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Along about Christmas the prize winning stories will find their way to the desks of the Hollywood studios and then the frantic cries of "help" will be heard. Professional screen writers will be engaged with the familiar greeting, "You'll have to start from scratch — there's no picture in it." And so they'll go to work making bricks without straw.
If the screen writer is sufficiently inventive to turn out a satisfactory story based on a title, he is equally capable of creating the same story with his own title.
Why then are there no story contests for SWG members? The producers give two reasons, the first being that contests held outside of the industry create public interest. The winning story is presold. This may be true — but it's also true that the studio publicity departments can sell the public almost anything. How many times have they taken some starlet and convinced moviegoers that behind her well upholstered sweater lies a talent greater than Duse's? If they can accomplish this, they can certainly make any winning story sound better than Hamlet. Their second reason — original stories are acceptable for B's and Westerns but not good enough for expensive productions with important personalities. These pictures require "big properties."
What about Going My Way, House On 92nd Street, Bells of St. Mary's, Boomerang, Miracle On 34th Street, Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, Double Life and the current Street With No Name? Nothing small and unimportant about those. Originals, every one of them — written by screen writers directly for the screen.
Who knows, maybe some day one of the studios will go over the books and realize that stories written expressly for the medium pay off. However, until that time, if you have a motion picture story you think might be worth a prize may we suggest a method? Send it to your brother who lives in Joplin, Missouri. He may know of a family in Connecticut who has a son attending a prep school in New Hampshire. Let this lad put his name on it and sit tight. Perhaps at the moment there isn't a story contest on for schoolboys— but don't be impatient. Let the lobby popcorn sales fall off a few more percentage points and there will be. When that happens perhaps we can also expect a story contest in which screen writers will be eligible to compete. There's hope at least — your board is working on it
THE EXECUTIVE BOARD
T-1
The Screen Writer, August, 1948 17