The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

by Lionel Houser nothing at all to do with the business of investigating, understanding, encompassing, and re-creating human characters filtered through and modified by one's own personality. That, after all, is a necessary ingredient of dramatic writing. Emphasis upon flamboyant people and circus events, a mental photo of Hildy Johnson and the other nonexistant people of The Front Page, both tend to corrupt his values, so that he no longer recognizes that (for instance, let us say) the struggle within herself of a quiet middle-aged school-teacher whether or not to buy a new cloth-coat, or whether or not to have the daring to go to a dancingschool and learn the rhumba, is more moving and tender and important than the kind of large, violent, noisy events and decisions which are looked upon as news by the newspaperman. Such an outlook becomes an unbreakable unconscious habit bye and bye ; the senses become blunted as by constant eating of heavily-spiced, violently contrasted heavy meals. The simple fare ultimately becomes unpalatable and tasteless to the jaded, swollen, scarred taste, and, to go on with the figure of speech, the writer can find no sustenance in good bread and cheese and an apple. NEWSPAPERING breeds impatience. The newspaper story must be gotten in a frenzied rush, phoned in, written, cleaned up and forgotten by tonight. What you might unearth or write tomorrow or next month on today's story is no good ; today or never. Several years of this kind of high-pressured outlook, with work segmented into daily compartments, fosters a childish, immature attitude toward a real job of literary work. I know, of course, that there are ex ceptions; but in the main the tragic thing that happens to a great many talented newspapermen when they start out to write a play or a novel is that if they don't have some kind of quick tangible result they become hopelessly discouraged and abandon the project within a few days, or weeks at the most. I should like to have a dollar for every manuscript by a newspaperman which has been dropped after Chapter One, or Scene One. It has been ground into his very grain, into his very unconscious, into his measuring of all values, that you get it quick — by deadline — or drop it. Naturally, there are a great many other reasons, like ordinary laziness or despair or neurotic twists, why projects are abandoned ; but my point is that people who might otherwise not be thus discouraged, who might otherwise go on to realize their fine potentialities, have been spoiled for the unavoidable long haul by the hurry-up, get-it-done-today-or-it's-no-use thinking which prevails in the city room. Newspaper writing deals with facts ; even when garbled or blown up, there is little exercise of imagination and creative faulties. The reporter sets down what happened. And he does not set it down in terms of character but of either sensationalism, as in the Hearstian papers, or of unadorned accountancy as in the dull New York Times. In any case, he does not create nor can he give free play to imagination, nor does he learn anything about the inner ways, the secret universal ways, of people feeling, acting on each other, nor how to identify himself with people and sink himself utterly into them and be them, nor how to transmute this process into words-on-paper. He learns nothing of his true trade, and he thickens and scars his senses. IN the main he writes a highly stylized kind of newspaperese which is neither the speech people speak, nor the English they narrate fiction with, but a dulled, tired, bastard series of office-forms. There are a half-dozen variations for nearly every familiar event, and most newspapers employ them unfailingly. These cliches are so familiar there is no point in repeating them, but the point is that they are considered acceptable as "writing" ; more than that, the reporter and rewrite men who try to deviate much, who fail to use the cliches, will have their work rewritten by the copy desk or thrown back at them to do over. Ambitious reporters sometimes delude themselves, when composing an immortal epic confected of one cliche after another, that the use of occasional exotic adjectives and phrases constitutes "fresh" writing. This is a childish habit to which lady feature writers and very young reporters are especially given. It is true that there are exceptions to this — but they are very rare. Nearly every newspaper in America contains nothing but varying combinations of phrases which have been so over-used that anybody can burlesque them with the tiniest exaggeration. NEWSPAPERMEN write so much that they lose their taste for writing. It is not the truth that working on a newspaper teaches facility in writing, and speed, and makes words come easily. All it does is make a pat, worn-out set of tired phrases, one for each kind of event, come easily ; it is sort of like pressing a button labelled: Fire In Historic Landmark or Murder Verdict and having a record rise to the turntable and play. The reason for this (Continued on Page 24) The Screen Writer, August, 194