The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

David Chandler (Continued from Page 11) struggle with an armful of bundles, leaves his foot in the aisle so she trips over it. Elaine is livid, but it is clearly a case of love at first sight, even though she pretends to be so furious that she says she hopes she never sees him again. Later, Kegley, reporting for duty, meets the ship's Exec, Commander Jim Murphy, a swell guy, homely as a matinee idol with drooping dewlaps, but pure gold all the way through. The two men fail to hit it off. Kegley doesn't know that Murphy is sort of engaged to Elaine and when he makes a disparaging remark about the grand old "Savin Rock," he makes an enemy of Murphy. That evening Kegley calls on Elaine ; she is in the midst of telling him that she would not go out with him for all the tea in China when in walks Murphy and Tom says BBBBB very hot for my script. Has read and raved. His signature all we need to go into production. Is big star and will produce all own pictures from here on out. "I can't go on forever being a bobby-soxer s idol," he says. "This is just what I want. A characterization, a real part to sink my teeth in." BBBBB has backed out. Called me after midnight to say he's afraid he's unsuited for part. While he deplores star system, he feels trapped by it and wonders whether audiences would accept him as my leading character. I told him I'd always regarded him as a genuine actor, not a painted doll, and felt he could do anything. (He was very grateful for this.) I said I'd be willing to tailor part a little for him. No go. He says he'll have to make another like his last one, which, he says, is cleaning up. Went to see it today to find out where I'd missed : PORT OF SIN It's touch and go for Dr. Hugo Cranstenpfeffer, atomic scientist, displaced person, mighty intellect and implacable enemy of the still-surviving remnants of the Gestapo, headed by the sardonic Herr Gusspimpel. Hugo lives by his wits in war-shattered Italy,, fissioning atoms for whoever will pay for a crummy bed in the crummier fleabag he calls home and for whoever will keep him in Necco wafers, for which he has an unquenchable compulsion. Love is a joke for Hugo. Life is a bitter joke too. "Ethics is for dreamers," he says wearily. He always says things like that. One day he is offered everything, money, a passport to America if he will just explain a certain formula to a certain party and ask no questions. He suspects the wily Herr Gusspimpel, but his supply of Necco wafers is running low. What to do? He walks in the rain. He meets — Her. She won't say her name, she hates men, she hates love. "Ethics?" She shrugs her beautiful shoulders. "Ethics is for dreamers." It is-a case of loveatfirstsight, but she confesses she is trapped, lost ; a certain fat black marketeer name of Gusspimpel wants her to CCCC is practically set. Loves story, structure and people in it. Only has to confer with end-money men. "Where have you been all my life? Writer-producer-director teams are the Big Trend" he says. "Are we lucky to meet!" In solid. Wants to know if I've ever considered directing. He says he likes this one because it has substance, is off-beat and can be a picture he'd be proud of making. "I'm sick of making pictures that outgross everybody's and are really nothing at all. I want to show this town I'm not just a commercial guy." Here we go again. Deal off. Business very bad. Taxes. British. Was very man to man. Wishes I could write stuff he usually turns out but has "a boy who can write that kind of stuff sleeping." Thinks better play safe for time being. But, mind, keeps insisting I've done a splendid job. Too bad I'm too good for his kind of thing. Agrees with Goldwyn on how writers have responsibility to improve product, but adds: "I ain't Goldwyn. Try Sam." Anyway, took in CCCCC's latest opus last night. Herewith honest synopsis, far as I got : PALISADES PARK Joe Loco runs the biggest saloon at the Park back in the Nineties. He's trying to brush off Fifi, a busty blonde who's been his big attraction for years in favor of a sweet young kid, Kathy, who sings like a million bucks and makes Fifi look as plain as a 1938 Chevrolet business coupe. But the kid is in love with a downat-heels composer who's got a song called Smoke Gets In Your Eyes which no one wants to hear, let alone publish. Joe is wild for Kathy ; he puts it up to her straight. If she wants Paul's song published (Paul walks in here, overhears enough to incriminate Kathy and beats a hasty retreat before he can hear anything more), if she really wants to be good to Paul, then she's got to let Joe There are more jottings in this vein. But the whole thing ends quite abruptly. Anybody regarding them as an inducement to purchase the scratchpaper script mentioned earlier, should be warned that these jottings are on poor quality stuff, apparently ripped from a schoolboy's nickel pad. There may be a picture in all this and, if so, as the departed guy's literary executor, all I ask is that no one tell me about it. I have troubles enough of my own. Harry Kurnitz (Continued from Page 15) One week later, a tall, stoopshouldered man named Oliver Wadsworth Venable got off the SuperSpace Limited at Burbank and asked the way to the Paramount Studio. An alert reporter interviewed Venable and the studio shame-facedly admitted that it had hired a writer. Only, it assured the public, as an experiment. Later that day, Lancelot Drimmel, the New York playwright, was located at R.K.O. adapting one of his own works for the screen. Venable and Drimmel inevitably met at a dinner party in their first week in Hollywood and over the coffee one of them murmured, "Say, why wouldn't it be a good idea for us to form a Guild? . . ." 26 The Screen Writer, August, 1948