The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

Martin Field (Continued from Page 12) part of a woman lawyer as played by Myrna Loy. ) Or, the adaptor is skilled at telescoping the plot so that two events which take place years apart in the novel would take place the same day in the screen story and thus provide greater dramatic effect. Sheridan Gibney's reputation as an adaptor rose enormously after he worked a year or so on the screenplay of Anthony Adverse and brought that massive novel within the framework of a screenplay. Mr. Gibney's services as an adaptor of novels have been in great demand ever since. WHEN Hollywood producers are faced with the problem of adapting a hit stage comedy to the screen, such as Philip Barry's Holiday or The Philadelphia Story or Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's Life With Father, the man they turn to is Donald Ogden Stewart. Never, never is Mr. Stewart thought of in connection with a serious motion picture, and so, to write a drama, Mr. Stewart must turn to the stage and create a play. Topping the list of writers are the dialogue and script polishers. They go to work after a screen play is finished and their job is to give the dialogue and situations "touches" and "twists" which will make for a brighter, more intelligent, less hackneyed film. They are among the highest paid writers and include such authors as Erskine Caldwell and William Faulkner, who will take on a "polish job" for two or three weeks or so at several thousand dollars a week and do not care about getting credit for their work on the screen, although in most cases their contributions are not large enough to justify screen credit anyway. SO we see how the final screenplay takes shape, like an automobile on an assembly line in Detroit. First there is the screen original or novel or play — the raw material. Then there are the adaptors, who shape the raw material. Beyond the adaptors are still other writers who are known as good "constructionists" or "builders." Given a plot and a locale and a set of characters, they can put everything together in such sequence as to provide the greatest dramatic effect. Then come the "screenplay" writers who are expert at dialogue, who can convey character, motivation, and action through dialogue and shot sequence. Then, finally, come the "dialogue polishers" and the shiny end product rolls off the assembly line, neatly bound and labeled, "Final Shooting Script." We have surveyed the kinds of type casting of writers and their various categories. What we now ask, is the effect of this "efficiency"? While the Hollywood producers seem content with this system of casting writers, many writers most emphatically are not happy about the situation. Just as actors frequently object to being typed, and would like the opportunity of playing roles which are different from their usual ones, so writers resent being typed. Most of them want a chance to show their versatility, instead of being straightjacketed. Every now and then Hollywood cries that its writers are sterile and incapable of "original" or "fresh" writing. In most cases, the people who lament the loudest about this state of affairs are the selfsame indi viduals who keep on typing writers in certain specialized grooves. It is rare for a writer to be given the opportunity to work on a different kind of story or do a different kind of screen writing than he has hitherto done. The most common way for a writer to get the chance to write a "different" type of screenplay is to sell the studio an original story of a "different" type and insist as a condition of purchase that he write his own screenplay. Failing that, the writer can only resort to writing short stories, novels or plays in an effort to show his studio bosses that he is capable of a type of story unlike his previous studio efforts. Once in a blue moon a writer of one kind of story may manage to prevail upon a producer to try him out on another kind of story and the results are, happily, very successful. However, most producers can hardly be blamed for playing it safe and refusing to take chances on writers doing different kinds of work, and therefore type casting of writers — as of actors — prevails in Hollywood. SOME writers darkly suspect that this pattern of dividing the work on pictures among several writers may be part of a producers' plan for minimizing the individual importance of writers. The producers can only reply that motion picture production is an "industry" and type casting of writers is the most efficient way of doing things. And who are writers to criticize? After all, the famed Chicago meat packing industry can only claim that when it butchers hogs it "uses everything but the squeal." Since the advent of sound, the film industry can boast that it has been doing much' better than that. hr^ The Screen" Writer, June-July, 194 8