The Status of the Screenwriter

Talking pictures added a new dimension to the craft of screenwriting—the ability to write realistic dialogue. Numerous contract writers from silent films easily made it into the talkies. Anita Loos, for example, returned to MGM after temporarily giving up screenwriting to write SAN FRANCISCO (1936), SARATOGA (1937), and THE WOMEN (1939). Frances Marion, who wrote for Mary Pickford in the teens, continued her career at MGM, where she wrote THE BIG HOUSE (1930), MIN AND BILL (1930), THE CHAMP (1931), DINNER AT EIGHT (1933), and CAMILLE (1937). Jules Furthman, who started out selling stories to the movies in 1915, collaborated with Josef von Sternberg at Paramount on three major Marlene Dietrich films, MOROCCO (1930), the picture that launched Dietrich’s career in America, SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932), and BLONDE VENUS (1932). Furthman also wrote two pictures directed by Howard Hawks, COME AND GET IT (Goldwyn, 1936) and ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (Columbia, 1939).

Nonetheless, Hollywood needed fresh writers after converting to the talkies and sent its agents to New York, where they scoured publishing houses, newspaper and magazine editorial offices, literary agencies, and Broadway in search of talent. One result of the search was that a large chunk of the eastern literary establishment boarded Santa Fe’s Super Chief for the West Coast. Joining the exodus were Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Robert Benchley, Charles Brackett, Sidney Buchman, W. R. Burnett, James M. Cain, Marc Connelly, Rachel Crothers, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dashiell Hammett, Moss Hart, Ben Hecht, Lillian Hellman, Sidney Howard, Nunnally Johnson, George S. Kaufman, Charles MacArthur, Dudley Nichols, Clifford Odets, Dorothy Parker, Samson Raphaelson, Robert E. Sherwood, Donald Ogden Stewart, Preston Sturges, and Thornton Wilder.

The experiences of these writers at the hands of producers generated the myth of Hollywood-as-destroyer, which Richard Fine described as follows:

Novelists and playwrights of acute sensibility and talent… were lured to Hollywood by offers of huge amounts of money and the promise of challenging assignments; once in the studios they were set to work on mundane, hackneyed scripts; they were treated without respect by the mandarins who ruled the studios; and they were subjected to petty interferences by their intellectual inferiors. In the process, they were destroyed as artists. Hollywood was a loathsome and demeaning place which invariably corrupted writers. Although writers prostituted themselves by accepting Hollywood paychecks, the film industry itself was the true villain of the tale. (Hollywood and the Profession of Authorship, 1928-1940, p. 3).

In analyzing the substance of the myth, Richard Fine discovered that the exodus of novelists, poets, playwrights, and newspapermen to Hollywood did not begin in earnest during the conversion to sound, as commonly believed, but in 1933 when the Depression forced half of Broadway’s theaters to close and many venerable publishing firms to file for bankruptcy. 20 In other words, they were not necessarily lured to Hollywood by offers of fat paychecks but were driven there by economic circumstances.

Back east, relations between authors and publishers were surprisingly cordial. Writers who earned a measure of notoriety gained respect and prestige. From a business and legal standpoint, an author owned his literary output, functioned as an independent economic agent, and retained creative control in the publication process. In the theater, playwrights enjoyed similar rights and privileges, thanks mainly to the Minimum Basic Agreement of the Dramatists Guild.

Once these writers nestled into their studio offices, they encountered circumstances totally different from what they had left behind. They learned that motion-picture production was big business dominated by five vertically integrated corporations and that creative authority resided in the financial-managerial class—namely, producers. As Fine put it,

For writers, Hollywood was New York turned topsy-turvy: instead of owning and controlling their work as independent economic agents, they found themselves employees, workers stripped of all proprietary rights; instead of their individuality and creativity being admired and rewarded, it was all too often prohibited or penalized; instead of editors, publishers and theatrical producers who acted as friends as well as business partners, they dealt with movie producers who were their absolute bosses in what was frequently an antagonistic relationship; and, finally, instead of receiving prestige because they were writers, they found themselves denied prestige because of their profession. The studio system, then, judged in terms of the world view of the New York literary marketplace, was an unmitigated disaster. ( Hollywood and the Profession of Authorship, 1928-1940, pp. 127-128).

In terms of specifics, writers did not labor endlessly under long-term contracts; rather, they found employment “notoriously uneven, short-termed, and unpredictable.” 21 Studios sometimes preferred using length-of-picture contracts, un der which a writer was hired to work on a single script usually for around six months, or even short-term contracts lasting anywhere from one week to three months. In between jobs, writers went unemployed for long periods.

Studios paid higher salaries than New York—about $1,000 a week—but a writer seldom worked the full year. Fine reported that of the 238 writers under contract at the four largest studios in 1938, “only 165 earned more than $15,000 a year. The median salary of these 165 writers was approximately $25,000, or half  what a writer earning $1000 a week would make working a full year.” 22 And unlike back east, Hollywood contract writers more often than not had to keep regular hours at the studio, normally from ten to five daily and a half day on Saturday.

Once they found employment, eastern writers complained mostly about three things: (1) the speed at which they were forced to work; (2) compulsory collaboration; and (3) unfair assigning of screen credits. Said Fine, “Despite the innumerable story conferences called by producers and the interminable delays they engendered, and despite the long periods during which contract writers waited to be assigned to projects, many writers felt pressured to work quickly.” They were also forced to collaborate with other writers by working as a team and to take on projects that had been simultaneously assigned to others. Studios rationalized compulsory collaboration by saying the practice “promoted efficiency and used the special talents of each writer to enhance the total effect of the film—the whole being more than the sum of its parts,” said Fine. But writers disagreed and countered that team writing was the result of producers having a compulsive need to control the writing process.

The practice of assigning screen credits caused the most rancor. Before the Screen Writers Guild achieved recognition, the producer of a picture decided who would receive screen credit. Since more writers worked on the development of a screenplay than could receive credit, writers who worked on intermediate drafts could work for years without receiving recognition. “Writers constantly complained that the system of granting credits was corrupt and counterproductive in that it insidiously pitted writer against writer,” said Fine. 24 As will be explained below, writers had to wait until 1941 before studios accepted the Screen Writers Guild’s plan for fairly arbitrating credit decisions.

In the meantime, a writer finding Hollywood’s norms distasteful had several options. Top talents like Lillian Hellman, Dudley Nichols, Preston Sturges, and Nunnally Johnson refused to collaborate with other writers. A few screenwriters teamed up with elite directors who were sympathetic to their work. Dudley Nichols, for example, acquired considerable creative control writing screenplays for John Ford. Described as “the most successful sustained collaboration of screenwriter and director in Hollywood’s history,” Nichols and Ford made thirteen films together beginning in 1929, among them THE INFORMER (1935), and STAGECOACH (1939). 25 THE INFORMER was nominated for best picture and won Oscars for best screenplay and direction. STAGECOACH, of course, became a Western classic. Another director-writer team to enjoy similar long-term success was the Frank Capra-Robert Riskin unit at Columbia. Their collaboration resulted in the acclaimed pictures AMERICAN MADNESS (1932), I T HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934), BROADWAY BILL (1934), MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (1936), LOST HORIZON (1937), and YOU C AN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938).

A few writers even moved up to the producer ranks. Herman J. Mankiewicz functioned as associate producer for two early Marx Brothers films at Paramount, MONKEY BUSINESS (1931) and HORSE F ATHERS (1932). Sidney Buchman was made a producer at Columbia after writing the original screenplay for Capra’s MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON in 1939, the unofficial sequel to M R. D EEDS. Nunnally Johnson was promoted to writer-producer by Darryl Zanuck at 20th Century-Fox in 1935, a position he held for twenty years. Preston Sturges parlayed his writing credits into an opportunity to direct his own scripts. Doing   stints at Paramount, MGM, and Universal, Sturges wrote over a dozen hits, based mostly on his own ideas. Finally, in 1940, Paramount permitted him to direct his seven-year-old script THE GREAT MCGINTY and revived screwball comedy in the process.

For those writers who could not find relief within the system, the option of unionizing always existed. 26 As pointed out earlier, the salary cut instituted by the studios after the 1933 bank holiday precipitated a crisis in labor-management relations and resulted in the formation of the Screen Writers Guild (SWG) on 6 April 1933 and of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) that June. The producers recognized the SAG on 15 May 1937, but recognition for the Screen Writers Guild came only after a protracted and acrimonious battle. Since the SWG platform went far beyond the bread-and-butter issues of the Actors Guild by demanding more creative authority over production and copyright protection that would make writers part-owners of the movies based on their scripts, the studios fought back with obstinancy and indiscretion.

Although the SWG won certification from the National Labor Relations Board as the sole bargaining representative of motion-picture writers on 10 August 1938, the result of studio-by-studio elections, producers stonewalled during bargaining sessions. A guild shop was finally established in May 1941. Needless to say, none of the goals of the original platform were realized. The studios agreed to ban speculative writing, set a minimum wage, and made the guild the sole arbiter of screen credits, but they would have nothing to do with elevating the creative status of the screenwriter. The means producers used to oppose the SWG provided “one of the less flattering commentaries on the men who control movie production,” commented Rosten.