World Film and Television Progress (1938)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

A Couple of Pages of Dialogue Like he kept saying, that picture might be a flop at the Box Office, but it was sure to be an artistic success by LOUIS PAUL The trouble is this. Once you're pegged at three-fifty a week, try and get a raise. That last musical the seven of us cooked up was a B.O. wow, and yet here I am working my fingers to the bone for peanuts. B.O. can stand for Box Office or Body Odour. Interchangeable synonyms? Can't use it. Even if it weren't too subtle for the horse-opera patrons they'd kill it up in the front office. Maybe I ought to knock out a couple of pages of dialogue this morning. Trouble with that is, if you get anything done in a hurry around here they think it smells. Funny how people figure a script writer is the little pampered darling of fortune. What we go through! Three-fifty a week. It sounds like Death Valley Scotty's gold mine until you deduct agent fees and front — a duplex apartment, ads in the Hollywood Reporter, the Troc and Al Levy's, a big dingus every so often for story editors and assorted bums. And that's not counting the income tax and — In fact I'll have to get twenty bucks from Jerry to see me through until Saturday. This may flop at the box office, but it's certainly going to be an artistic success. All the characters and events depicted herein are entirely fictitious, having been lifted directly from the newspaper headlines. Make a note of a funny story to be worked into next comedy that comes along. Visualise a script writer so dumb that nobody's feelings can possibly be hurt. (Plenty dumb.) He is protesting against the suggestion of plagiarism. "Listen, how could it be plagiarism? I can't even remember the name of the magazine where I read it." Not so good. Lousy. In fact, to put the proper movie-land tag on it, it stinks. Whatever else you may think about Hollywood, we have a mighty colourful vocabulary. A thing is either marvellous or it stinks. Magazines. Well, how about this, then? The editor shakes his head. "We've got so few ads this month I guess we'll have to pad the magazine out with reading matter." Better. A little better. This may flop at the box office, but — I wonder how much Sam Goldwyn pays a gagman for writing the marvellous solecisms he pulls off. "A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." A thing like that lives. It's permanent literature, like Andersen and Grimm and Shakespeare. I think I've got an idea for Walt Disney. Donald Duck in The Ugly Duckling. Can you imagine that tomato turning into a swan? It'll knock the schoolkids out in the aisle. Or how about this? A burlesque to be called So What? and the Seven Dopes. I guess maybe it stinks. Disney doesn't need me. He's doing all right as it is. Once you're pegged at three-fifty — Maybe I never should have come to Hollywood. I figured I'd get me a nice pile of dough socked away and then pull out and build myself a little shack somewhere and really go to town on a novel. That first novel of mine got pretty good notices, even if it did sell only three hundred copies. Maybe that publisher phonied up his ledgers. It doesn't seem possible that a swell book like that only sold three hundred copies. You can't trust publishers farther than you can kick a pumpkin. In fact you can't trust anybody. Just the same that was a pretty good book. The guy on the Des Moines Chronicle said it showed a remarkable knack for anecdote and plot manipulation and was full of quiet humour. But you can't feed yourself and send money home to a hard drinking grandmother on the royalty from three hundred copies of a book. I've been here two years, and what a pile of dough I've saved! Twenty bucks from Jerry till payday. Maybe I ought to do a couple of pages of dialogue; it may be an artistic flop, but it's certainly going to be a success at the box office. The truth is, I ought to pull out of here when my contract is up and go over to Paramount. They say a writer gets a chance over there to do a screen play without having it torn to confetti by the director, the assistant cameraman and the gatekeeper. On the other hand, I know what I've got here. Maybe I'll get ambitious and work up an original in my spare time for Charlie Chan. Charlie Chan in Hollywood. A star is shot on the set. A gun with a silencer is concealed in the camera lens. Everybody suspects the cameraman but Charlie Chan, so you know right away somebody else must have done it. We'll make it the script writer, who thinks the star stinks and will ruin his picture. The characters and events depicted in this motion picture are entirely fictitious, and the names of real persons are never knowingly used. Maybe I ought to write a couple of pages of dialogue. Or what a script writer thinks about. This is what a script writer thinks about: that damned dame. She thinks I can put her in the movies. Me. I am lucky I can put myself in the movies. Everything is going along fine, and then sex rears its ugly head. She thinks all you have to do to get into pictures is to flop on some guy's couch and zingo! your name is up in lights on the marquee of the Capital Theatre in New York. Phooey. Maybe I could talk Frankie into mugging her for a screen test, but what the hell, I'm just as human as the next bird. You'd like to be loved for yourself alone and not because these screwballs think they can use you. Say, that wouldn't make a bad Grade B a-tall! Maybe I'll write it up. Dame puts herself at the mercy of movie producer (I'll make myself a producer in this picture — dramatic licence.) 104