Screen Guilds Magazine (April 1935)

April, 1935 7 Mr. (jioldwyn Bears Down . . • M E, SAMUEL GOLDWYN, about whose head has gathered a nimbus of amusing Hollywood anecdotes, most of them apocryphal and all of them tending to shadow an acute business in¬ telligence, has lately been fulminating against Hollywood writers, if one may 'believe the Associated Press. Mr. Gold- wvn in short, is quoted as saying that no screen writer in Hollywood is worth a thousand* dollars or more a week. That is a difficult point to defend, for one wonders, when people are starving in a rather messed-up world, whether anybody in creation is worth a thousand dollars a week. Certainly if no writer is worth that salary, neither is any producer of mo¬ tion pictures, and a few of them draw ten times that amount, not counting bonuses even more succulent. If Mr. Goldwyn wishes to contest this point openly, would he reveal his own income from the pictures he produces and have an impartial inquiry examine his creat¬ ive contribution to those same pictures? I daresay he would not! It is not possible to discusss the mat¬ ter of Hollywood salaries in terms of creative writers and what they derive from their works. Creative writers are notoriously underpaid. That is the pen¬ alty of being a free artist, and God knows screen writers are not and cannot be free artists. . Milton, I believe, re¬ ceived ten pounds for one of the world’s masterpieces, Pardise Lost. Famous liv¬ ing writers who create enduring work usually receive very little from their labors. The reason is that the mass of people does not care for great literature; they want entertainment; and that is why writers who will turn their talent to creating entertainment without im¬ plications of life-criticism are much bet¬ ter paid. And screen writers must necessarily fall into this class. They are hacks; that is they write w r hat is de¬ manded for money. Mr. Goldwyn himself, I believe, makes explicit demands for his money. However, they are only hacks in terms of their employment, not in terms of their talent. One should not apply the ^ord 'hack’ in derogation. A man may be the finest imaginative writer in the world, but the moment he comes to Hol¬ lywood and turns his talent to inventing mass entertainment, he must accept with his salary check the status of hack, for in return for his money he must write what his employers expect of him, which naturally is something which can even¬ tually 'be cashed in at the box-office. Now, agreeing that Hollywood writers are hacks creating or trying to create entertainment for money, to create en¬ tertainment for the great masses of people who. do not want profound works of art and who will repay Mr. Goldwyn and other producers handsomely for what they purvey, the question is whether such writers are overpaid hacks. The law of price as a result of supply and demand functions more drastically in Hollywood than anywhere else one knows. Be sure that if a producer pays a writer a thousand dollars a week, it is only because some other producer will gamble on his talent and pay him twelve hundred. And let that writer be involved in a few failures and he will find he is in demand no longer, and his salary will drop to five hundred, or even fifty dollars a week. Or he will starve finally, being unable to find any job at all. There are a great many unemployed ■writers in Hollywood as we all know. Yet certain writers are in demand at two or three thousand dollars a week. And why? Because the producers can make big profits by employing their talents in the collaboration that goes to make a motion picture. One is far from asserting that the best writers are continually employed and the worst unemployed. Far from it. There are fakers drawfing good round salaries and talented men and women starving to death for lack of recogni¬ tion. But the point is that the produc¬ ers, not always being discerning about wuiting talent, think the people they are employing are the best writers available, and hence, compete for their employ¬ ment and drive their salaries up. And usually in time the fakers are found out and vanish from the Hollywood scene with their bank account. I will believe Mr. Goldwyn’s sincerity when he refuses during the course of By Dudley Nichols one year to pay any writer so much as a thousand dollars a week—or an equi¬ valent in royalties or a percentage deal. The fact is that motion pictures can make a great deal of money. A product that can take in nickels and dimes from millions of people all over the world is bound to roll up a huge gross revenue. Compared, with the possible revenue the cost of production, however wasteful, is slight. Due to the mechanical compli¬ cation of motion picture production, it is not possible to make a fairly good program picture in a major studio for less than, say, two hundred thousand dollars at present. The actors may draw huge sums for a short intense period of employment. The writers may do the same. Then they may be unemployed for a considerable layoff period while waiting for another assignment. I should say that the total salary paid to writers in Hollywood is well under five per cent of the total cost of pictures. That is not much, considering that pic¬ tures today could not begin to be pro¬ duced without the writers’ ideas and talents. Mr. Goldwyn, in short, is like a man owning the goose that laid the golden egg, complaining bitterly because un¬ expectedly on some days the goose lays a silver egg, or even a china egg. Or possibly a very rotten egg! The money the producers pay the writers is rela¬ tively chicken feed, and the golden eggs continue to be found in the nest now and again and they all belong to the company! True, it might be possible even to stop feeding the goose, and let him scratch for himself, and perhaps he would still go on laying a golden egg now and then. The only catch is that neighbor pro¬ ducers are looking over the fence, and they will throw more chicken feed, and lure the poor goose away. For the golden-egg variety of goose, like the clever and competent screen writer, is rare and will always be in competitive demand. The time is com¬ ing wdien Hollywood producers will have to pay more and not less for able screen writers; when writers, rebelling against their status as hacks, will starve for a stronger voice and try to achieve some dignity as free and creative artists, mingling this with a proper respect for the producers’ business demands; and when that time comes, eventually, they wall begin creating scripts out of their own inner demand for self-expression and will work on a royalty basis, shar¬ ing more equitably in the box-office returns.