Variety (January 1954)

PICTURES A WRITER'S WRITERS STORY (Or Blankety-Blank the Critics) By WILLIAM SAROYAN: Bill Saroyan The way writers get their work done has always been fascinating. Take mvsclf, for instance, . . ■ “There is a fine story in the way a writer g s Thci? .1* “ work done," 1 say to the wall when I get up in the morning. . This seems a reasonable thought. Writers are such interesting tellows, humorous and yet seriousminded, and often Interested in hu mAlso’ they travel farther than other professional men, excepting ^professional men who travel to Arabia. Women, make a fuss over them, and generally speaking they are a jaunty l0t\Vhy shouldn’t a story about the way one of them gets his work done be justthe thing for the Woman’s Home Companion. . Unfortunately, however, this carlymoi ^ been going on by itself, and I have been a little suspicious *f No. What I want ; is not a story about, a writer but a story about somebody else, a man of 88, for instance. “Look over there,” he says. “There’s that woman again, ■weeping off her porch. She doesn’t know how to hold a broom. She might have been hitched to a cart m the old davs. Still, 20 or 30 years ago 1 might have stopped at her gateand tipped my hat, hoping spmeUinig might But the old man won’t do, either, for I cant think of a good name for him. or whether he traveled. I wonder, then, if the, story oughtn’t to be about a new life instead of an old one. An infant, three hours old, lor instance* • 4. What I want to say about him is that he is quite sound andwill live 51 years, How do 1 know? I don’t, but a writer is permitted to say such things. It’s something nobody cbmplains about. If I were to say he is to live four days nobody would complain about that, either, but it happens that 1 feel he ought to. live 51 years. That is no longer a great number of years for any man to live, so I do not feel I am exaggerating things. And, of course, the. infant will receive the usual honors of a faithful employee: that is to say, a letter from the assistant manager Which says in, an apparently sincere '.manner that he, the assistant manager, would not have been a real executive had he not noticed over the 30 rears of Arthur’s employment that apart from the fact that Arthur had never behaved mischieviousjy insofar as company interests were concerned, Arthur had also worked hard and cheerfully. r On Another Tuck I thought Arthur would be a rather impressive name for the infant. But the thing I really wanted to do was to see if I could convey a. sense of life through the infant, for almost anvbody cah say something about a delivery clerk. in short. I thought that if I could make the aliveness of a new man real, the critics Would have to think twice about me, That is the plague of a writer’s life. Critics will not think twice about him. They will think once and hurry back to the writers of a hundred years ago who knew what they were doing. . They will say things that do not do a writer’s dignity very much good. If they would think twice about the man, they would know that he is not such a bad sort, after all. But just thinking about the critics annoys nie; and Instead of trying to make Arthur immortal, I let him perish. ■ In the meantime, my thinking has moved quickly, and I have imagined what I would write about Arthur, and how hopeful I would be that it would make the critics think twice, and then, no. they have not done so, they have thought only once again, and their opinion is that Arthur is boring. One of them 'a well-bred man with a college background. both as a student and as a teacher of English) quotes from the book without comment, and somehow this pains me more than anything else. The quotation falls fiat, as the critic meant it to, and the words I thought were so meaningful when I wrote them seem preposterous and silly. What the devil did I mean? I must confess the critics scare me. and haunt my sleep. I would do better, I know, if they would only think tw ice. If they would think three. times I might write something astonishing. (But the mere .thought of the critic who has always written so coldly about my writing has finished Arthur for me, and for the world.) Fortunately, there are other people to think about, and I find that I am thinking about a man who is wretchedly unhappy because, although he is gainfully employed and has appropriate clothing for all ordinary occasions, feel that he should have stuck to his boyhood ambition to be. a pianist. He had had other ambitions as well, but Urey had been wild, and he had had intelligence enough, -after he wgs 30. to recognize them as such. It was quite unlikely; he began to feel at 30, for instance, that he would, ever lead the men who would conquer South Africa, for if the truth were knownhe did notknow where the men were and .was not. sure that he might not meet with some sort of accidental embarrassment at the time of the leading. For instance, a man lias worked hard for 39 years to achieve something extraordinary and impressive, like the conquering of South Africa, and finally he is leading his men to the 'moment of glory, charging ahead. Behind a very small bush, however, lurks an African. The bush is so low as to seem incapable of concealing a human being, but alas the lurking man is small. And he is concealed, look at it any way you like. He is watching Joseph with small ugly eyes,, for he loves South Africa, and altogether on his own, not even assigned to the awful task by the proper authorities, he has taken his place behind the small bush; and having no Forty-eighth Anniversary other weapon with which to defend South. Africa, he holds in his hand a stone weighing one pound, two ounces. What he means to do is to smite Joseph (Swigley) on the head. Joseph strides fearlessly forward, for he disdains horses. (Actually he is afraid of them and has developed a whole philosophy based on the superiority of conquest on foot.) The fanatical South African is ready for him, and at the proper moment leaps up and casts the stone. Fortunately, it misses the mark, does not catch Joseph in the mouth, but pushes Into the pit of his stomach. Now, how was Joseph to have known there would be a South African fanatic behind that bush? It was an accident, pure and simple. But the damage is done. The blow has hurt Joseph, and he has sat down in front of his troops and is crying. Well, there it is. A man never knows what sort of accident is likely to humiliate him if he thinks of being a conqueror, and so Joseph, at 30, gave it up. But he did feel that he should have gone ahead w'ith his ambition to be a pianist, and so he is unhappy, and having the appropriate clothing doesn’t comfort him. Well, there was certainly a little something to this idea, too, but I couldn’t quite take to it, for to be perfectly honest I didn’t like the man— him and his thoughts of playing the piano both. AH of this thinking, this preparing to get to work, has taken the time it lakes to smoke a cigaret, and yet I have already begun to feel that the day is lost, for. I cannot decide who io tell my story about . I might have written something quite good about the 88-year-old man, and come to think of it why couldn’t I have called him Stephen Alcott? That’s quite a good name. I might also have hit upon some clever thoughts about how he had managed to stay alive SO long. There might even have been a word or two about patriotism, for he wore a small flag in his lapel. A Belgian flag to be sure, although he was not a Belgian, but he always remarked to those w'iio noticed that the flag was a Belgian one, “Don’t let the flag fool you, sonny, I love this country.” If I had had any luck at all I might even have got in a few good licks about life insurance, pointing out that in most eases it is not necessary, or on the other hand that it is generally a blessing, for had. not Mr. Alcott taken out the proper pblicy when he was 20 he could not in his old age receive in the mail on the first of each, and every month iiis cheek for $55, rain or shine. In short, had I not been so eager to make a better impression on the critics and gone ahead with the story of the old man, I might have done all right. And if the worst came to the worst I might have w ritten a good story about Arthur the infant, too. • In other words, the critics. What good are they? Don’t they spoil things? Don’t they stop a man in his tracks? Don’t they scare him half to death with their clever way of putting things to make a fellow feel small?" And yet where is the critic who, in a showdown, could give us the pleasure the writing fellows give us? Where is the critic who could get down off his high-horse and tell a little story that could make an unhappy man smile and say to himself, "Well, now', living’s not so bad, after all. There’s these writing fellows to cheer a man up once in a while.’’ How about that? .Wednesday, January 6, 1954 Westward -Or Is It Eastward-Ho? ===By KEN ENGLUND====~to Let’s begin with* -s^ory you might have heard that is probably apocryphal: two writers— one driving from New York to Holly wood, the other bound in the opposite direction—rpass each other in the desert and both sinuilta neously yell: “Go back!” Which gets me neatly into the theme of this monograph— namely the problems writers face in straddling both coasts^-everi people like Bob Sherwood, no matter how long hjs legs. Take any show business nomad, any writing Arab who must fold up his tent and move from one market place to the other to sell his wares— (Men! Send for my free booklet entitled “How I, a writing weakling, learned „ . to coin colorful metaphors overnight Ken Engiuna and incr£?ase(j my vvord • power tenfold.” Mailed to you in a plain wrapper) . . . take me lor example. Because I’m the handiest— Right now I am the sole support of two warehouses— Bekins Storage in Los Angeles and Hollanders in New York. I have visitation rights to some 40 packing cases On both coasts, bulging with duplicate complete sets of Zane Grey, four copies of ”Why Not Try God?” by Mary Pickford lying Unused in Bekins, and two identical mint copies here in Hollanders, with equal and exasperating duplication all down the line, Edith Sitwell records and Woolworth China accumulating at a frightening rate each time I shuttle across the country , and set up a temporary hot plate kind of housekeeping. . And so the tides of fortune have filled my crates to overflowing with identical flotsam and jetsam. On that great eome-and-get-it day, I will be able to furnish a 28loom house with coffeepots alone— six Silexes to a room. But this is the least of a wandering minstrel’s problem. The hearth and fireside can be dismantled and packed away, not so the family. Just when The Little Woman is making a wonderful adjustment, with the help of a Westwood phyehiatrist, to the rules of conduct in her Hollywood milieu— women at one side of the room, men at the other at parties, purple slacks with mink jacket at the Farmer’s Market — -she is cruelly uprooted and tossed into a New York cocktail party where the men talk to the women, and finds herself having lunch with females who wear hats, skirts, stockings and leather shoes. She to her mortification the only one with straw wedgies. Naturally, the blows to the ego lay her low— this time on the couch of a Park Avenue Freud. Then There Are the Kids A Thorn By Any Other Name , _ W By ARTHUR (OOPS!) KOBER ===== It isn’t exactly a gripe, and I wouldn’t be too "disturbed about what I’m going to say, if I were you. I mean, it’s something that bothers me from time to time. I mean, I don’t lose any sleep over it, see, and I can think of many other things if I. would just set my mind to thinking of many other things. That’s my trouble, though. My mind insists on clinging to this one thought. Well, I might as well stop acting like someone writing at space rates and come directly to the point, which is this: who the hell is the guy in Hollywood (I’m sure he works for Universal Pictures since that studio is the chief offender) who is naming our movie heroes these days, and what in heaven's name is the reason for his intense preoccupation with verbs? Now in' my time our movie heroes had simple first names. There was a pleasant, monosyllabic name like John — Barrymore and Gilbert; a name like Richard — Barthejmess and Dix; like William — Farnum and S. Hart; Tim — Moore and Mix. Occasionally we’d have a film star with an exotic . first handle — Rudolph, Adolphe, Ramon — but these were appclations which went hand-in-hand with the well-upholstered costumes and uniforms they wore. (A name, incidentally, which seemed most felicitous for the evil roles, he played was that of Gustave von Seyffertitz, my favorite screen villain.) The tendency toward action in given names was first detected by me in the early ’30s when I was a writer in Hollywood (and you Were, a Christian slave!) I recall, when “The Thin Man’’ was first produced, that the executive in charge of the picture was Hunt Stromberg, a name that fairly screamed for an exclamation point, a monicker that would most certainly have increased the circulation of any tabloid printing it across its front page! This film, by the way, was based upon a book written by a writer whose first name, properly shortened, sounds like a terribly tempered preacher uttering, a mild expletive: “Dash Hammett!” Today, however, there is action, the moment the movie hero’s name is flashed upon the. screen. Who, among the sedentary customers in a picture house, isn’t tempted to get on his mark, get ready, and fairly fly out of the theatre at the sight of the name, Race Gentry? And -who among us is so hard-hearted as to resist the temptation to reach out, and chant a soft lullaby to Rock Hudson? (Rock Hudson, a chip off old Boulder Hudson!) Oh, the mystique in the name of Touch Connors. How often Tve wanted to seek him out and to comply with the request his name makes by touching Mr. Connors with the baseball bat which, in my fantasy* I have firmly gripped in my hands! I, my friends, am a timid soul, queasy at the simple act of opening a blister. And yet, I am courage itself But it is the children who really suffer. The Ford convertible with the twin pipes must be sold along with the entire wardrobe of T-shirts and corduroys, all traded for a baffling world of subways, shirts and neckties. And the straight-A student at Hollywood High winds up one cruel morning to find a demoralizing series of C’s on the Eastern report card. Is all this suffering necessary? At a recent writers’ seminar organized to look into the problem, it was agreed that it was not. AH heartily endorsed a suggestion for a practical workable plan that would eliminate the uprooting of wives and kids if it works a hardship. The plan, in principal, is to be a simple matter of temporarily trading roofs, wives and children — the Eastern playwright bound for a short stint at Paramount, moving neatly and without fuss into the Bel Air nest of the film writer bound for Eastern TV, who would even-Steven settle in the apartment, and family circle of his opposite number. The trading post to be the Author’s League Journal and the Personal Column. The ads would perhaps read : AUTHOR LEAVING HOLLYWOOD TEMPORARILY FOR N. Y. TV, Will swap 6-acre estate, “ Snug Haven,” complete with championship size pool and young, lovely wife. She is my third and must really be seen to be appreciated, measuring 36-22-36. Good cook, too. Quiet children. Girl (6) helpful, . having been trained to use electric pencil sharpener. Boy (9) will tuash Cadillac on Saturday for weekly $12 allowance — answer to Dusty and Rory. What am I offered? — East 60s or Park Avenue preferred. Like Eastern temporary wife to be good mixer but plain type who will encourage me in my work, or SACRIFICE: The heartbreaking kind. Forced to , move West due to untimely, sale of novel, “Burning Lips and. Napoleon Brandy,’’ to MGM, with screen v play assignment making, it necessary for me to give up but try to realize something of the investment I have made in promising . young dancer in “Kismet.” Already in for $1,823.67 in preliminary entertainment at 21, Sardi’s, the Copa, including gifts. Just try to improve on this one, a realbeauty and like new — needs home with someone who appreciates finer pieces.. I’d rather keep myself and move her West than let someone have her who wouldn’t be good, to iicr. Who has Culver City starlet for quick trade? And later . turnover. Let me hear what my readers think. If you only know how much your letters mean to me. In summing lip, which I suppose I must .do-^aelually I'd rather -just lie down now because I have a slight head-, ache— but in looking the problem square in the face. I’d say the old advice still holds true, only now it works both ways— and that is —‘"Don’t take anyone to either coast you can't put on the Chief.” about yielding to the appeal implicit in the name of Lance Fuller, something I would most gladly do. preferably with a well-honed spear! And one other ^tiling: if I had the lungs of a lion, what fun it would be for me to roar into Rory Calhoun’s ears! Oh, that delicious and wonderful sound of . eardrums bursting in air! As a final note, I intend to give up my., London living quarters, located in Kidding-on-the-Square, and perch my house right on top of Universal’s new leading man, Craig Hill! (I don’t think I’ll bother repairing the plumbing.) As I said before, this, isn’t exactly a gripe. I call it more of a question: who the heck is the guy in Hollywood who is naming these new movie heroes? Chuck Cupp