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THE UNLICK’D BEAR WHELP
MARY C. McCALL, JR.
Screen writers want recognition for their work. They want their con¬ tribution to motion pictures critically evaluated. Mr. Emmet Lavery and Mr. Bosley Crowther have recently had words on this subject. Mr. Wolfe Kaufman, himself both writer and critic, though not, I believe, simulta¬ neously, has expressed himself on this question in these pages. Mr. Kaufman dismissed the bulk of our work as carpentry.
I think that every time a writer signs a term contract with a studio, every time a free-lance writer answers a call from a story editor or a producer, and, after an interview, accepts an assignment to adapt to the screen someone else’s work, he is laying a wreath of immortelles on the grave of silent pictures. And the dull red flush that creeps up my neck when I say that is proof that I have been, am, and probably will be a wreath-layer myself.
The coming of sound transformed the motion picture from an artistic sack-race into a story-telling medium both flexible and potent. It is possible to pick a dime out of a plate of flour with one’s teeth and without using one’s hands. But no one would recommend that method as the simplest, speediest, or most sensible way of picking up the dime. It was possible to tell a story through inaudible characters, whose artifi¬ cial mutism was somewhat alleviated by sub-titles. It is possible today to communicate a story to an audience using only that audience’s ears as a means of ingress to its mind. But I think any radio writer is rooting for the perfecting of television.
The vestigial remains of the bad old days of motion pictures can be
MARY C. MeCALL, JR., a member of the Executive Board of the Screen Writers’ Guild, is one of Hollywood’s most distinguished screen writers, author of a long list of highly successful films.
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