The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

/ An Evaluation of T/ie Screen Writer With this issue, Volume 4, Number 1, The Screen Writer celebrates its third birthday. And we are fortunate to be able to present an evaluation of the last thirtysix issues by a distinguished critic. An outsider looking in — looking at us as we reveal ourselves in the points of view we hold toward our profession — Frank Hursley discusses the vital function and purpose of the Guild's magazine. Literary critic and associate professor of English in the University of Wisconsin until 1943, Mr. Hursley has, since then, been successfully -engaged in writing radio plays in collaboration with Doris Hursley. They are represented in "The Best One Act Plays of 1945." Mr. Hursley' s article is the comment of a man with a sound academic background combined with practical entertainment experience outside the motion picture industry. THE best antidote I know to seeing too many movies is to read The Screen Writer. And the best corrective to the casual impression one may have formed of the nature and purposes of screen writers is to encounter them again on the pages of The Screen Writer. Of course, as a plain, or Galluppoll, consumer of the movies, I have not been too aware of just who, if anybody, did write the movies I have seen. Unfortunately, I am not too conscientious about reading small print on the screen or elsewhere, and anyway the brief flash announcing that the screen play had been done by some fellow or fellows I had never heard of, always seemed to come just at the moment I was opening my popcorn box. By the time I had the popcorn well under control and the film was fading into the view of the sun rising over the towers of Manhattan, the author of the piece had become a dim figure indeed. So far as I could judge, in the hierarchy that brought forth the picture, he had a little precedence over the enviable fellow who provided Miss Turner's nightgowns. The picture itself, excepting, of course, the memorable few, had no stamp of authorship. There was no revelation of insight into the turbulent waters of human behavior, no flashes of understanding of reality, no suggestion of awareness, no doubt, no lyricism rising above the level of a greeting card, no wit — in short, no encountering of a mind that challenged, or disturbed, or inspired, or even impressed. There was lots of other stuff, of course : quaint if predictable characters, muscular heroes, costumes, formula dilemmas, formula complications, pat solutions, twists, twisteroos, gags, cute dialogue, and, perennially, titillating passionless sex — the whole literary Sears Roebuck catalogue. But nobody ever asked who wrote the Sears Roebuck catalogue. THEN, something over a year ago, I picked up a copy of The Screen Writer on a newsstand. What I expected was something like The Writer's Digest. I read the lead article ( it was William Wyler's "No Magic Wand," treating of his experience with The Best Years of Our Lives), grabbed a checkbook, filled out a subscription blank, and ordered all the back copies. May I say parenthetically everybody who has ever seen a movie should do the same thing. The Screen Writer is probably the most consistent and successful attempt in literary history by a group of professional writers to evaluate their medium. I make this statement advisedly and having in mind a long and distinguished succession of journals of literary criticism, from the Grub-Street Journal to T.L.S. and from the Dial to the Saturday Review of Literature. What distinguishes The Screen Writer is that it is written by the practitioners of a craft and directed to the attention and scrutiny of the other practitioners of the craft. Most literary criticism, of course, has been written by professional critics and directed to the attention of the literate public. It would be absurd to attempt to characterize literary criticism in a glib sentence, but much of it has dealt with general, if basic, problems and rather little of it with the immediate problems of the working craftsman. Literary criticism has probably influenced literature more by affectiing the taste of readers than it has directly by shaping the practice of writers. The impact of The Screen Writer, 14 The Screen Writer, June-July, 194S