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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