The screen writer (June 1946-May 1947)

COMMUNICATIOIV WRITIRS’ WAR Charles Grayson, well-known screen writer, novelist and anthologist, whose Angel Town has just been published, tells of some of his wartime experiences in the following report, which may in part answer the question raised last month in a letter from Jay E. Gordon, as to why writers are not credited far their wartime service films and other contributions: The originator of the observation that wherever you go you take yourself with you soon had a disciple in one brand new lieutenant who in 1 942 set out from Burbank to help make pictures for the Army. During the ensuing four years I was to learn that no matter where the job, I would find familiars who also had changed their clothes and taken a cut, but who retained literary habits. The discovery started immediately up¬ on my arrival at V/right Field, in Ohio. At the Training Film Production Labora¬ tory, already there or to come, were Mel Baker, Dave Matthews, Arthur Strawn, Ted Reeves, Ben Grauman Kohn, Ivan Goff, George Owen, Charlie Lederer, Rian James, Jerry Sackheim, Mauri Grashin, Lynn Riggs, Herb Stein, Arnold Belgard, Arthur Orloff — backed by such civilian scribes as had managed to tear themselves away from Hollywood to give a hand on the desperately-needed scripts: Earl Snell, Everett and Devery Freeman, Milton Laz¬ arus. . . . Subsequent tours of duty turned up more of the ink-stained fraternity. Carl Winston’s beaming face shone in Florida, Al Duffy’s in Texas. An oddly saluting sergeant in California proved to be George Oppenheimer. Leonard Spigelgass was in Washington when I was there, Charlie MacArthur in New York, and Dick Carroll on a train between. Gordon Rigby was on the plane to Scotland. Overseas it was the same. Joel Sayre was in Algiers, Oliver Garrett in Tunis, and I crossed paths with Bob Riskin in Marrakesch — three instances of writers not in uniform who put in valuable hitches. in the line, Italy became more sup¬ portable when through the mud John Huston came shambling. With him was Eric Ambler of the British Photographic, loaned by his CO, David Niven, to be my opposite number in a combined AngloAmerican record of the campaign. This project ultimately took me to London, where George Stevens led the way to a foodeasy which might have been the backroom of Musso-Frank’s, dotted as it was with members of his unit like Irwin Shaw, Irving Rei,s, Gene Solow and Bill Saroyan, about to engage upon the book so insulting to William Saroyan. Later, in a cellar-club run by Alwyn Vaughan of the English documentaries with the sup¬ port of Burgess Meredith, there was such a racket as could emanate only from Dick Macaulay. Around London, but with duties away from film, also were Cy Bartlett, Laurence Stallings and Steve Avery. Back in New York, at the Signal Corps Photographic Center, were more besuited Guildsmen, coming and going on mis¬ sions, creating the essential framework for all those thousands of so-vital reels which poured from the plant: Dick Maibaum, Jesse Lasky, Charlie Kaufman, Ben Roberts, Tony Veiller, Dick Blake, Ted Cox, Ted Geisel, Frank Coen, John Mee¬ han, John Wexley, Sidney Kingsley, Claude Binyon, James Gow, Arnaud D’Usseau, Dan Taradash, Carl Foreman, Don Ettlinger— -and on from the First Motion Picture Unit at Culver City, Nor¬ man Krasna, John Mahin, Ed Gilbert and Jerry Chodorov. . . . In Washington for a joint short subject with the Navy, I found a file of blue suits topped by recognizable faces squinting over typewriters and from Gene Markey’s braid — Collier Young, Clay Adams, Dick Carlson, Julie Epstein, Paul Jarrico, Bob Taplinger. In nearby offices, Phil Dunne, Sam Engel and Tom Kilpatrick were mak¬ ing propaganda films for South America. OSS had Budd Schulberg, Peter Viertel, Ian Hunter — while over at Quantico Leonard Lee, Milton Sperling and Richard Brooks were writing on the Marines’ part of that vast effort by which all branches of the Services were instructed and in¬ formed by those who did their part with celluloid weapons — those who, for me, made it seem that I’d never left home. — Charles Grayson. 39