The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

You Know How They Are A Story By DWIGHT TAYLOR I want to state right here and now that I'm not much of a writer. I used to be an assistant director in motion pictures. I can take a lot of punishment, and that's about all. I made enough dough to retire to Glendale where I raise rabbits with my wife's assistance. But she says I ought to write the story of Art MacGuinness and Perry Wall. She says there's something about it that's interesting, and that I should try it because I'm the only one who knows the inside. I don't know the inside. I don't know the inside. I don't know anything. But she says to write it, so here goes. Art MacGuinness, the guy I worked for, was a great practical joker. Some of his jokes were sort of cruel, but he was a good motion picture director, and that covers a lot of jokes. It just depends on whether you are in the chips or not. I remember when we were working for the old Atlas Film Corporation on Yucca Street we needed some lions for a jungle picture. Art had me send out to Gay's for a couple of lions, and when they arrived he thought he'd play a joke on Sol Bamberger who was producing the picture. Sol was a pioneer in the business — started out selling lemonade in the nickelodeons and built up from that. He was getting pretty old when we worked for him. Art wanted to put the lions in his office. The idea was that when Sol came in he'd get a fright, and everybody else would get a laugh. Of course the lions were harmless, but even a "work" lion can look bad if you come upon it unexpectedly. I told Art I didn't think his idea was so good. But you couldn't talk to Art. Once he got an idea it was the greatest idea in the world — until he got another one. You know how they are. Well, we laughed about the idea of what Sol's face would look like when he saw the lions. Art kept telling it and the crew kept laughing until they could hardly laugh any more. I laughed too — after all, none of us was working for peanuts. Well, the cats arrived and Art had the trainer release them in Sol's office. Sol had gone to the Men's Room. Most of the gang were gathered around out in the hall, trying to keep from laughing, when Sol comes out and goes back into his office. He took one look at the lions and fell over in a dead faint. That sort of put a damper on the festivities and we had to throw cold water on him and send for a doctor and he went home early. The next day he died. It seems something went wrong with his ticker. Art sent a beautiful bunch of flowers to the funeral and he received a nice letter of thanks from Mrs. Bamberger. But I didn't feel so good about it. I just tell you this to give you an example of Art's humor. He wasn't so good at the wise-crack or off-hand remark, but when it came to the hotfoot or the electrified chair he was as clever as Oscar Wilde. In a nice Way, of course. But what I want to tell about is Art and Perry Wall. Perry was one of the handsomest leading men of his time. He had a profile like on an old two-cent stamp — but he was a terrible lush. In the silent. days that didn't matter so much — we could hold him up from behind and lean him against a book-case or something — but when talkies came along it was not so good. His speech was so thick that you couldn't mix it and it sounded as if a mouse had gotten into the sound equipment. Perry had a terrific following amongst the female sex and it was hard for the studio to think of giving him up. They tried to get a sibilant-comber for awhile — some guy who would go through the script and try to take out all the S's — but it wouldn't work. Perry was through. For a year or two after that you could see him hanging around the bars on Vine St., and then he disappeared from public view. Some people said he had gone back to his mother in Wisconsin. But he was really lying on a bed in a cheap Boarding House downtown and couldn't get up. I happen to know this because he wrote a letter to Art. They had worked together in the old days, and Perry spoke of old times and so forth and like-a that. But he never mentioned Lola Meredith. That was a touchy subject between them, and I guess he knew enough to let sleeping dogs lie. Lola Meredith had been quite a dish, with the long curls and gingham dresses that used to be the mark of a good woman. Half these dolls that they use for heroines today wouldn't have been allowed in the pictures in the old days, even as a heavy. You had to draw the line somewhere. Well, Art had figured on marrying Lola at one time, but Perry moved in on her, and when Perry moved in on a dame in those days that was it, brother. They got married for awhile and lived in a big house at Santa Monica, but she The Screen Writer, May, 194