Sunday, October 4, 2020
Review of Backstory 2: Interview with Screenwriters of the 1940's and 1950's
Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Patrick McGilligan. London, UK: University of California Press, 1991. 417 pages.
By Patrick Charsky
Patrick McGilligan’s Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940’s and 1950’s is another triumph in his Backstory series. Through many stories, anecdotes, and advice about Screenwriting, Backstory 2 shows how a select group of Screenwriters managed to live, write, and sustain careers in a time of the Black List and dramatic change in Hollywood. In this review I will present three points that prove the thesis that McGilligan’s book is a success.
The first point concerns writing advice from the group of Screenwriters interviewed for Backstory 2. The second point is about how the Black List affected writers while it was enforced. The last point is about the changes that the Screenwriters endured. On each point there are many examples from the Screenwriters in the book which are informative and lively.
Backstory 2 is similar to Backstory 1: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The book reveals many little known writers who wrote some of the classic films of the 40’s and 50’s. Movies like Rebel without a Cause, The Way We Were, and From Here to Eternity. These films are classics that reflect the time period in which they were made.
These Oral Histories are a joy and a pleasure to read and will prove edifying to anyone with an interest in Screenwriting, Film History, or Hollywood. When I read the book, at times, it felt like going to a writers conference for Screenwriters. So much good advice about writing, about working in the “industry.” Richard Brooks, Garsin Kanin, Arthur Laurents, Philip Yordan, and many others told of their experiences writing screenplays at a time when the “Big Studios” were in decline. Garsin Kanin said the worst thing a writer could do “is to read a newspaper” when starting out to write. I thought that was an interesting comment. What I thought was good habit, Kanin describes as a bad habit.
Almost all of them said they constantly re-write. A good habit, but the hardest part of writing is editing your own work. Arthur Laurents talks about making movies that are meaningful and profitable. He says it’s difficult, but it can be done. Staying true to oneself is of utmost importance to Laurents and it shows in his few, but very well done, films such as Westside Story and The Way We Were. Both films standout as classics with numerous awards, critical praise, and big box office numbers.
The second point which makes Backstory 2 a success and a must read for Screenwriters, Film Historians, and others, is McGilligan’s treatment of how the Black List affected Screenwriters. The interview with Ben Maddow stands out the most. Maddow was on the Black List and couldn’t find work for a solid decade. In the interview, Maddow is evasive and refuses to talk about whether he was a member of the Communist Party. Or whether he named names in the late 1950’s to a California Congressman. It is an excellent interview full of intrigue, perhaps the best interview in the book. Arthur Laurents was also Black Listed. Laurents kept working on Broadway and away from Hollywood. He didn’t seem to be affected as deeply as Maddow was by the Black List.
In McGilligan’s introduction he cites several books for further reading about the Black List. He has a special interest in the History of the Black List in Hollywood. In several interviews there is talk of how the Black List hovered like a dark cloud over Hollywood and rained particularly hard on Screenwriters. His treatment of the Black List shows the injustice that was done to Screenwriters. McGilligan shows how it ruined careers, caused psychological harm, and stomped all over the constitutional right to freedom of speech.
In contrast to McGilligan’s Backstory 1 where writers were struggling to get credits and have successful films which extended their contracts, Screenwriters in the 40’s and 50’s were a new generation where most writers didn’t have contracts. The contract writer became an “endangered species,” according to W. R. Burnett. The Studio system went into steep decline after the rise of television and an anti-trust court ruling that forced the studios to give up control of theater chains. The Big Studios never recovered. The decline of the studios only complicated matters for Screenwriters. Several interviewees were refugees from Hitler’s Germany. Their stories related how they moved to Hollywood and had to start over. Fleeing Nazis, writing clandestinely under the Black List, the rise of TV, all of these factors were obstacles that Screenwriters had to overcome to find long term success and financial stability. Both of which were elusive even to the most cunning like Philip Yordan.
The book is well put together. From one Screenwriter like Arthur Laurents, who writes mostly Romantic movies with many song and dance numbers, to a writer like Curt Siodmak who wrote horror films like Frankenstein meets Wolf Man; still others like Richard Brooks and Stewart Stern who wrote about Political and Social issues similar to the Italian Neo-Realists. The book has a diversity of writers and an attention to detail that left me very pleased after having read it.
I would highly recommend the book to anyone interested in Screenwriting, the History of Screenwriting or Screenwriters. It was like meeting each individual writer and listening to them talk about how they write and how they feel about the movies they made, the business side of Hollywood, and, in some cases the most famous people of the day; like Marlon Brando and Jimmy Dean. A fascinating study.
Review of Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60's
Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60’s. Patrick McGilligan. London, UK: University of California Press, 1997. 428 pages.
By Patrick Charsky
The blacklist hovered over Hollywood during the 1950’s like a storm cloud casting a shadow on many careers of not just actors and directors, but most egregiously, Screenwriters. In the third installment of Patrick McGilligan’s Backstory series, he shows how the blacklist affected writers like Walter Bernstein and Ring Lardner, Jr. So much so that they have long gestations in the list of their credits. The Front, Bernstein’s revenge film against McCarthyism in Hollywood, shows the injustice done to writers who held a different set of beliefs and should have been protected by their constitutional rights. Instead they were persecuted in a witch-hunt that McGilligan documents in his interviews with Screenwriters affected by the blacklist and in his other book Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist
Fortunately, in Backstory 3, McGilligan shows how the blacklist ended and writers who were affected by it became folk heroes for sticking to their principles in a time of deep distress. The Screenwriters who outlived the blacklist may have had their right to work in Hollywood restored, but they never got back the many years of productivity that might have been.
Backstory 3 follows the same format that the previous two editions in the series use. McGilligan uses oral histories in the form of interviews to create another triumph about Hollywood writers. The anecdotes about celebrities, production stories about acquiring properties or getting assignments, and advice from veteran writers create an absorbing book sure to be liked by any Screenwriter, whether up and coming, or established. There are many lessons to be learned.
McGilligan’s book about Screenwriters from Hollywood of the 1960’s sees celebrity culture in full bloom. In Backstory 1 the book is littered with stories about the moguls, rarely a story about stars. In Backstory 3 there is an abundance of anecdotes about celebrities. John Michael Hayes talks about his relationship with Alfred Hitchcock. Hayes confirms, like Charles Bennett the Golden Age Screenwriter, that Hitchcock was an ego maniac and would see to it that no one got as much publicity as Hitch. Hayes worked with Hitch on four films, including, perhaps, Hitch’s greatest film, Rear Window. It is stories about Hitch which could be applied to any relationship between a famous director and a novice Screenwriter. Movies in the 60’s were dominated by Auteur theory where the director commanded the production and received top billing.
The interviews serve a purpose of edification for Screenwriters learning the business. Arnold Schulman’s experiences might have been terrible, but others talk of positive collaborations with directors. In Wendell Mayes’ interview he talks glowingly of working with Otto Preminger. He talks about the writing process with Preminger. Preminger liked to write part by part, editing each sequence as it was written. In another positive instance of a Screenwriter working with a Director, Terry Southern’s interview goes into detail about his relationship with Stanley Kubrick. He relates an anecdote about Kubrick picking him up in a limo and working with him in the early morning light on the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove.
McGiillgian reinforces the fact that Film is a collaborative art. Writers and Directors have to work together to create films. Writers like Schulman or Ravetch and Frank, Jr. are careful about who they work with. They are instances of writers who are selective and only work on their terms. Other writers, especially beginners, should heed their examples and learn that they don’t have to sell their souls to succeed in Screenwriting.
Others like Walon Green seem to work with anyone. Green was very flexible and productive, but, perhaps, not on his own terms. Whereas the Ravetches made films like Stanley and Iris, and Norma Rae, Green and others like him made big productions like Robocop 2. Stirling Silliphant, who was the most successful screenwriter interviewed, wrote The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno which were disaster films with big budgets. He still had time to make such critically acclaimed movies as In the Heat of the Night and A Walk in the Spring Rain. McGilligan shows that Screenwriters in the 60’s experienced a wide range of success with a variety of projects. Some were content with a smaller workload and financial outcome. Others worked all the time to get their names in the limelight with more money in their pockets, but had to endure the vicissitudes of the box office.
In addition to anecdotes about working with some of the most famous names in Hollywood there are also many stories about how screenplays were made. Jay Presson Allen talks about how she acquired the book The Prince of the City. In her telling she talks about buying the rights after another filmmaker didn’t adapt the book and let the option on it expire. Presson goes into detail about how she worked as a script doctor, a job several writers in the book worked at. On The Verdict, an academy award winning legal drama, she rewrote a number of parts. In the end, like many other script doctors, she ended up with money, no credit, and the script she wrote wasn’t used at all.
Many of the writers interviewed had projects fall through. One lesson that the book imparts to would be screenwriters is that success doesn’t come easy and it rarely lasts. Terry Southern was a very hot screenwriter in the 1960’s. He wrote two classics of 60’s Hollywood; Dr. Strangleove and Easy Rider. Still he was hard put to find work after the 1960’s. His screenplays weren’t produced, he couldn’t make anything happen. His attempt to turn William Burroughs novel Junkie into a film totally floundered. Many of the screenwriters from the 60’s didn’t last beyond that decade. George Axelrod, like Southern, was a very hot screenwriter who wrote the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s and, among others, The Seven Year Itch starring Marilyn Monroe.
The book is replete with stories about how screenwriters work. Stirling Silliphant says he writes everyday, five pages a day until he has a good first draft. Arnold Schulman wears a kimono and lays on the floor when he writes. In contrast to the screenwriters of the Golden Age or even the 40’s and 50’s all of the writers from the 60’s worked at home wherever they lived or were at the time; Los Angeles, New York, London, Thailand, New England. The days of working in the office had become obsolete. So had the contract writer. No more did writers get a weekly salary. There was still rewriting another writer’s work, but not as much as in the past.
Screenwriters in the 60’s had a variety of options; TV was booming, movies were still strong, and if they were creative enough they wrote novels, or plays. Richard Matheson, the most productive writer of the interviewees, wrote many films and novels in the Science Fiction genre. When I read his interview he reminded me of Philip K. Dick. Screenwriters in the 60’s had less restrictions, perhaps less stability, but greater freedom of expression and artistic license. If a screenwriter could write for television, then they would be more financially stable. For the purists from theater, or novels, the road to Hollywood recognition was rougher.
McGilligan’s Backstory 3 builds upon the accomplishments of his previous two books in his Backstory series. It educates, entertains, and memorializes the lives and careers of Screenwriters who are often overlooked when Film History is written. The book is essential to anyone looking to understand Screenwriting as an art and business. And to also understand the lives, struggles, brilliant successes, and harrowing failures of some of the best screenwriters who ever worked in Hollywood.
By Patrick Charsky
The blacklist hovered over Hollywood during the 1950’s like a storm cloud casting a shadow on many careers of not just actors and directors, but most egregiously, Screenwriters. In the third installment of Patrick McGilligan’s Backstory series, he shows how the blacklist affected writers like Walter Bernstein and Ring Lardner, Jr. So much so that they have long gestations in the list of their credits. The Front, Bernstein’s revenge film against McCarthyism in Hollywood, shows the injustice done to writers who held a different set of beliefs and should have been protected by their constitutional rights. Instead they were persecuted in a witch-hunt that McGilligan documents in his interviews with Screenwriters affected by the blacklist and in his other book Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist
Fortunately, in Backstory 3, McGilligan shows how the blacklist ended and writers who were affected by it became folk heroes for sticking to their principles in a time of deep distress. The Screenwriters who outlived the blacklist may have had their right to work in Hollywood restored, but they never got back the many years of productivity that might have been.
Backstory 3 follows the same format that the previous two editions in the series use. McGilligan uses oral histories in the form of interviews to create another triumph about Hollywood writers. The anecdotes about celebrities, production stories about acquiring properties or getting assignments, and advice from veteran writers create an absorbing book sure to be liked by any Screenwriter, whether up and coming, or established. There are many lessons to be learned.
McGilligan’s book about Screenwriters from Hollywood of the 1960’s sees celebrity culture in full bloom. In Backstory 1 the book is littered with stories about the moguls, rarely a story about stars. In Backstory 3 there is an abundance of anecdotes about celebrities. John Michael Hayes talks about his relationship with Alfred Hitchcock. Hayes confirms, like Charles Bennett the Golden Age Screenwriter, that Hitchcock was an ego maniac and would see to it that no one got as much publicity as Hitch. Hayes worked with Hitch on four films, including, perhaps, Hitch’s greatest film, Rear Window. It is stories about Hitch which could be applied to any relationship between a famous director and a novice Screenwriter. Movies in the 60’s were dominated by Auteur theory where the director commanded the production and received top billing.
The interviews serve a purpose of edification for Screenwriters learning the business. Arnold Schulman’s experiences might have been terrible, but others talk of positive collaborations with directors. In Wendell Mayes’ interview he talks glowingly of working with Otto Preminger. He talks about the writing process with Preminger. Preminger liked to write part by part, editing each sequence as it was written. In another positive instance of a Screenwriter working with a Director, Terry Southern’s interview goes into detail about his relationship with Stanley Kubrick. He relates an anecdote about Kubrick picking him up in a limo and working with him in the early morning light on the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove.
McGiillgian reinforces the fact that Film is a collaborative art. Writers and Directors have to work together to create films. Writers like Schulman or Ravetch and Frank, Jr. are careful about who they work with. They are instances of writers who are selective and only work on their terms. Other writers, especially beginners, should heed their examples and learn that they don’t have to sell their souls to succeed in Screenwriting.
Others like Walon Green seem to work with anyone. Green was very flexible and productive, but, perhaps, not on his own terms. Whereas the Ravetches made films like Stanley and Iris, and Norma Rae, Green and others like him made big productions like Robocop 2. Stirling Silliphant, who was the most successful screenwriter interviewed, wrote The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno which were disaster films with big budgets. He still had time to make such critically acclaimed movies as In the Heat of the Night and A Walk in the Spring Rain. McGilligan shows that Screenwriters in the 60’s experienced a wide range of success with a variety of projects. Some were content with a smaller workload and financial outcome. Others worked all the time to get their names in the limelight with more money in their pockets, but had to endure the vicissitudes of the box office.
In addition to anecdotes about working with some of the most famous names in Hollywood there are also many stories about how screenplays were made. Jay Presson Allen talks about how she acquired the book The Prince of the City. In her telling she talks about buying the rights after another filmmaker didn’t adapt the book and let the option on it expire. Presson goes into detail about how she worked as a script doctor, a job several writers in the book worked at. On The Verdict, an academy award winning legal drama, she rewrote a number of parts. In the end, like many other script doctors, she ended up with money, no credit, and the script she wrote wasn’t used at all.
Many of the writers interviewed had projects fall through. One lesson that the book imparts to would be screenwriters is that success doesn’t come easy and it rarely lasts. Terry Southern was a very hot screenwriter in the 1960’s. He wrote two classics of 60’s Hollywood; Dr. Strangleove and Easy Rider. Still he was hard put to find work after the 1960’s. His screenplays weren’t produced, he couldn’t make anything happen. His attempt to turn William Burroughs novel Junkie into a film totally floundered. Many of the screenwriters from the 60’s didn’t last beyond that decade. George Axelrod, like Southern, was a very hot screenwriter who wrote the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s and, among others, The Seven Year Itch starring Marilyn Monroe.
The book is replete with stories about how screenwriters work. Stirling Silliphant says he writes everyday, five pages a day until he has a good first draft. Arnold Schulman wears a kimono and lays on the floor when he writes. In contrast to the screenwriters of the Golden Age or even the 40’s and 50’s all of the writers from the 60’s worked at home wherever they lived or were at the time; Los Angeles, New York, London, Thailand, New England. The days of working in the office had become obsolete. So had the contract writer. No more did writers get a weekly salary. There was still rewriting another writer’s work, but not as much as in the past.
Screenwriters in the 60’s had a variety of options; TV was booming, movies were still strong, and if they were creative enough they wrote novels, or plays. Richard Matheson, the most productive writer of the interviewees, wrote many films and novels in the Science Fiction genre. When I read his interview he reminded me of Philip K. Dick. Screenwriters in the 60’s had less restrictions, perhaps less stability, but greater freedom of expression and artistic license. If a screenwriter could write for television, then they would be more financially stable. For the purists from theater, or novels, the road to Hollywood recognition was rougher.
McGilligan’s Backstory 3 builds upon the accomplishments of his previous two books in his Backstory series. It educates, entertains, and memorializes the lives and careers of Screenwriters who are often overlooked when Film History is written. The book is essential to anyone looking to understand Screenwriting as an art and business. And to also understand the lives, struggles, brilliant successes, and harrowing failures of some of the best screenwriters who ever worked in Hollywood.
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