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Life holds only a few moments as thrilling as this famous writer experienced when/with dread in his heart, he stepped onto a set and watched his dreams come true
BY LOUIS BROMFIELD
AUTHOR OF
"THE RAINS CAME"
India transferred to Hollywood — in this dramatic scene with Myrna Loy and George Brent
NOT every book that a novelist writes occupies an equal place in his heart. There are some books which he finds entertainment in writing, others which are more or less autobiographical and consequently easy; there are some which are so difficult that he finishes by hating them; and finally there are those books which are written from the heart because they had to be written. I have written three of this last category — "The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg," "The Farm," and "The Rains Came." But of all of them "The Rains Came" was the closest to my heart. And so when it was sold to be made into a talking picture I felt uneasy about the whole thing.
It was not the first time Hollywood had made a picture of one of my books. From my point of view, and once or twice from the point of view of the public, the results were not altogether happy. Some of the pictures had been good, some indifferent in quality, and one downright bad. There were various reasons why
stories which had known a great popularity as books failed to achieve a corresponding success as pictures. The reasons for the failure are varied. Sometimes the adaptation is bad, sometimes it is the rapidly changing fashions of Hollywood which force a story into an artificial or unconvincing form. Sometimes a story can be massacred by economy or by a director not suited to it.
A book is different. No one lays hands on it but the author himself. No one else has the authority to change a comma. No one can maul it about, stick on a different ending or change the characters. No censorship can reduce what is the result of intelligence into what appears to be the result of idiocy. The novelist is not used to having a dozen brains taking part in the production of a story. A novelist's craft is a solitary one in which he takes his own pace. The production of a talking picture is a co-operative affair achieved under the terrific pressure of time and the vast cost of everything.
And so, when I found myself unexpectedly and on very short notice coming to Hollywood to the very lot where they were in the midst of making "The Rains Came," it was with trepidation, punctuated even by moments of actual dread. The book and all the characters in it were close to my heart.
I knew "The Rains" was a big and complicated and expensive story. I knew that a record budget had been made for its production. I knew too that in the book itself there were at least a dozen stories — the material for a dozen pictures. If the book were filmed in its entirety, about twenty-four hours would be needed to show it. So cuts had to be made and I wondered what they would be.
On arrival I was handed the final script which they were in the midst of shooting. I read it over and saw what had been done. Philip Dunne and Julien Josephson, who did the job, had taken the two principal love stories — one happy, one unhappy — and stuck to them.
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