The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

The New Mythology By EDMUND HARTMAN A middle western theatre chain recently asked 12,000 of its customers, "Why do you go to the movies?" There were 9,000 replies, an unusually high average on a questionnaire. 60 per cent said, "To see my favorite stars." 26 per cent heard that the picture was worth seeing. 9 per cent liked the type of story advertised. 3 per cent always went to a certain theatre rain or shine. 2 per cent could be titillated by the picture title. Edmund Hartmann, long a writer in the industry, has a few pertinent remarks to make on the psychology behind this state of affairs. APOLLO meets Aphrodite . . Apollo loses Aphrodite . . Clinch . . Kiss . . Fade . . The writers may give the characters any names they choose . . They may make the hero a miner in Pennsylvania or a farmer in Kansas or a millionaire on Park Avenue . . It doesn't matter very much, for what the public sees is a god of the Cinema making love to a goddess of the Cinema ; two film deities enacting a Saga of their heroic adventures. Name them Dexter Penrose and Diana Blythe, two orphans who meet in the night somewhere on Skid Row. What your audience is thinking about as the tale unfolds is how gorgeous Gene Tierney looks in rags; what a real handsome fellow Tyrone Power is, slumped over the piano with the three days beard and the glass of gin. For just as the Norse story-tellers peopled Valhalla with Wodin, Loki, Thor, Frey and the other gods; just as the Greek and Roman poets filled Mount Olympus with Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, Venus, Mercury and the rest, so the movie-goers have populated Mount Hollywood with a Divine Company of gods and goddesses. The screen writer would do well to reflect on this for, while cameras cannot roll until story and words are put on paper, a more practical understanding of the true stituation may help him to say better what he wants to say. Alas, the mass reaction to the best pictures is not yet how good the story is but how effectively the starhero is presented in his or her mythological role. While this is not a conscious process on the part of hero worshippers, perhaps one day, like Pavlov's dogs, they can be conditioned to something more adult and interesting by the screen writer's knowledge of their folklore responses to symbols for good and evil and in-between states of behavior. The Norse, Greeks and Romans heard the same legends of their gods so many times over the years that they came to personify each of the characters with a human form. Zeus was a strong old man with a long beard ; Mercury wore a little cap and sported tiny wings on his feet; Venus had the perfect feminine figure, and so on. Our film audiences were able to quickly personify their gods, for they could see the gods actually enacting heroic adventures. The gods of Wisdom, Love, War, and Strength were before their eyes in human form. Gods of War like James Cagney or Alan Ladd perform superhuman feats of strength in overcoming far superior enemies. Humphrey Bogart takes beatings that would be fatal to a mere mortal and comes out with one band aid and a smile. Errol Flynn out-duels as many as twenty soldiers at one time. Hedy Lamarr wakes up every morning with a perfect hair-do, and not one wrinkle in her lace nightgown. And lo and behold among the many goddesses and lesser goddesses, there is not one who was flat chested. JUST as Zeus never made a wrong decision, Mercury never lost a race, Apollo never was cuckolded ; so the gods of Mount Hollywood are invincible and forever beautiful. Alan Ladd might be called any name or The Screen Writer, May, 1948