Talking pictures : how they are made, how to appreciate them (c. 1937)

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The Story Is Selected tures a year. Others have private readers who consult with their chief concerning possibly suitable stories for his particular type of operation. Many observers consider most effective the system which has reached its best fruition in the hands of a charming, gray-haired woman named Kate Corbaley. Her method is suggestive of the time when early sultans called upon their storytellers for diversion during idle hours. But storytelling in studio style is not the diversion of anyone's idle hours, but serious business. Mrs. Corbaley, a Stanford graduate, represents perfectly the kind of trained story technician most successful in studio work. Family conditions placed on a young wife the full responsibility for four infant girls. A talent for magazine fiction kept the wolf from her door. After this she spent years in writing screen stories in the early days of the motion picture. But it soon developed that Mrs. Corbaley, fine creative writer that she was, possessed a much more valuable talent than writing. She had a "nose" for "picture values." She could read a story, quickly analyze it as it might appear, and translate it first into the silent, then into the talking photographic medium. Thus developed the system of telling key stories to associate producers. A three or four-page synopsis of a long novel is usually pedantic. A producer, responsible for several millions of dollars in costs each year, is seldom able to read each of the three hundred best stories chosen from each year's supply and give attention to other equally important executive duties involving the expenditure of millions of dollars. [51]