The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

E MULTI-COPY SERVICE Specializing in TYPING AND MIMEOGRAPHING TREATMENTS SCREEN PLAYS MANUSCRIPTS RADIO SCRIPTS Your Rough Draft Put in Presentation Form By Experienced Personnel Speed • Accuracy Courteous Service • 13471/2 NO. HIGHLAND AVE. HUdson 2-1341 Everett Freeman MANUSCRI PTS Typed and M Expert Work • imeographed Prompt Service Beverly Hills Letter Shop 9717 Santa Monica Blvd. Beverly Hills, Calif. • CRestview 6-2530 Hollywood Writers To Aid You Something new. Your material judged by 3 members of our staff for expert criticism. Regardless of type of assistance needed, we are qualified to render you valuable service. Specialists in book-length novels, screen adaptations, radio dialogue, stage, short stories, ghost writing and articles. Please send your problems to the Hollywood Writers Aid Association 1317 N. Bronson, Rm. 101, Hollywood 28 ■kFor Your Book Wants . . . WEPPLO'S BOOK MARKET In the Farmers Market (3rd & Fairfax) We have a complete stock of new, used, art and children's books Phone us your wants — WH 1813 Open 9:00 thru 6:00 -daily except Sunday BUSINESS MANAGEMENT A-l RATING INCOME TAX LEGAL • INSURANCE 16 years' experience Business Counselor for 35 motion picture and radio writers. CHRIS MAUTHE 8006 Sunset Blvd. • Los Angeles 46 Hillside 6012 (Continued IT is to be noted, and commendably, that in recent months McCarten has shown a marked tolerance in his work. Whether this is the mellowness that comes with age or a growing awareness of the fact that every oyster, try as it might, cannot produce a pearl, I do not know. The fact remains that the tone of the department has assumed a gentler cast, making it brighter, cleverer and wittier. Let us hope this continues. Let us hope that Mr. Ross and Mr. Mc from Page 4) Carten, literate men both, realize that an industry the size of Motion Pictures must, of necessity, be geared to please as vast a cross-section of paying customers as possible. If the bulk of filmland's output does not please the editor of the New Yorker, that is quite understandable. But to maintain a constant rearguard sniping at the industry, its people and the word "Hollywood" is a type of bigotry and decadence not too far removed from some of the world's major ills today. Frank Hursley ( Continued fr movies be somehow so managed that the centrality of the author in the creation of the movie be preserved through to what appears on the screen. As the movies exist, the author is a man who gets lost in the shuffle. If a screenplay is worthy of production, it should contain the values common to all artistic creations, values that are the imprint of intelligence and sensitivity and honesty. If the screen writer isn't that sort of person, he shouldn't be writing screen plays. If his view of life isn't worthy of attention, if his understanding of people and what makes them tick isn't penetrating, if his feeling for what is dramatic doesn't spring from having lived and thought about it, he shouldn't be in the business. That, I believe, is the point of view of The Screen Writer. But if a man is entrusted with the writing of screenplays precisely because he does have those rather rare qualities, and because he and not somebody else has seen how a story which means something can be memorably told on the screen, the rest of the business of get om Page 15) ting out movies should be arranged to the end of preserving and not nullifying his intent. T T is pretty obvious from reading ■*■ The Screen Writer that things are stirring in the movies. Very exciting things. The movies are being challenged to meet the potentialities of the medium. Possibly no one has stated that challenge more pointedly than William Wyler: "Hollywood seems a long way from the world at times. Yet it does not have to be. Unfortunately, at the moment, the motion picture in Hollywood is divorced from the main currents of our time. It does not reflect the world in which we live. It often has little meaning for audiences at home, and even less for audiences abroad. It is time that we in Hollywood realized that the world doesn't revolve about us." Well, that seems to call for some kind of revolution (if you will pardon the expression), and for my money, the blueprints for it are being drawn up, month after month, in The Screen Writer. T-1 22 The Screen" Writer, June-July, 1948