlines around.

ing soil chemistry. Again I am not writing of something Gags lead, of course, to what some people call the

I just heard about. I created fan magazine filler and curse of modern civilization, the radio. This is a little the filler helped fill me. I would rather have written cruel—but maybe true. I spent ten years in the radio The Red Badge of Courage—but I ate. mills, came out a whole but perhaps a saddened man.

As the novel changed from art to Edna Ferber, and When I started writing soap opera serials at twenty- —

MARKETS FOR WORDS five dollars a fifteen minute radio script was often circulation magazines. One lady magazine writer called a bed of neurosis. When I quit I was turning always opens her latest magazine by saying: "What up my nose at eighteen hundred a week. I may add has God wrought? Ouch!" in passing that I am the radio writer who told Ed There is the short story market. There are several Gardner that the character "Archie" was not going good, clean formula stories that appear over and over to go, and that I also drove Bob Hope off the air in again. Study the magazine you want to work for and thirteen weeks, an ordeal he recovered from, and he see what kind of story they like. There is the folksy went on to real success, without me. little story with the city slicker or city vamp getting

beaten all hollow by the simple Juke's type country cousin who turns out to be Gary Cooper or Jimmy

' I ''HE demand for writers in radio is constant and Stewart. The boy meets girl, tiffs with girl ; then gets

* the pace is killing. But the money is as good as her against his clean, manly chest in three thousand picture money, often better. The prices are sometimes words. The witty story, the Hollywood story (please much higher. Most radio writers tell me they would don't). The story, the big business story, the trade all of radio to the Russians for a good fullback faith story and half a hundred others. Don't be for the Los Angeles Rams, but the fault, I suspect, is ashamed of them. All have produced masterpieces in the result of selling out a great art form to the pack- their time. Don't be too unhappy to write them. agers of tripe, and letting it slip into the hands of the O. Henry, Kipling and others have done them and hucksters, cut-purses and reformed con men and footpads done them well. After a while you may develop into that are the advertising agencies. If there is an honest rich trade goods, and if you click you are producing agency man—one radio writer told me—I have never the Somerset Maugham, Edna Ferber, Louis Brom- met him. So be sure—he went on—your contacts field story which is as marketable as U. S. Steel. Only are iron-clad, your legs crossed and the crookedest now it's called the John Doe story (you). And there lawyer you can hire is aware of your every move. is always the accident that you might turn out another Ransom Of The Red Chief, The Open Boat, The "It's really not that bad," I said. "Oh yes," he said, Killers, or Pigs Is Pigs. "anyone who has written a motion picture script can Magazines also print a lot of filler; profiles, close- be Bernard Shaw when it comes to radio writing. One writes for senile dementia, sex addled housewives and ups and life stories of such people as Mike Curtiz sinister kiddies who cut up cats in their backyards. (that market has been a little overloaded of late, but I am not trying to be funny about this; radio writing if it's a habit—well), George Washington Carver, is an insult to your intelligence." the map who invented a ten per cent deadlier than machine guns, new kinds of cooking, what to do with "Can I quote you?" plastics and many other simple little topics. Don't expect "These are hard times and harder ones are coming, the big money, my lady magazine writer tells me. print it. And please, Norman Corwin, don't write The real rich graft in war experting, breast beating, me a letter saying you are an artist. I admit it; but it atom bombing, red baiting, Mickey Mouse art, and doesn't change my opinion about radio much." enema bag literature, unAmerican vice and the solu- tions the problems My friend needs a rest. of world by union now, or tracing the migrating habits of the lemmings, i