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suggest that this excellent theory of operation be extended without delay to the field of motion pictures.
Or, to put it more bluntly, there will never be a better time to achieve for the seller of material to the screen some of the privileges and the protections which the dramatist enjoys in the theatre.
True, the Hollywood producers and studios have fought off for years anything that would remotely suggest the possibility that some day screen authors would enjoy that continuing identity with their work, and the continuing responsibility for it, which their brethren enjoy in the theatre.
But the times are changing and the studios will have to change with them, whether they like it or not. And especially if the members of the Authors' League and its Guilds will stand together in one common front. It will involve, of course, a certain amount of struggle. Not quite so much, perhaps, as attended the memorable battle when the members of the Dramatists' Guild won their first Minimum Basic Agreement. But a battle none the less.
The issue at stake is clear and it is basic. As matters now stand, the seller of material for the screen is as unprotected as the dramatist was in the theatre before the advent of the Dramatists' Guild and the Minimum Basic Agreement. He can get as little or as much as his agent can bargain for but, with a few rare exceptions, these are the things he cannot get:
(1 ) He cannot control his material in any degree;
(2) He cannot separate the copyrights, but usually disposes of his radio and television copyrights along with the motion picture copyright;
(3) He cannot reserve to himself the legitimate profit involved in re-issues and remakes of films;
(4) He cannot even have the copyright in his name: the corporation is always listed as the "author."
It is true that, in one or two cases, strong-minded individuals have been able to assert some of their rights. John Steinbeck, so the report goes, was able to reserve the right to take back his name and his title in the event that The Grapes of Wrath did not live up to expectations George Bernard Shaw, by dint of his own virtuosity, has had pretty much his own way in English films based on his plays. Here and there, a few free-lance writers have been able to work