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UNEXPECTED IS RIGHT!
How a filming father turned three-year-old family footage into the Maxim Award winner for 1948. Good humor helped
ERNEST H. KREMER, ACL
THE room seemed unusually quiet as I lounged in my favorite armchair, trying to dream up a story for a new movie. Suddenly my wife's voice broke the silence. "Ernie, dear," she began calmly, "Ernie, Em going to have a baby."
A gunshot couldn't have brought me to my feet faster. Me a father I Me? Like all naive males, I must confess that my first reaction was amazement. But amazement soon dissolved into pride and pride into delight. For, apparently being a movie maker first and a prospective father second, I realized that here was my story! I named it at once: The Unexpected.
All of that took place well over three years ago. And now comes the news that this simple family him — this film which had its beginnings on that far-away evening— has won the treasured Maxim Memorial Award! Can you wonder that I name my story of it: Unexpected Is Right!
But let's lap dissolve back to the beginning. I started my new script immediately. Ignoring my wife's misgivings, I planned to film the baby right after birth and then to continue shooting daily scenes of his or her progress. Swiftly my Great Ideas took shape and as swiftly I jotted them down in scenario form. Little did I realize how naive they were! And the time seemed to drag until I could put them into effect.
Then, for no reason, it was September 27. 1945, and my wife was shaking me out of a deep sleep. Her voice
OPENING sequence in The Unexpected, Maxim Award winner for 1948, is suggested above. Lap dissolves link smoothly paced scenes to advance Father to mystery sequence, first right column. Producer, seen at editing board, was hailed by judges for crisp cutting of 325 foot 16mm. winner.
sounded dreamy and far away. "Ernie," I heard her say, "Ernie, wake up! I think this is it." That woke me up fast. A glance at the clock showed it was four a.m. The ride to the hospital was uneventful and my wife was soon under her doctor's care.
So this was it. I found myself worrying. Will everything be all right? Suppose something happens to my wife or to the baby? Suppose? Suppose? SUPPOSE? By daybreak I swore I would never laugh at an expectant father again. By noon, the hospital asked me please to stop calling; nature would have to run its course. By evening, I was ready to be hospitalized myself and I was positive that a father undergoes the worst ordeal of all. At nine p.m., weakly answering the phone, I heard the doctor say: "Congratulations, mother and daughter are doing fine."
As the next days slipped past I found myself living in a new world, a place where movie making somehow did not seem to fit. Reality had deflated my Great Ideas. Ten days later, the nurse wheeled my wife into the hospital foyer, handed me the baby and a bottle containing the proper formula, wished us good luck and we were on our own. Two weeks of sleepless nights, walking floors, making formulas, washing diapers reeled by before I realized that the baby was changing in more ways than one. I had not shot one single frame of film. I had to get busy, and at once!
My carefully prepared script was now of no use. What to do? Finally I de