onwriting - brisbin...ring lardner, jr. maurice rapf with an introduction by doug mcgrath in this...

OnWritingA Publication of the Writers Guild of America, East

Ring Lardner, Jr.Maurice Rapf

with an introductionby Doug McGrath

IN THIS ISSUE

…In the case of “Woman of the Year,

Michael Kanin and I talked it out in term

of movie scenes and then, instead of writ

ing it as a screenplay, wrote it as a novel

ette told in the first person by the Spence

Tracy character.here was a knock on the door, and a

came in with a big hat and a long

ette holder and I knew it was Lillian

an. She said that the Writers Guild

bout to amalgamate with the Authors

ue, that there was a lot of pressure

st the Guild by the studio, and would

?

A Note from the EditorOnWriting

August 1997 Volume #7

Published byThe Writers Guild of America, East, Inc.

Editor

Arlene Hellerman

Copy Editor

Marilyn Berkman

Designer

Stan Kaufman

Coordinator

Marsha Seeman

Advisor

Marc Siegel

President Herb Sargent

Vice President Albert Ruben

Secretary-Treasurer Bruce R. Campbell

Executive Director Mona Mangan

All correspondence should be addressed to On

Writing, The Writers Guild of America, East, 555

West 57th Street, New York, New York 10019.

Telephone: 212-767-7800, Fax: 212-582-1909.

ØCopyright © 1997 by The Writers Guild

of America, East, Inc.

The interviews in this issue cover five differentelements: Hollywood screenwriters in the 1930s–1950s, the role of political involvement amongHollywood writers of that era, the formation of theScreen Writers Guild, the Hollywood blacklist, andthe film Woman of the Year.

There are entire books written about each of thesesubjects, many of which quote Ring Lardner, Jr.,and Maurice Rapf extensively. For some readers,therefore, much of what is contained in these pageswill not be new. Other readers may find somedetails they consider superfluous.

But our hope is not only to inform. It is also todocument the recollections of two extraordinarymen whose personal experiences are a part of ourcollective history.

For us this is a very special issue. Because it isspecial, we have asked Douglas McGrath tointroduce it.

Arlene Hellerman

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OF AMERICA, EASTWGAE A

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About This Issue

When I was at my least informed and thus my most opinionated, which is to say whenI was 12, my grandfather asked me who my favorite writer was. Without delay Ianswered, “Ring Lardner.” He asked me why. I cited not only Mr. Lardner’s cracklingwit but also his versatility: After all, this was the man who had written the peerlesslyobserved baseball stories Alibi Ike, and You Know Me, Al, as well as the irreplaceablydroll screen comedies, Woman of the Year and M*A*S*H. My grandfather said, “Youdon’t know it, but you have two favorite writers.” In a twist worthy of Chinatown, Iwas shocked to learn that Ring Lardner was the father of Ring Lardner. That’s a lot ofwhat growing up was for me: every so often somebody said something and the worldturned upside down.

It is Ring Lardner, Jr., and Maurice Rapf that On Writing is lucky enough to have as itssubjects in this issue. In November, it will be 50 years since the Hollywood Ten wentto Washington. That era, which Lillian Hellman memorably called Scoundrel Time, isone of many things that Mr. Lardner and Mr. Rapf discuss in the next pages: theirpolitics, their roots, the craft and challenges of screenwriting in the golden age, as wellas in the yellow age of McCarthy.

What makes this issue of On Writing of special interest is that it includes the originalending of Woman of the Year, which Mr. Lardner wrote with Michael Kanin. Theirending was disliked by the studio and replaced by one that was not theirs. Mr. Lardnertells us that the studio ordered the alteration based on preview cards, which complainedthat Katherine Hepburn’s character needed more of a comeuppance, though it is hissuspicion that the men in power were those with that desire. Either way, the originalending was discarded and a new one stapled on.

It is particularly delightful to read the original as I always felt, even as a boy, that theending in the movie felt phony, and worse, judgmental and punitive. It seemed absentof the intelligence and mocking good humor that make the rest of the film so much fun.The original ending has all that and a quality that marks the body of Mr. Lardner’swork: a compassion for his characters, which by extension spills over to, and elevates,his audience.

Douglas McGrath

Ring Lardner, Jr.

Maurice Rapf

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October 4, 1996 • New York City

ON WRITING: What brought each ofyou to Hollywood?

RAPF: I was raised in Hollywood, but Iwent to college at Dartmouth anddidn’t want to go back to Hollywoodwhen I got through with college. Ithought, having grown up in Holly-wood, that it was a cesspool. I initiallywent to work in New York in thetheater, which I thought was incorrupt-ible. I got a job with a theatricalproducer—through Hollywood influ-ence, of course.

ON WRITING: What year was this?

RAPF: ’36, no, ’35, I beg your pardon.All I seemed to do was run back andforth to Wall Street to pick up moneyfrom his angel, who, believe it or not,was named Gabriel. Gabriel had agirlfriend, and that’s why he wasinvesting in the theater. I mean, that’swhat I found the theater to be like. Itwas really bad. It was just like Holly-wood. I got $15 a week and I couldbarely eat on it. So I went to Hollywood.

ON WRITING: Were you also in NewYork at that time, Ring?

LARDNER: I was in New York in 1935.I had gone to Princeton but quit collegeafter my sophomore year when I was18 and went to work on a newspaper. Ididn’t know Maurice was in New Yorkthat year. We had met the previous yearin the Soviet Union.

ON WRITING: What were you bothdoing in the Soviet Union?

RAPF: We didn’t go on the same trip tothe Soviet Union but we went to thesame school there. I went with fiveguys from Dartmouth, including BuddSchulberg.

LARDNER: They were part of a group—was it the National Students League?

RAPF: The school was called theAnglo-American Institute.

LARDNER: I was traveling by myself. Istopped off in Moscow to see a friendwho had been president of the SocialistClub at Princeton. He was at thisschool and said it was very interesting,so I signed up.

RAPF: I saw an advertisement on thewall at Dartmouth for the summerstudying at the Anglo-AmericanInstitute and traveling around theSoviet Union. It sounded great. But myparents didn’t think it was a very goodidea to go to a Communist country.Don’t forget that the Soviet Union hadnot been recognized by the UnitedStates until Franklin D. Roosevelt gotelected. He recognized the SovietUnion in ’33.

LARDNER: It was the first year thatAmericans could go freely.

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RAPF: Well, Americans went before,but this was a mass exodus. There musthave been 40 of us that went fromEastern colleges under the auspices ofthe National Students League.

LARDNER: I came home in September’35 and went to work on a newspaperin New York.

ON WRITING: How did you go out toHollywood?

LARDNER: Through a friend. Therewas an interesting character namedHerbert Bayard Swope who had beeneditor of the New York World and whowrote campaign speeches for FranklinRoosevelt. His family lived next doorto mine when I was a child. I roomedwith his son my second year in college,and went to visit the Swopes very oftenon weekends.

ON WRITING: Wasn’t his son Herbert,Jr.?

LARDNER: Herbert Bayard Swope, Jr.,yes. I met David Selznick at theirhouse. He had just left MGM and wasstarting his own company with JockWhitney’s money. He asked if I wouldlike to work there and learn about themovie business. I was making $25 aweek on the New York Daily Mirror,and I think Selznick offered me $40 tostart in his publicity department. So Itook the job and went west. As apublicity man I was to be on sets agood deal of the time doing storiesabout the stars —Fredric March andCarole Lombard and others who wereworking for Selznick.

ON WRITING: Maurice, wasn’t yourfather a producer?

RAPF: We moved out to Hollywood onmy seventh birthday.

ON WRITING: From New York?

RAPF: From New York. My fatherwent into the movie business in 1916. Iwas a child actor. Until I went to schoolI was in every movie he made. When-ever there was a kid, it was me. Hemade a lot of Jewish movies on theEast Side.

ON WRITING: Then he went to MGM?

RAPF: First he was at Warner Brothers.He started the Rin-Tin-Tin pictures. Hedid those, and then he left when theystarted MGM. He had a very cloudedcrystal ball; he didn’t think that WarnerBrothers was going to last. He didn’tknow that they would be the ones tointroduce sound. But he did all right atMGM because that did well, too.

ON WRITING: I’ve often thought thatin the ’30s and ’40s Hollywood wasone of the intellectual centers of theworld. Is that true?

RAPF: Yes.

LARDNER: There were some veryinteresting intellectuals living there,some of them from Europe. And somevery good writers. William Faulknerwas working in Hollywood, ScottFitzgerald—

RAPF: S. J. Perelman was there, OgdenNash was there. Every great Americanplaywright worked in Hollywoodexcept Elmer Rice.

LARDNER: Moss Hart, GeorgeKaufman, Robert E. Sherwood—

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RAPF: They all came to Hollywood.The only one who didn’t was ElmerRice. He had contempt for movies andwouldn’t come. They tried to lure himout there; it wasn’t because he wasn’toffered a job. The producers felt thatBroadway writers—and novelists—were better than Hollywood writers.They thought so at first. They changedtheir minds after a while.

LARDNER: Selznick was particularlyguilty of that.

RAPF: Yes, he was.

LARDNER: I had become very goodfriends with Budd Schulberg, who wasworking in the story department while Iwas in the publicity department. After Ihad been there a year, Selznick wasmaking this picture, A Star Is Born; hehad Dorothy Parker and her husband,Alan Campbell, working on the screen-play but they didn’t have an ending.Typically, Selznick sent scripts to anumber of writers around the country tosee if they could think of an ending, andhe also asked Budd and me to see if wecould think of one. We thought of thescene that was actually used in thepicture, and then again as an ending inthe Judy Garland–James Mason version.

ON WRITING: What is the ending?

LARDNER: It takes place in Grauman’sChinese Theater. Janet Gaynor isplaying a movie star whose husband,played by Fredric March, has gonedownhill.

RAPF: By that time he’s dead.

LARDNER: Yes, by that time he’skilled himself. She’s accepting anaward, and she says, “This is Mrs.

Norman Maine speaking.” We alsowrote a couple of other scenes in thepicture.

ON WRITING: Which scenes?

LARDNER: There was a scene—I can’tremember it well. As a matter of fact, Ido remember we had a big argumentin Selznick’s office with WilliamWellman, who was the director andoriginal co-writer of the script beforeParker and Campbell rewrote it.Lionel Stander, playing a press agent,was very nasty to Fredric March whowas on his way downhill. And I said,“I don’t know why he’s so nasty tohim, they were friendly before.”Wellman said, “Because he’s drunk.” Isaid, “Well, I think people who arenasty when they’re drunk are nastywhen they’re sober, the drink justbrings it out in them.” I wanted tohandle Stander’s character differently.But Wellman very angrily said, “I’mnasty when I’m drunk.” I said, “Thatproves my point.” We didn’t get alongso well after that.

But after A Star Is Born, Selznick saidwe were writers and assigned us towork on a script for a fellow namedMerian Cooper whom he’d hired as anassociate. Merian Cooper had producedKing Kong and some rather unsuccess-ful pictures, too.

RAPF: The Four Feathers was notsuccessful.

LARDNER: We realized that Selznickwas never going to allow Cooper tomake a picture, and he was never goingto allow anything we wrote to be thefinal script. Even though he had us in a

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sense rewriting some of the fancierwriters, he would always get somebodyelse in at the last minute, a big writer.

Anyway, he had another picture withending trouble. Ben Hecht hadwritten a picture called NothingSacred and left the studio with anending which Selznick didn’t like.The story was about a young womannamed Hazel Flagg, played by CaroleLombard, who’s diagnosed as havinga fatal ailment that would kill her in amatter of months. Her cause getschampioned by a newspaper and herimpending death becomes a nationalevent. Then it’s discovered the doctormade a mistake. The ending problemwas how to let her get back to anormal life. Hecht’s ending was thata birth of sextuplets drives her storyout of the papers and so everybodyforgets about her. Selznick wantedsomething else. Budd was away atthis time, so Selznick enlisted me towork with a writer named GeorgeOppenheimer at Metro. And at thesame time he again sent the script toGeorge Kaufman, to Moss Hart, toRobert E. Sherwood—to see if theycould think of an ending. Well, wecame up with the ending for that one,too.

ON WRITING: Where Carole Lombardis on the boat?

LARDNER: Yeah. The newspaper hasfaked her funeral. She’s on a ship whensomebody recognizes her as HazelFlagg and she says, “I’m getting sickand tired of people mistaking me forthat fake.” So they used that.

But I still realized I wasn’t going to getvery far at Selznick’s, and that if Iwanted to get some movies done it wasa good idea to go somewhere else. So Igot a job at Warner Brothers workingin their B department. They made a lotof B pictures; you know, small budgetpictures.

ON WRITING: You were working forBryan Foy.

LARDNER: Yes. The first time I walkedin Brynie Foy’s office for an assign-ment, he had a stack of scripts on thefloor that was a desk high. Apparently,as he finished shooting a picture he putthe script on top of the stack. So hereached down to the bottom of the stackand very deftly pulled one out. Thebottom of the stack meant it was—

RAPF: He had made 12 movies sincethen—

LARDNER:—a year or two since then.So he’d pull out a script, look at it andsay, “Let’s see, this one was abouthorse racing, make it about automobileracing.”

RAPF: I had the same experience withFoy. I worked for Foy when he went toFox. I’ve told this story to my studentsa lot. It’s unbelievable because he wasso frank about it. I was assigned towork for him on the story of FloydGibbons, who had written his autobiog-raphy. He was a nutty war correspon-dent, and nothing in his book made anysense. Foy said we had to find anothermovie to pattern it on. He said, “Don’tyou know of any other movies about aguy who’s doing a dangerous job thathe shouldn’t do and is driving his wife

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crazy?” I said, “Sure, there’s oneplaying right now called Test Pilot withClark Gable and Myrna Loy.” He said,“Let’s look at it.” So he sent for it. Itwasn’t even a Fox picture; it was anMGM picture. He said, “You can getthe script, your father’s at MGM.” Hegot the script, read it, and said, “I’ll tellyou what I want you to do, I want youto take this script home and switch itfrom a test pilot to a war correspon-dent.” You know the sequence in thebeginning where Gable’s in an airplaneand it crashes on a farm and he meetsMyrna Loy? Foy said, “Well, he’s in aTin Lizzie, he’s driving to cover a storyin St. Louis, and he has a flat tire on afarm.” In Test Pilot they go to a base-ball game. Foy said, “Make it a circus.”He changed every goddamn thing. Buthe said, “Keep the dialogue, I don’twant you to change a word.” I said,“But we can’t do that, it’s not a Foxpicture.” He said, “We’ll fix it later.”Well, I never worked on it. I quit.

ON WRITING: Did the movie getmade?

RAPF: No, it never got made. But whenI objected to it he told me a story. Hesaid, “Don’t worry about it, I made onemovie at Warner Brothers 12 times.”He made a movie called Tiger Shark 12different ways. Tiger Shark was withEddie [Edward G.] Robinson andRichard Arlen and somebody else—Zita Johann or somebody that younever heard of. It’s about an older manwho’s married to a younger woman anda shark bites off his hand. He becomesan embittered old man, and as a resulthis wife has an affair with his first

mate. And he did that in The Circuswith a lion tamer where the lion bitesthe hand off. He did it in a lumber millwhere the saw saws the hand off. Iforget all the different versions, but hedid it 12 times. And I said, “But you’restealing from your own movies, that’snot so bad.”

ON WRITING: So, when you werewriting for him, would you be rewritingthe same movies over and over again?

LARDNER: Well, I worked on onescript for Foy—or an assistant of his, Ican’t think of his name at the moment.When I brought in this script, he put iton his desk and said, “I was justwaiting until Jerry Wald and Dick[Richard] MacCauley got through withtheir script to give this to them.” Hewas going to pass my script on to themwithout looking at it. But then I gotdrafted into the A department to workwith another writer on what wasconsidered a big project. It never cameto anything. I left after less than a year.I think I had some kind of a contractwith Warner Brothers where theydidn’t take up the option. And I startedto try to write original stories to sell tostudios.

ON WRITING: Was it a problem foryoung writers that they would just keepgetting—

RAPF: Well, they didn’t get paid verymuch. I got $40 a week to start. Thatwas my first assignment.

ON WRITING: Were you at MGM?

RAPF: It was a little nepotism. Myfather was at MGM and he hired me towork on a movie with another writer,

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Richard Maibaum, who was doing hisfirst film. He wrote almost every singleone of the James Bond movies until hedied. But at that time he had writtenone Broadway play, and they hired himon a six-month contract—seven years,but the first option was at the end of sixmonths. So it really was a six-monthcontract. They gave him $200 a week,but he had never written a screenplay.And I knew a lot about movies, but Ihad never written anything exceptstudent plays. So I was a junior writer.A real junior writer.

ON WRITING: What did that mean?

RAPF: There was no Guild, don’tforget. So they could pay you anythingthey wanted. Some people got $25 aweek; I got $40. But the first screen-play we wrote got made. I worked on itsix weeks—that meant I got paid $240for a screenplay that got made. EddieMannix was the general manager of thestudio, and after one of the previews hecalled and congratulated me for thesuccessful picture. It looked as if it wasgoing to be a big success even though itwas only a B picture—it wasn’t evenan A picture, we weren’t importantenough as writers—and he offered mea bonus. I said I didn’t want the bonus,I wanted a raise to $75 a week. And hewouldn’t give it to me, he gave me thebonus instead.

ON WRITING: How did young writerswork their way up?

RAPF: Going from job to job and askingfor $10 a week more or $20 or $30, orselling original material. The big thingthat should be stressed, and it’s veryimportant—when Ring talks about

leaving Warner Brothers and starting towrite originals—what are you doingwhen you’re writing an original? You’reworking for the industry for nothing. Weused to talk about that all the time. Thepool of writers that existed in Holly-wood—not the playwrights who couldgo back to work in New York and writea play, but the people who were depen-dent upon the movie industry as writers—worked for nothing when theyweren’t employed. They still worked forthe industry.

ON WRITING: Did people writeoriginal screenplays or original stories?

LARDNER: In the case of Woman of theYear, Michael Kanin and I talked it outin terms of movie scenes and then,instead of writing it as a screenplay,wrote it as a novelette told in the firstperson by the Spencer Tracy character.The idea was that if you worked it outas a picture and then wrote it in thisform, the producer who was reading itwould think to himself: Oh, I can seethat as a movie.

ON WRITING: Were studios morelikely to buy a short story or a screen-play?

RAPF: They bought a lot of originalstories. You tried all kinds of deviceswhen you wrote stories. But they wereuseless stories. I mean, they couldn’tsell to magazines. They weren’tintended to sell to magazines. Theywere intended to sell to studios.

ON WRITING: What if you wrote it as ascript? Would they be less interested?

RAPF: They’d change it.

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LARDNER: It would be harder to getthem to read it. But occasionally peopledid write scripts. They also used thisform called a screen treatment, whichwas conceived as a screenplay but wasjust an outline in prose. And theywould listen, too. They bought verbalstories, ideas.

ON WRITING: Weren’t there twowriters—what were their names?

RAPF: Well, the play Boy Meets Girlthat Sam and Bella Spewack wrote isbased on those two guys who talkedtheir stories all the time.

LARDNER: [Ben] Hecht and [Charles]MacArthur.

RAPF: No, it was Graham and some-body. One guy who could write, andthe other one couldn’t write a word, hejust talked. Hecht and MacArthur couldboth write.

LARDNER: Yes.

RAPF: But there was this other team. Iremember Graham did all the typing,and the other guy walked around andtalked. Gene Towne and GrahamBaker. Towne was a Screen Play-wright.

LARDNER: Who was the man atMGM—

RAPF: Bob [Robert] Hopkins. He soldSan Francisco. That’s a famous story.You know what he did? He had nooffice, he had no typewriter. Hecouldn’t write. He walked around witha cigarette dangling out of his mouth,and a straw hat. And he came into HuntStromberg’s office, I think it was, andhe said, “The San Francisco earth-quake. A gangster, an opera singer, and

a priest.” And he walked out. And thatbecame San Francisco. He got originalstory credit and won an AcademyAward for that. But he never wrote it,never wrote a word. Stromberg thoughtit was a great idea and assigned it to awriter. I think Anita Loos wrote it, orsomebody like that. But Bob Hopkinswas famous for that.

LARDNER: There was another one whowas always playing a baseball pitcherand winding up and throwing pitches ashe told stories to producers. This was aguy who also never wrote anythingdown.

RAPF: I never knew of anybody butHopkins. But I’ve looked at a lot ofsilent films lately and he’s got credit onthose. He must have done the samething.

ON WRITING: Do you think studioexecutives had an appreciation forliterature?

RAPF: They didn’t read. They hadreaders. That was the other job foryoung writers, by the way—reading.

ON WRITING: What did a reader do?

RAPF: A reader synopsized literarymaterial and then wrote a critique andsuggested how a thing could be made.

LARDNER: Selznick’s eastern storyeditor, a woman named Kay Brown,recommended this book Gone With theWind, which had just been published.When Selznick saw the length of themanuscript, he asked three people inthe studio to read it. One was his storyeditor, a man named Val Lewton. Andone was his secretary, Silvia Schulman,

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who later became my first wife. Andthe other was me. And both Val and Irecommended against it.

ON WRITING: You had politicalreasons for that.

LARDNER: Well, yes. It was very pro-Confederate with a distorted picture ofAmerican history. But Silvia recom-mended it highly and thought it wouldmake a good movie. And Selznick then,she says, read some of it. But she didn’tthink he ever read the whole thing. And,of course, he had a record number ofwriters working on the script.

ON WRITING: How much writing didyou do on movies that didn’t get made?

RAPF: Well, Ring wrote a piece for—was it The Nation—about the fact thatall the best things he’d written nevergot made. I congratulated you forwriting it. The fact that it was so true.

LARDNER: I don’t remember thefigures now. But at one time, forinstance, they had 120 writers at MGM.

RAPF: Working. Being paid everyweek.

LARDNER: Yeah. And MGM wasmaking, what, 30 or 40 pictures?

RAPF: Forty-five movies a year. But120 writers.

LARDNER: So, most of what wasturned out didn’t get made.

ON WRITING: Were good screenplayspassed over?

RAPF: Oh, sure.

LARDNER: The reasons they didn’t getmade didn’t have much to do with thequality of writing. It had to do with anexecutive’s appraisal of how good itwould be at the box office.

RAPF: And who was hot and whetherthere was a role for the actor in it. Theywould say, “God, we need a Gablestory badly, we’ve only got three. Wepromised them five Gables this year.”You might have written a wonderfulscript for John Gilbert, but he’s nolonger at the studio. So they’re notgoing to make your movie.

ON WRITING: Did people write forspecific actors?

RAPF: On A pictures, very much so.You wrote with the actors in mind. Youwere asked to by the executives. They’dtell you who was going to be in it.

ON WRITING: Who assigned whowrote what?

LARDNER: Well, it was different atdifferent places. Most studios hadpeople called story editors who headedthe story departments but also some-times had supervision over writers orrecommended who should write aparticular script. I think the produceralways had the final say.

RAPF: The story department, which iswhat dealt with writers, had three mainoperations. One was reading, whichwas like a funnel. Everything that waswritten in any form whatsoever wasread and synopsized for the literarytastes of the producers. That was onejob. Another was what Ring justmentioned, to suggest writers forhiring. There were about 1,000 writers

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in Hollywood, of whom 500 wereemployed. That’s pretty good, youknow. In those days it was about 50percent employment. But, of course,they could hire outside of Hollywoodand they frequently did. And that wasthe second chore of the story depart-ment. Then there was a third chore, andthat was typing scripts. There was athing called—at least at MGM—thescript department, which was under theaegis of the story department. For thosewriters who came out from the Eastwho didn’t know what a screenplaywas, the secretaries in the script depart-ment did. They would assign a secre-tary to a certain writer who would writein prose like a play, and she wouldtranspose it into screenplay form.

ON WRITING: So she was collaborat-ing.

RAPF: And never got any credit forthat. But that was called the scriptdepartment. At Metro, Sam Marx wasthe head of the story department foryears, and then Eddie [Edwin] Knopf.That was a big job. They were bigshots, the heads of the story depart-ment. MGM had a leading reader whowas a very important person. LouisMayer liked her storytelling ability.Every studio had a storyteller, likeScheherazade, who could tell a storywell. She would meet with the produc-ers once a week and tell her favoritestory of the week. And they bought alot of them.

ON WRITING: When you were undercontract, were you constantly writing,or were you waiting for an assignment?

LARDNER: It depended mostly on thewriter and somewhat on the studiosetup. At Columbia Pictures, HarryCohn ran a studio that was built aroundan open yard and you could see fromone office into the others. He wasnotorious for looking through a win-dow at a writer’s office and calling himup to say, “How come you’re notwriting?” And you had to be strictabout the hours. At Warner Brothers—

RAPF: Warner Brothers checked youin.

LARDNER: We came in every day ataround nine in the morning, with anhour out for lunch or something, andworked until six o’clock at night.Saturday was a half day. You weresupposed to show up Saturday morn-ing and work till one o’clock or so.Warner’s was pretty businesslike andsaw to it that every writer was doingsomething. Whereas at MGM, I thinkit was not as disciplined. You weresupposed to show up at the office, butif you said you wanted to work athome for this particular week and thisparticular stage in the script, youcould do that.

RAPF: There’s that Faulkner storywhen he said, “Can I work at home?”Well, he worked at home, but his homewas in Mississippi.

ON WRITING: Were there writers whostayed at certain studios?

RAPF: Sure.

LARDNER: Warner’s had several whostayed there for years. There werewriters named Seton Miller and Casey

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Robinson, I remember, and some otherswho just worked on one Warner pictureafter another over 20 years or more.

RAPF: Producers had favorite writers,too. They used them if they’d had anyluck—producers are very superstitiouspeople. They’re like baseball players,and they want to put everything to-gether the same way it was. Theywould hire a writer who was undercontract to another studio if they weregoing to repeat something they’d donefive years ago. I know my father didthat. There was a woman who wasreally a Warner Brothers writer—therewere a lot of women writers, you know.It wasn’t a majority, but there were alot. This woman’s name was LenoreCoffee and she worked mostly atWarner Brothers.

LARDNER: Sam Goldwyn once hadLillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, andAlan Campbell working at the sametime. They were all in the office havinglunch or something. And Goldwyn said,“You know, I really like women writers,I think I’m going to have just womenwriters from now on. Oh, of course,Dottie, if anybody like you wants tobring her husband, that’s all right.”

ON WRITING: What about the sociallife in Hollywood? Was it true thatyour social lives involved CommunistParty activities?

LARDNER: Let me say something aboutthe social life. When the Screen WritersGuild was reorganized, both Mauriceand I served on the executive board forsome years. That meant being oncommittees. There were weeks when

every night was taken up with either aCommunist Party meeting, a Guildcommittee, or some other meeting.

RAPF: We were on the board of theGuild, it seemed to me, all the time. Itwas an evening a week. I never wenthome that day. I’d go right from thestudio to Musso & Frank’s and then tothe meeting at eight o’clock. Also, theParty was very demanding of yourtime. You were involved in a lot of thecommunity anti-Fascist activities andyou ended up writing stuff for them.There were people making speecheswho couldn’t speak.

LARDNER: So there was no social lifereally.

RAPF: Well, the meetings were thesocial life.

LARDNER: Yeah.

RAPF: Weekends were for recruiting, ifyou remember. I always credit Ringwith saying it, but I say it sometimeswithout giving him credit, that theprettiest women in Hollywood were allmembers of the Communist Party, andwe used them for recruiting.

LARDNER: Oh, yes, I used that as arecruiting—

RAPF: You said it first. We used tohave those beach parties for the pur-pose of recruiting. We had a lot ofpretty girls and the guys came. TheDaily People’s World was well estab-lished—that was the Communistnewspaper in San Francisco. I havepictures of people reading the DailyPeople’s World openly on the beach atMalibu. So that was the social life. Itwas still Party related.

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ON WRITING: Was membership in theParty at that point covert?

RAPF: Very.

ON WRITING: Was it always verysecretive?

RAPF: Very secretive.

ON WRITING: Why?

LARDNER: Because we were prettysure that there would be a blacklist ifit were known openly. There wereparts of the country where it waspretty open. In certain factories and insome unions, Party members workedas Party members. And even LosAngeles County Party meetings wereheld in a public place. It was muchdifferent in Hollywood. Anytime wehad a meeting of more than a fewpeople it was in somebody’s housewith certain precautions taken againstpeople coming around taking licenseplates or anything.

ON WRITING: Ring, you had a storyabout meetings and poker games.

LARDNER: When I was at MGM, therewas a very big poker game that the headsof the music department had started. Afriend of mine, Sol Kaplan, was broughtinto this game and he brought me into it.These music department heads didn’twant it known that they were in thispoker game. So on the MGM switch-board, instead of a poker game theywould say, “The meeting tonight is goingto be at somebody’s house.” And thiswas such a switch because whenever wecalled on the phone about a meeting, wesaid, “The poker game is going to be atMaurice’s house.”

ON WRITING: Maurice, weren’t yourecruited into the Screen Writers Guildby Lillian Hellman?

RAPF: It was April or May of 1936,the first day I arrived in Hollywood.She knocked on the door of myoffice. I didn’t even know she workedat MGM, and I don’t know that shedid. I had a miserable little office inwhat was then the writers’ building atMGM. It should be noted, by theway, that the office you got dependedupon your prestige and salary. I had achair, a desk, and a typewriter. Therewas a knock on the door, and a ladycame in with a big hat and a longcigarette holder and I knew it wasLillian Hellman. She said that theWriters Guild was about to amalgam-ate with the Authors League, thatthere was a lot of pressure against theGuild by the studio, and would I join?I said I didn’t know anything about it,but I was always on the side of theworkers against the bosses, sure I’djoin. She invited me to a meeting thatvery night at Samson Raphaelson’shouse. I went, and Donald OgdenStewart was there, and DashielHammett. Lillian Hellman, OgdenNash, S. J. Perelman—it was justincredible. I was so impressed to bein a room with these people.

LARDNER: Raphaelson is another veryprominent playwright who was broughtout at that time.

RAPF: He wrote Suspicion for AlfredHitchcock.

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ON WRITING: Could you describe thepermutations that the Screen WritersGuild went through into formation?How did it start?

RAPF: That’s before either one of uswas in Hollywood. There was a Guildthat was formed in ’33. The firstpresident was John Howard Lawson. Icame at the very moment that themerger was proposed in ’36. Thepresident at the time was Ernest Pascal.

ON WRITING: The merger with—

LARDNER: The Authors League ofAmerica.

ON WRITING: Were the studiosnegotiating with the screenwriters?

RAPF: No, but this was how we weregoing to force negotiations.

LARDNER: The Guild was completelyunrecognized, and it represented just apercentage of the writers. I don’t know,maybe half.

RAPF: Half, I think.

LARDNER: And the others just didn’tbother. They didn’t want to pay dues,or they didn’t think it was important.Or they were against the idea of unionsfor writers. But it was growing untilthis merger thing was proposed in ’36.The people who opposed the idea of aWriters Guild used that issue to attackthe whole idea of a guild. They said wereally had nothing in common witheastern writers, and we would bedominated by the Authors League if wejoined as a member guild along withdramatists and novelists. I was not amember of the Guild at this time. But atthis famous meeting—

RAPF: I was at that meeting. It tookplace within about three weeks of thetime I arrived. It was at the HollywoodAthletic Club, which was the standardplace where the Writers Guild met. Wehad been getting people to join theGuild who would be in favor of theamalgamation. But it was going to be aclose call because there were a lot ofsuccessful writers who thought peoplelike me, who made $40 a week, weren’tentitled to the same consideration theywere entitled to. And there was a realproblem because the opposition to themerger were members of the Guild.James Kevin McGuinness was theleader of the opposition.

ON WRITING: I thought the oppositionwas the Screen Playwrights.

RAPF: Later. We’re coming to that.

LARDNER: They hadn’t formed yet.

RAPF: They were members of theScreen Writers Guild. But the after-noon before the meeting, the Guildboard of directors, which were largelyprogressive people who wanted themerger, met with those in the opposi-tion. The opposition agreed to vote inprinciple for the idea of the merger.They wouldn’t vote it in officially untilthey got rid of a few things aboutautonomy for the West Coast. Some oftheir objections weren’t ill founded—except that they weren’t put forth withany good intentions; they were putforth to stall the thing, as we realizedlater. The meeting took place, andJames Kevin McGuinness got up andproposed that we approve the merger inprinciple. And then everybody threwtheir arms around everybody else. It

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was the biggest love fest. We all wentout and got drunk because it was agreat success.

ON WRITING: And then what hap-pened?

RAPF: Another thing they did thatnight was put members of the opposi-tion onto the board of the Guild. A lotof the progressives on the boardresigned to make room for people likeMcGuinness and Howard EmmettRogers. But the next day the oppositionresigned from the Guild completely.And then they formed the ScreenPlaywrights.

LARDNER: The Screen Playwrightswas really a company union. Theydidn’t describe themselves as that.They claimed to be a legimate union,but Irving Thalberg and Louis B.Mayer were responsible for starting it.John Lee Mahin was the president. Itwas formed mainly at MGM by somewriters and producers, and then itspread to some other studios.

ON WRITING: What did that do?

RAPF: The Guild collapsed. We had noboard because half the members of theBoard resigned to form this neworganization. And we were demoral-ized. We had accepted this move as if itwere bona fide, and it was fake. It wascarefully orchestrated by these guys tolull us into accepting a postponementof something that had been worked onfor two months. I remember oureuphoria, and I remember our disap-pointment. I overheard James KevinMcGuinness’s drunken tirade in thenext office. He engineered that wholeplot, and he confessed to it.

ON WRITING: The whole plot aboutthe—

RAPF: About the merger. He did that atThalberg’s behest. He knew damn wellwhen he went to that meeting andembraced Dorothy Parker that the nextday he was going to resign. He waspromised that he’d be a producer forthat. I heard him say, “Tell that Jewbastard loyalty is not a one-way street.”

ON WRITING: Who was the Jewbastard?

RAPF: Thalberg. McGuinness wassupposed to produce Maytime, and theydidn’t let him do it. That’s what he wasyelling about when I overheard it. I toldBudd Schulberg and he used it in WhatMakes Sammy Run?

ON WRITING: Was there a blacklistingafter that?

RAPF: There was presumably a black-listing. For years it was said it was thefirst blacklist in Hollywood. They hadthe meeting in May of ’36. As I re-member it, they formed the ScreenPlaywrights about a week later, butNancy Lynn Schwartz says in her book[The Hollywood Writers’ Wars] that thecontract with Screen Playwrightswasn’t until ’37.

ON WRITING: According to TheHollywood Writers’ Wars, the ScreenPlaywrights signed a contract with thestudios February 10, 1937.

RAPF: But they were recognized beforethat.

ON WRITING: On April 12, 1937, theSupreme Court declared the WagnerAct constitutional, which upheld

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labor’s right to bargain collectively.That’s when the Screen Writers Guildstarted organizing again.

RAPF: That’s correct.

ON WRITING: We may as well gothrough all of this. April 19, 1937, theScreen Playwrights contract went intoeffect. It was a five-year contract. TheAcademy relinquished control ofcredits, and directors were given theright to story credit. June 11, 1937, theScreen Writers Guild had its first openmeeting attended by over 400 writers.Were you both at that?

RAPF: Must have been.

ON WRITING: What happened at thatpoint?

RAPF: We had a real problem becausethere was going to be an election andwe had to defeat a group that had acontract.

LARDNER: But before that June ’37meeting there was an awful lot of workgoing on getting writers to come to themeeting and to say that they weremembers of the Guild, to join up again.Because almost all of them had quit.

RAPF: There were very few people leftand we didn’t meet anymore. Thereweren’t any meetings held in thatparticular period, except Party meet-ings. There were Party meetings abouthow to revive the Guild. I think we hadsome fraction meetings during thatperiod.

ON WRITING: So the Party was veryinvolved in reforming the Guild?

RAPF: As a matter of fact it was quiteinvolved. We took it as a temporarysetback. And it really looked very badfor a while.

ON WRITING: So now you have thiselection coming up between ScreenWriters Guild and Screen Playwrights.

RAPF: You had a choice in both, yeah.Or no Guild. That was a third choice.

ON WRITING: And what were thestudios doing about it?

RAPF: Plenty.

ON WRITING: Like what?

RAPF: Well, there’s the meeting thatwas held in Thalberg’s projectionroom at MGM, which I attended. Itwas full—of 120 writers at MGM,I’ll bet 100 were there. Thalbergcame in flanked by Eddie Mannix andBenny Thau. He looked grim. Itreally looked like gangsters comingin to address the mob, because theymarched in, Thalberg at the head, andMannix and Thau behind him. He gotup in front and started to address us.He was very tough, and he said, “I’mgoing to remember everybody”—itwas a secret ballot, you know, thiswas absolutely absurd—“I’m goingto remember everybody who supportsthe Guild in this and they’re nevergoing to work here again.” He threat-ened a blacklist, in other words, ifyou supported the Guild. I went withRichard Maibaum; we left thatprojection room and we were stag-gered. I understand they had similarmeetings at every studio. I know theyhad one at Warner Brothers. And Ithink they had one at Fox. [Darryl]

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Zanuck was not violently against theGuild, but he was forced to do it.They had to have a meeting at everystudio before the election to urgepeople to vote for the Screen Play-wrights, or for no Guild. They didn’tobject if you voted no Guild.

ON WRITING: Who was eligible tovote?

RAPF: Anybody employed at a studioas of a certain date and I forget what itwas. But the voting was studio bystudio. The weakest studio was goingto be Paramount, I think. That was onestudio that everybody was very worriedabout, and it barely squeaked through.It wasn’t MGM. MGM was prettystrong for it.

ON WRITING: Once the Screen WritersGuild won the election, wasn’t there abreak between—

RAPF: We couldn’t get a contract. Butthey had to cancel their contract withthe Screen Playwrights. We were theofficial representatives of the screen-writers of Hollywood after that elec-tion. But we didn’t have a contract.

LARDNER: They were compelled bylaw to negotiate and to meet, but thatdidn’t mean that there was a time limiton the negotiations.

RAPF: I think they kept it going for acouple of years.

LARDNER: From ’37 to ’41.

RAPF: Four years. It was a longstruggle. That’s where the minimumwage came up. You see, when theGuild started there was a lot of opposi-tion to the idea of a minimum wage.The more experienced writers said it

was going to pull their salaries down.But we really needed a minimum wagebecause they could hire writers fornothing. And most of us would haveworked for $20 a week just to get in thestudio. The minimum wage was veryimportant. It was people like Ring and Iwho made the case for the minimumwage in the first contract negotiations.The young writers were very importantin this thing. And people like DorothyParker were very moved by our situa-tion, the fact that we got so little moneyand so little recognition. We never gotour names on anything because we hadno power. And they put in a $100minimum wage in the first contract.

ON WRITING: What were some of theother things you were negotiating for?

RAPF: The notification of other writersworking on a project. They could dowhat Ring was talking about earlier,bring in extra writers without tellingthe writers who already were on it.They didn’t have to tell them. Underthe contract they did.

LARDNER: Another point was to whatextent a producer could talk to a writerabout a project without putting him onsalary. Producers who sometimes hadan idea for a picture—or bought a bookor something—would call 10 writers insuccession, pretend they were thinkingabout hiring them to work on it, andask for their ideas on how it should bedone. They would get all the benefits of10 writers’ advice without paying themanything. So there were some fairlystrict limits put on to what extentproducers could do that.

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RAPF: That’s right. Producer’s creditwas another one.

ON WRITING: What do you mean?

RAPF: Producers, especially Selznick,had a tendency to put their names onpictures.

ON WRITING: As a writer?

RAPF: As a writer. Well, they didcontribute. And it was almost impos-sible to get them off because they werethere from the beginning. They’d hire10 writers. Who contributed the most?The producer. But I think we had thatin the contract, too, that they couldn’tdo that unless they did 50 percent, orsomething like that. There are someproducers who do write their scripts.

LARDNER: Selznick did it under apseudonym, Oliver Jeffries.

ON WRITING: Isn’t it true that, beforethe Screen Writers Guild had a con-tract, it was completely up to theproducers to decide credits?

RAPF: The contract used to say “thestudio hereinafter known as the au-thor.”

LARDNER: For instance, when Womanof the Year was made into a Broadwaymusical, MGM got the share ofauthor’s royalties that went to thescreenplay because they owned thescreenplay and had been declared itsauthor. We got tickets to the openingnight.

ON WRITING: So the contract with thewriter was calling the studio theauthor?

LARDNER: They claimed it wasnecessary for legal purposes that theybe declared the author, that only theycould copyright the thing they hadbought.

RAPF: There were other things that Ican’t remember. The credits were themain thing. It was the producer’sobligation to notify the writers of thetentative credits they chose. They hadthe right to name the first credits—theycould put their relatives on that—butwe could object. We had 48 hours, or36 hours, or whatever it was. Theyclaimed they didn’t really need acontract because they were abiding bythe credit rules.

ON WRITING: Were they?

RAPF: No, not quite. Almost. I mean,this business of producer credit, theyhated that. They didn’t want to give upthose rights. I can’t remember thedetails of that original negotiation, but Iremember our saying, what the hell arethey fighting it for? It was so mild thatwe didn’t think it was a strong enoughcontract to begin with.

ON WRITING: How much would ascreenwriter make, say, in the 1930s or’40s?

RAPF: Who was the highest paid?

LARDNER: Well, the top salary, I thinkwas Ben Hecht.

RAPF: $3,500?

LARDNER: No, I think he got $5,000for—

ON WRITING: In the 1930s?

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LARDNER: Well, the ’40s. But this waspartly because of his ability to write ascript in two or three weeks.

RAPF: He was the one demandingpayment by the day.

ON WRITING: What was the average?

LARDNER: My salary had been estab-lished in the last job I had, at $200 aweek I think, before we sold Woman ofthe Year. After we sold the screenplay,MGM hired me for $1,000 a week.Mike and I each got $1,000. And by’46 or beginning of ’47, just before theHollywood hearings, I had signed acontract with 20th Century Fox startingat $2,000 with raises every year. Peoplelike Donald Ogden Stewart, I’m suregot up to $4,000 or $5,000.

ON WRITING: What was the averagewriter getting?

RAPF: $750.

ON WRITING: $750 a week? Whichwas good.

RAPF: Yeah, it was pretty good.

ON WRITING: When were the firstsigns of the blacklist?

LARDNER: Everything changed after thewar. There was a great deal of right-wingactivity. The Republicans got a majorityin Congress for the first time sinceHerbert Hoover’s day. There were a lotof strikes that had been held off duringthe war that broke out in 1946. And thebig employers got very worried aboutthese strikes and the power of the unions.There was Churchill’s speech in Fulton,Missouri, about the Iron Curtain. Therewas Truman’s beginning of his ownloyalty plan. And there was a CaliforniaState Un-American Activities Committee

headed by a man named Jack Tenney,which started investigating Hollywoodand called several people, including JohnHoward Lawson and Waldo Salt. Inkeeping with Party policy, when asked ifthey were members of the CommunistParty, they said no.

Before the war, there had been a tempo-rary Congressional committee, theHouse Un-American Activities Commit-tee. In ’46, with the Republican majorityin Congress, the House Un-AmericanActivities Committee was made apermanent committee. A Republicannamed J. Parnell Thomas was put in aschairman. And one of the first thingsthey announced was that they weregoing to look into Hollywood. Theyheld secret hearings in Hollywood inMay of 1947, mostly with the peoplewho later testified publicly as friendlywitnesses: [Louie B.] Mayer, [Jack]Warner, Howard Emmett Rogers,Rupert Hughes, Adolphe Menjou—wejust heard reports of what had been saidthere. But they had announced that therewere going to be public hearings. InSeptember of ’47 subpoenas began to behanded out to 19 people. Others gotsubpoenas, too—Robert Taylor andGary Cooper and so on—but 19 of uswho got subpoenas named ourselves theUnfriendly Nineteen.

ON WRITING: Was it randomly 19 ofyou? How did they pick which ones?

LARDNER: Part of it was just haphaz-ard, part of it—I had pointed out at thetime, and I think it still has somevalidity—was that no one who hadseen active service in the armed forcesduring the war, which was just over,

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was among those 19. For instanceRichard Collins and Paul Jarrico hadwritten a picture called—

RAPF: Song of Russia.

LARDNER:—Song of Russia, whichwas very favorable to Russia. I think itwas probably the reason Collins gotsubpoenaed. But Jarrico didn’t getsubpoenaed because he had been in theservice.

ON WRITING: When this happened,did you realize that this was going tobe—

LARDNER: The start of the Cold War?Well, we could see the threat of it beinga start of such a thing, but we thoughtthere was a still a chance—

RAPF: I thought it would be defeated. Ididn’t expect you guys to go to jaileither. I thought it was a temporarything. There were a lot of people whowere against it.

ON WRITING: Maurice, did you—

RAPF: I fled town. I heard there was asubpoena out for me, and I didn’t wantto be subpoenaed because I didn’t wantto embarrass my father. I got mentionedin that ’47 hearing. There was a newspa-perman who was a witness. He had beenwriting about Ring and Budd and me asthe leaders of the Communist Party inHollywood. And that brought a responsefrom, I forget if it was Goldwyn, whosaid, “If they’re the ones that are thehead of the Communist Party, we’ve gotnothing to worry about.” Goldwyn or[Jesse] Lasky or somebody said it. Inany case, I left. I fully expected to beback in a couple of years, I left for thetime being. But when they [the Holly-

wood Ten] lost their [Supreme Court]suit, I knew I was in the soup and thatI’d never go back to Hollywood.

ON WRITING: This has been gone overbefore, but what was the strategy at thehearings?

LARDNER: We met, the 19 of us.Bertolt Brecht met with us only once ortwice, but the other 18 met. There was adifference of opinion about what weshould do. Some people wanted to sayyes, we’re Communists, and so on. Butit was pointed out that they would thenbe asked about other people, and theydidn’t have the same right to talk aboutother people as they might have aboutthemselves. We discussed the FifthAmendment and decided not to take itbecause we would be saying it was acrime to be a Communist, and nobodyhad been indicted yet under the SmithAct. But there was another angle. DaltonTrumbo and I had talked about this inadvance of these meetings, and we haddecided the only thing was just to saywe won’t answer the question becausewe have a perfect right to be anythingwe want, and you have no right to ask usabout it. The Committee has no right toinvestigate where it can’t legislate andit’s forbidden under the freedom of thepress in the Constitution to legislateabout movies. But then one of ourlawyers, Robert Kenney, who had beenan Attorney General of California, said,“Look, if this goes to a jury trial, I’vegot to have something I can argue aboutwith a jury. I don’t want any judgedeciding this; I want a jury of Ameri-cans, and they might be sympathetic if Icould argue with them that you were

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trying to answer the question, but inyour own way.” Well, this led to most ofthe witnesses defying the Committee,attacking the Committee, saying all sortsof things, saying, “I’m trying to answerthe question, but I want to first establishthat this Committee is unconstitutional.”And so on.

ON WRITING: What did you say?

LARDNER: I said, “I could answer, butif I did, I’d hate myself in the morn-ing.” But anyway, following Kenney’sadvice really had an unfortunate effect.A lot of people who would have beensympathetic, including some membersof the Committee for the First Amend-ment who were there to cover thehearings, thought we should have beenmuch more dignified and just said thatwe didn’t want to answer their questionbecause it wasn’t their right to ask it.

ON WRITING: When did you realizethat this thing was not going to beover?

LARDNER: Basically when we lost thecase in the Court—that was in thespring of 1950 when the SupremeCourt refused to hear it.

ON WRITING: You’re talking about thecontempt of Congress citations. I justwant to clarify that you were one of 10members of the Unfriendly Nineteenwho testified in those November ’47hearings. All 10 were cited for con-tempt of Congress, and that groupbecame known as the Hollywood Ten.The citations were appealed, and whenthe Supreme Court refused to hear thecase, all 10 went to prison. You were inprison for a year.

LARDNER: And then there were a lotof other things happening. The KoreanWar broke out, the Rosenberg trialwent on. Then while I was still inprison they started new hearings, andsomebody came to my cell and said,“They’re talking about you on theradio.” Actually it was Richard Collinstestifying before the Committee. So weknew then that it was going to spreadvery wide and last for a long time.

RAPF: It was devastating. And it wasdevastating to an entire family, not justto the person involved. My kids stillremember it. They were there when thesubpoenas were served. All my subpoe-nas were served at dinnertime exceptthe one that was served by a friendlymarshal who said, “Call the marshal’soffice, we have a subpoena for you.”My first subpoena was in ’51. I thoughtI had abated the Committee by going toNew England.

ON WRITING: What were you doingthere?

RAPF: Nothing. Trying to write. But I’ma movie writer and I needed employ-ment. So in ’51 I moved to New York. Iwasn’t here one week before they rangthe doorbell. I was convinced that theyhad lost me and then found me again. Itwasn’t true because—remember theFreedom of Information Act when youcould write to William Webster? I wroteand got a thing back that looked like atelephone book. They knew everything Iwas doing all the time. They knew I wasin Hanover. My records went from LosAngeles to Trenton, New Jersey, toRutland, Vermont, to Manchester, New

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Hampshire. Wherever I went theyswitched my records, and they sent newguys out to watch me.

LARDNER: That’s the only record Ihave of all my addresses.

RAPF: They knew when I lived there,they knew the name of the super. Imean, everything. They had it all, butsome things were blacked out in mycopy, unfortunately. They told me mycar was parked in front of such andsuch a house, they had the name of theperson whose house I was in. But theydidn’t tell me who told them that.

[Editor’s Note: Frances Chaney, RingLardner, Jr.’s wife, was a patientlistener throughout this interview. Atthis point she contributed a personalrecollection we felt was important toinclude.]

ON WRITING: So you were followed?

FRANCES CHANEY: Oh, God. Thekids and I were stopped on the way tothe waterfront to go swimming. Theyasked me in front of the children, did Iknow such and such? And my heartpounding.

LARDNER: Did you know the Lardners?they said.

FRANCES CHANEY: And the kids said,“We’re the Lardners!” And then thisguy wanted to know if I knew some-body and named a name. My relief wasthat it was a name I did not know, thatI could say, no, I didn’t know thatperson, and we were just going swim-ming and will you excuse us. Therewere two guys who were standing atthe corner of our road waiting for meand had spoken to the neighbors.

ON WRITING: This is in Connecticut?

FRANCES CHANEY: New Milford,Connecticut.

ON WRITING: Even after Ring went toprison and got out they were stillfollowing you?

FRANCES CHANEY: Yes. The super inour building in New York told us menhad come around with questions aboutus.

ON WRITING: So it was constantharassment.

RAPF: Yes, constant. They used to stopmy wife, Louise, on the street. Whenshe’d come out of the subway, they’dbe waiting for her. And they’d say toher, “Excuse me, but we want to askyou a few questions. Are you willing toanswer them?” And she’d say no, andgo on her way. But it’s terrible to beharassed like that.

ON WRITING: What really changedthings for writers, for everybody, wasthe Waldorf Declaration.

RAPF: That was held in ’47.

ON WRITING: After the hearings.

FRANCES CHANEY: That really madelife hell.

RAPF: That’s when they initiated theblacklist.

ON WRITING: What did the studiosagree to?

RAPF: The chairman of the [MotionPicture] Producers Association was EricJohnston. He had sworn that he wouldnever accede to a blacklist, but hechanged his tune pretty fast after those’47 hearings. The Waldorf conferencewas held only a month later. The

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producers declared their liberalism andtheir Americanism and all that shit, thatthey stood for the best of America andwhatnot. And they said they would nolonger knowingly employ anybody whowas a member of the Communist Party.

LARDNER: Or anybody who refused toanswer questions before a Congres-sional committee.

ON WRITING: It was selling out theHollywood Ten.

RAPF: Well, and everybody else. Andit went for people who were on thebacklots as well.

ON WRITING: What do you mean onthe backlot?RAPF: Technicians. Carpenters,painters, electricians. They fired a lotof people from the backlot. Musicians,guys who played in the orchestras.Somebody told me that they camearound with affidavits. You could signan affidavit saying that you were notnow and never have been a member ofthe Communist Party, and then theywouldn’t fire you. I gather that was thecase, but I wasn’t in Hollywood, so Idon’t know.

ON WRITING: During the ’47 hearings,the first question the writers in thegroup were asked was, “Are you amember of the Screen Writers Guild?”And the second question was, “Are younow or have you ever been...” Whywas that?

LARDNER: They were trying to dem-onstrate that the Screen Writers Guildwas a Communist-dominated organiza-tion. I don’t know where they got thisidea, but they had. And so those two

questions—especially consideredtogether—were going to be part oftheir proof of this.

ON WRITING: Why were they singlingout the writers? Why not SAG, or theDGA? IATSE was very conservative atthat point.

LARDNER: Yes, it was. And the ScreenActors Guild was fairly conservative.Robert Montgomery and RonaldReagan were presidents of it, and theywere both quite conservative. Reaganhad been a liberal and was becoming aconservative. There undoubtedly weremany more left-wing people among thewriters. The Writers Guild votedseveral times to support various strikesand certain causes that were notdirectly related to the Guild but had todo generally with censorship andfreedom worldwide. The directors andactors never bothered passing suchresolutions. I think probably some of uson the board pressed for those thingsunnecessarily. So I think the proportionof writers subpoenaed was probably aproper one in relation to the number ofleft, liberal people.

ON WRITING: How did the WritersGuild deal with the blacklist?

LARDNER: The Writers Guild reallygave in to it completely. In a caseinvolving Paul Jarrico and HowardHughes, they permitted Hughes to takeJarrico’s name off a script after he wasnamed. They said that the rules aboutcredit didn’t apply to writers who werenamed by the Committee. They reallyjust capitulated, because everybodypractically did.

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RAPF: Did you ever read EmmetLavery’s testimony? It’s pretty terrible.

ON WRITING: What is it?

RAPF: Well, he was the president ofthe Guild, and he said he’d been usedby the Communists. He came out witha very sharp and clever attack onCommunist influence in the WritersGuild. So they took the position thatthey were justified in refusing credit toany Communist.

ON WRITING: Ring, there’s a story youtell about credit arbitration during theblacklist—

LARDNER: Oh, yes, about The BridgeOn the River Kwai. I was writing a piecefor the The Saturday Evening Post aboutmy life on the blacklist. It was publishedin 1960 or ’61. And I wanted to say thatThe Bridge On the River Kwai waswritten by two blacklisted writers, CarlForeman and Michael Wilson. TheSaturday Evening Post asked me toverify this. A friend—a lawyer, SidneyCohn, who represented Carl Foreman—called me because a photographer forThe Saturday Evening Post had tried totake a picture of Carl in Switzerland touse for this story. Carl apparently calledSidney Cohn who called me and said,“If you say that was written by CarlForeman and Michael Wilson, we’ll suebecause it was all written by Carl, andMike had practically nothing to do withit.” So I called Mike Wilson, who wasliving in Paris then. He read me a letterhe had gotten from the director, DavidLean, talking about the script and usingthe phrase “it’s 75 percent yours.” Ithought that was enough to go on to

safely tell the Post they could print bothnames. It was really a quarrel betweenblacklisted writers about credit.

ON WRITING: How did each of youwork during the blacklist?

RAPF: Well, I came to New Yorkfinally, but I was very lucky. Therewere some people in New York whodidn’t give a shit about the blacklist. Istarted work in 1953 on a different kindof film where nobody gave a damn. Inever put my name on it. I worked for aguy who knew I was blacklisted anddidn’t care. I got one half of what Iused to get—no, one third of what Iused to get—and I didn’t care. I washappy to be making a living. I wroteindustrials. I worked for the biggestcompanies in America—Ford, GeneralMotors, U.S. Steel—they couldn’t careless. They didn’t know, they didn’t ask.They liked me. I never went back toHollywood, and never tried.

LARDNER: Ian McLellan Hunter and Iwrote a number of half-hour televisionprograms that were produced by awoman named Hannah Weinstein. Shehad gone to England and set up acompany there. Part of her idea was touse blacklisted writers. She was verysympathetic herself. She first had AbePolonsky and Walter Bernstein. Thenshe asked Ian and me to write a pilotfor a series about Robin Hood. We did,and that sold to an American network.We did one called The Buccaneers andone about Sir Lancelot. These werekids programs, although adults watchedthem, too. Robin Hood was the mostsuccessful of them, it lasted four or fiveyears. By that time we had enlisted

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about 20 other blacklisted writers.Some were written by English writers,but most were based in New York.Waldo Salt wrote a good many. AndMaurice wrote one or two. We had allwe could do. We finally had writtenfour pilots, and all four of them hadsold to American networks. And wehad all these series going.

ON WRITING: Under pseudonyms.

LARDNER: Oh, yes. We had to eachhave a name to use for financialpurposes, because you could open asavings account under any name andchecks could be made out to that, andthe bank didn’t question who it was.And then you transferred the moneyfrom the savings account to your ownchecking account in your own name.

ON WRITING: Didn’t the IRS havequestions?

LARDNER: As long as you reported theincome, it’s perfectly legal for a writerto have a pseudonym. But he does haveto report to the IRS.

ON WRITING: So one branch of thefederal government was trying to makesure you’d never work again, andanother branch of the federal govern-ment was recording all the money youmade while you were working.

LARDNER: That’s right. And all thoseyears old movies we wrote wereappearing on television with theoriginal credits and nobody objected.No viewers even paid attention to whothe screenwriters were. So Ian and I didthat from 1953, I think, to about ’58.

Hannah had wanted us to come over toEngland and do them there, but wecouldn’t get passports.

RAPF: The thing that marked the bigchange for me was the passport. I’veoften told the story about meeting Ringin the passport office the day theSupreme Court gave Rockwell Kent hispassport back. We were both free, and Irushed down. Five years of no passportwas pretty tough to take.

FRANCES CHANEY: Ring, tell the storyabout your passport experience.

RAPF: It is funny.

LARDNER: As soon as the decision wasin the paper—

ON WRITING: What decision?

RAPF: Well, they took our passportsaway. I was told by my lawyer not tosue the State Department, because therewere a lot of suits ahead of me by moreimportant people like Rockwell Kentand Paul Robeson and others. And towait on the decision, which wouldprobably be favorable. They had noright to refuse you the right to travel.

LARDNER: When it became clear wecould all get passports, we were livingon West End Avenue, and I went up toBroadway where there was a photogra-phy place that advertised passportpictures in the window. I went in, and Isaid, “I want a picture for a passport.”He said, “All right, I’ll take it, andyou’ll have it tomorrow.” I said, “Youcan’t do it today?” This was beforePolaroids were invented. And he saidno, unless I wanted one of thosepictures without a negative that they

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take in those machines. He said, “Youcould do that, but you’ll end up lookinglike a Communist.”

Ian was able to get a passport beforethe Supreme Court decision. He wentover to England to work with HannahWeinstein. As soon as the decisioncame through and I got a passport, Iwent over there for a few months. Butby that time we were able to get jobs inHollywood again—still not under ourown names, that is.

ON WRITING: What year was that?

LARDNER: 1959.

ON WRITING: So it lasted more than10 years.

LARDNER: Oh, yes. The actual timebetween screen credits for me was 17years. I was openly hired for a job in1962 by Otto Preminger, 15 years afterthe hearings. But he never made thepicture.

ON WRITING: Weren’t you working onan Otto Preminger picture when yougot fired from 20th Century Fox afterthe 1947 hearings?

LARDNER: Yes, I got the message inhis office. I had finished a script for aproducer named Bill [William]Perlberg that I worked on during thehearings and started working on thisPreminger thing. In November hissecretary got a message that Mr.Zanuck wanted to see Mr. Lardner.And Otto said, “He wants to talk tojust the writer, he doesn’t want to seeme?”

ON WRITING: Otto Preminger was theone who first gave Dalton Trumbo—

LARDNER: Credit on Exodus. Thoughwhen I wrote that in an obit of Trumbothat appeared in The New York Times,the day it appeared I got a call fromKirk Douglas saying they had decidedto put Trumbo’s name on Spartacusbefore Otto.

ON WRITING: How did you know youwere off the blacklist?

LARDNER: Otto Preminger asked meto do some work on a script he wasshooting. And then he hired me toadapt a book he wanted to make into amovie. He had just given Trumbo thiscredit on Exodus. So he decided toannounce that he had hired me to workon this thing called Genius, from abook by Patrick Dennis. Within days hegot a letter from the AmericanismCommittee of the American Legionsaying, “There are plenty of goodAmerican screenwriters, why do youhave to hire one of these?” Otto wroteback that they were entitled to theiropinion, they were entitled not to go tosee the picture when it came out, but hewas entitled to hire whom he wanted.That was his right. Unfortunately, hesaid this part had to be played either byAlec Guinness, Lawrence Olivier, orRex Harrison, and he couldn’t get anyone of them. So the picture was nevermade.

ON WRITING: But that got you off theblacklist?

LARDNER: Yeah, from then on I washired openly. The first picture I did in’64, which came out in ’65, was calledThe Cincinnati Kid. That was the firstcredit since my pre-blacklist credit forThe Forbidden Street.

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ON WRITING: What do you think wasthe point of the Hollywood hearings?

LARDNER: Very briefly, I think themain reason the Committee investi-gated Hollywood was not because theyexpected to find that Communists werecontrolling the content of pictures orthat there was any sort of danger, somekind of subversion through writersgetting their terrible thoughts into thepictures. It was mainly that the Com-mittee wanted something that wouldgive them a lot of publicity and wouldbe good for the whole Cold Waratmosphere. Hollywood was chosenbecause it was the one place that wouldget them most attention in the press.

ON WRITING: When you went back toscreenwriting after the blacklist, thestudio system you had worked underwas in decline. Do you feel that thestudio system enabled writers to getbetter educations as screenwriters thanthey can now?

LARDNER: In one way, there wasmuch more association among writersthan apparently there is in the presentday. Writers frequently talked to eachother about writing problems. And thiswas also true in the Communist Party,to talk specifically about certain writingproblems that people were runninginto. Now I gather there’s very little ofthat. There’s no such thing as a writers’table at a studio.

ON WRITING: There was a writers’table at a studio?

RAPF: There was at MGM.

LARDNER: There was at WarnerBrothers.

RAPF: Yeah. And at 20th Century.

LARDNER: The writers would sort ofall sit at the same table, a large table.

RAPF: Actually during the Guildconflict, it was quite confrontationalbecause there were two writers’ tablesat MGM. The Screen Playwrights had adifferent table. They also associatedwith the bosses—not so much theproducers, because the producers didn’teat in the dining room, but the heads ofdepartments and people like that.You’d see the production managerseating with Jimmy McGuinness andHoward Emmett Rogers. But the othertable was not Communist Party people,it was just progressive writers whobelieved in the Guild.

ON WRITING: There was a communityof writers.

RAPF: Yeah.

ON WRITING: Did the Communistparty give you a stronger sense ofcommunity or was there a communityeven without that?

LARDNER: When you were working ata studio, you associated with otherpeople who worked at the studio,mainly the writers. Some directors. Thepolitical part of it was not too relevant.And you had some social life withother writers at the studio. PhilipDunne and I, who worked together on acouple of projects, were also goodfriends.

ON WRITING: Did your work in theParty affect your work in screenplays atall?

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RAPF: Sure it did. And not becauseanybody told me how to write. Forexample, I think if you look at Womanof the Year, most of that movie wouldseem to be an expression of an attempton the part of writers to introduce astrong woman in movies. Unfortunatelythey took the ending of Ring’s movieand turned it around the other way. ButI constantly tried to write strongerwomen in movies. You didn’t ask meabout Song of the South, which is theusual subject I get into. When I went towork on that, I went to work on it as aParty member to prevent it from beinganti-black. It didn’t work. You cer-tainly couldn’t do anything verypositively in a movie in Hollywood.The producers controlled the medium.But I think as a Party person you didtry to avoid racial stereotypes, and youdid try to make women more important.I did at any rate. I tried to.

ON WRITING: Did you, Ring?

LARDNER: Yes, but it wasn’t a veryimportant part of the job. ■

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Ring Lardner, Jr.Feature Films

The Greatest, 1977M*A*S*H, 1970 (Academy Award)The Cincinnati Kid*, 1965The Forbidden Street, 1949Forever Amber*, 1947Cloak and Dagger*, 1946Tomorrow the World*, 1944The Cross of Lorraine*, 1943Woman of the Year*, 1942 (AcademyAward)The Courageous Dr. Christian*, 1940Meet Dr. Christian*, 1939

Musical ComedyFoxy, 1954 (co-written with IanMcLellan Hunter)

In 1989, Ring Lardner, Jr. wasawarded the WGAw Laurel Award forScreen Writing Achievement. In 1992,he was the first recipient of the WGAEIan McLellan Hunter Memorial Awardfor Lifetime Achievement in Writing.

During the blacklist, Ring Lardner, Jr.collaborated with Ian McLellan Hunteron five different television series whichthey wrote and sold under pseud-onyms. Lardner is the author of twonovels, The Ecstasy of Owen Muir andAll for Love, and a memoir, TheLardners: My Family Remembered.

This fall, The Ecstacy of Owen Muir willbe republished by Prometheus Booksin the Literary Classic series. Theseries includes works by such authorsas Anton Chekov, Nathaniel Hawthorne,Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Edgar AllenPoe, and Aristophanes.

Maurice RapfFeature Films

So Dear to my Heart*, 1948Song of the South*, 1947Call of the Canyon (story)*, 1942Dancing on a Dime*, 1941North of Shanghai*, 1940Winter Carnival*, 1940Jennie*, 1939Sharpshooters (story)*, 1939Bad Man of Brimstone (story)*, 1938They Gave Him a Gun*, 1937We Went to College*, 1936Divorce in the Family*, 1931

During the blacklist, Maurice Rapfbegan writing and directing industrialfilms, which he continued to do through1975, for companies including Time,Life, and Fortune magazines, Esso,Ford Motor Company, AmericanCancer Society, American Iron andSteel Institute, and Liberty MutualInsurance. Rapf has also written anddirected a number of short films andanimated films. He wrote film reviewsfor Life and Family Circle from 1967through 1970.

In 1966, Rapf began teaching filmtheory, writing, and production atDartmouth College, and in 1970, hetaught and launched film studies atBrown University. From 1971–85 hewas Adjunct Professor of Drama/Filmand Director of Film Studies atDartmouth College. In 1990, he wasnamed Director of Film StudiesEmeritus at Dartmouth where hecontinues to teach on a part-timebasis.

*co-credit

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Doug McGrathFeature Films

Emma, 1996 (Writers Guild Awardnomination)Bullets Over Broadway*, 1994 (WritersGuild Award nomination, AcademyAward nomination)Born Yesterday, 1993

TelevisionL.A. Law, 1989 (one episode)Saturday Night Live, 1980–81

TheaterPolitical Animal, 1996The Big Day, 1990

Douglas McGrath is a contributingeditor to The New Republic and haswritten essays for The Nation, TheNew Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The NewYork Times Book Review.

*co-credit

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Woman of the Year: The Writer’s Cut

The original ending of Woman of the Year never made it to the final cut. We areprinting it here for the first time. We are grateful to Grace Ressler of Warner Bros.for helping us secure permission to reprint this ending.

Preceding the ending, Lardner talks about how the screenplay was written, andwhy the ending was changed. The following is from an interview that took placewith Ring Lardner, Jr. on October 10, 1996, and March 1, 1997, in New York City.

ON WRITING: What is Woman of theYear about?

LARDNER: It’s a story of a relation-ship, a love story, between a man andwoman who work for the same news-paper. He’s a fairly tough-mindedsportswriter and she’s a politicalcolumnist. She writes something aboutgiving up things like baseball for theduration of the war and he is prettyshocked by this. They attack each otherin their columns. Then they meet in themanaging editor’s office and aredelighted with each other’s appearanceand manner. They quite abruptly decideto get married, and the problems oftheir life together continue after theirmarriage.

It reaches a climax when she asks ifhe’s ever thought about having a child.He gets very excited about the idea andthinks she’s saying she’s pregnant. Itturns out that she’s brought home aGreek orphan for them to adopt. Andthis is not his idea at all of the way tohave a child. At the same time, she isvoted Woman of the Year by anorganization and she prefers to go tothe ceremony rather than stay home to

take care of the child. Sam decides totake the child back to the adoptionagency. The child is actually veryhappy to get back with his friendsbecause he wasn’t happy at all in theirhouse. When she comes home fromhaving been declared Woman of theYear and getting all these honors, shefinds the child is gone, and her husbandhas gone. That’s where this endingbegins.

ON WRITING: What’s the ending theyused in the movie?

LARDNER: When she finds he’s gone,she realizes how much she cares forhim and decides to do a completeswitch. She gets into his new apartmentby telling the doorman she’s his wife.Then she starts to cook him breakfast—which she knows nothing about—and makes terrible mistakes. He wakesup and finds her botching this job offixing breakfast. Finally he asks herwhat all this is about. She says shewants to just be his wife. He says hedoesn’t want to be married to just TessHarding anymore than he wants to bemarried to just Mrs. Sam Craig. And he

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says, “How about being Tess HardingCraig?” She says she thinks it’s awonderful name.

ON WRITING: They kept the finalspeech of your original ending.

LARDNER: Yes. But it was almost aslapstick ending because she does somevery improbable things. It’s improbablethat she doesn’t know anything aboutcooking an egg or making coffee. Itwas done more for laughs than any-thing else and it had the effect ofsaying she was overboard in being acareer woman. In effect, it was sayingthat a woman’s place is in the home.

Mike [Kanin] and I kept in pretty closetouch with the picture until it seemedfinished. We saw the finished, editedversion and went off to New York for avacation. When we came back wefound that they had decided to changethe ending with a version written byJohn Lee Mahin. They allowed us tochange a few things and rewrite somelines, but we couldn’t get back to ourown ending or work out somethingdifferent. We didn’t like the fact that itseemed kind of anti-woman in the end.

ON WRITING: Why did they decide tochange the ending?

LARDNER: They said there was apreview and that some of the previewcards seemed to say the woman shouldget more of a comeuppance. But I gotthe impression that this was not somuch what any preview audiencethought as what Louis B. Mayer andJoe Mankiewicz and George Stevensall thought. Katharine Hepburn agreedwith us. She liked the original ending

better. But she was under contract tomake this picture and to do it the waythe producer and director said. And soalthough she agreed with us—and stilldoes—that the original ending wasbetter, she had to go along with it.

ON WRITING: What about SpencerTracy? What did he think?

LARDNER: I don’t think I ever dis-cussed it with him. I’m sure she did,but he was also pretty used to doingwhat he was told at the studio.

ON WRITING: Where did you get theidea for Woman of the Year?

LARDNER: It was Garson Kanin whoknew Katherine Hepburn—actually, hewas kind of in love with her at the time.As a matter of fact, she asked me oncewhether she should marry him, al-though he was several years youngerthan she was. He thought of casting heras a newspaper columnist like DorothyThompson, who was Sinclair Lewis’swife and the only woman columnist atthat time. Gar was going into the armyso he mentioned this idea to MikeKanin and me, and the three of usworked out the character of the sports-writer on the same newspaper. Mikeand I developed a story, talked it out asa movie, and then decided to write it asa novella told by the sportswriter in thepast tense. Gar mailed the novella toHepburn, who was in Connecticut, andshe responded very enthusiastically.She called Louis B. Mayer and had ussend a copy to MGM. When MGMexpressed an interest, Kate said shewanted $211,000 for the thing.

ON WRITING: Why $211,000?

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LARDNER: She said $100,000 forherself, $100,000 for the screenplaywhich we would write, $10,000 to payher agent, and $1,000 for her expensescoming from Hartford. And theyagreed to it. Our names were not on thescript so there was a lot of speculationat MGM. They thought it was Hechtand MacArthur who for some contrac-tual reason or something didn’t wanttheir names on it. But they were kind ofsurprised when they found out it wastwo pretty obscure writers who hadgotten very low salaries at their lastjobs.

ON WRITING: Did Hepburn give thescript to Joe Mankiewicz to produce?

LARDNER: She sent it to Mayer.Mayer may have passed it on to JoeMankiewicz to read first. Joe had beena writer who had become a producer.He wanted to be a director, which heeventually was, but Mayer told him heshould be a producer, saying, “Youhave to learn to crawl before you canwalk.”

ON WRITING: He produced The Phila-delphia Story, which was Hepburn’scomeback vehicle.

LARDNER: Right. I think it wasprobably Kate’s idea to get GeorgeStevens, who was not a Metro directorbut mainly worked for RKO andParamount. He had directed one of herpictures and she particularly liked him.

ON WRITING: Was it Alice Adams?

LARDNER: I think it was, yes.

ON WRITING: So you got $100,000. Inthe realm of what people were gettingpaid for scripts in 1941—

LARDNER: It was the largest sum paidfor an original screenplay to that date.

ON WRITING: Who had the clout thatgot MGM to agree to do this?

LARDNER: Hepburn.

ON WRITING: Was she that big a starafter Philadelphia Story?

LARDNER: Yes. And they very muchwanted a picture for her. Then SpencerTracy, whom we had not thought of,was doing a picture called The Yearlingwhen production on it was called off.As a matter of fact, it was later donewith Gregory Peck and another direc-tor. But they had already startedshooting so MGM had Spencer Tracyon salary and no vehicle for him. Thatwas another lucky thing that madethem anxious to go ahead with the dealand get the script as soon as possible.

ON WRITING: Who were you thinkingof when you wrote it?

LARDNER: Because of MGM wethought Gable was more likely.

ON WRITING: Hepburn and Gabletogether would have been…

LARDNER: Well, Hepburn and Tracyworked very well. Of course they hadnot met before. I think their attractionfor each other showed in the film.

ON WRITING: Just as a footnote, howdid Garson Kanin feel about helping tocreate the vehicle by which he lostHepburn to Spencer Tracy?

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LARDNER: I don’t know. He went intothe army, so I didn’t see him during thetime the picture was being made. Ithink he probably realized it was a veryunlikely thing with Kate. Although, as Isaid, she did say to me, what do youthink? I don’t think she ever took it tooseriously or that she was in love withhim.

ON WRITING: I gather this was beforeRuth Gordon.

LARDNER: It wasn’t much before RuthGordon. Two years maybe. He was stillin the army when he married.

ON WRITING: How was the scriptwritten, you worked with Mike andwith Hepburn?

LARDNER: Mike and I worked mainlyat his house at first, I think, until wefinished a first draft screenplay, andthen we moved into the MGM offices.But Kate sat in on several sessions, andshe suggested a number of things.

ON WRITING: I noticed in the scriptyou were very specific about camerashots in a way that would be unusualfor a screenplay nowadays.

LARDNER: We meant to do that onlywhen they seemed particularly relevantto getting a point across. Although weknew that the director was not going tofollow them literally, it was just easierto describe what we wanted empha-sized by sometimes saying, go from aclose-up of her to a shot of him. Forinstance, in the first scene of theending, the camera pulls back fromSam’s side of the bed and picks upTess’s. We wanted it to be the tele-phone ringing and just seeing that

empty side, and then seeing her occupyit. Now, I don’t remember if Stevensshot it that way.

ON WRITING: Also during the fightsequence you were very explicit: two-shot, wide shot… Did writers do thatmore then than they do now? Or wasthat just something that you decided todo for this script?

LARDNER: No, I think it was moregeneral. There were writers, of course,such as playwrights who came out toHollywood and hadn’t worked inmovies before. They would write ascript more or less like a play, and thenthe secretary would put it in screenplayform. But screenwriters who worked inmovies all the time tended to think invisual terms and what they thought theaudience should see. They wouldindicate that by the camera directions—knowing, as I said, that the direc-tions wouldn’t be literally executed. Ithink there was more of that in thosedays than there is today.

ON WRITING: Do you do that in yourmore recent screenplays?

LARDNER: I think I do less of it—onlywhere it seems very important to makea point about how the audience shoulddiscover something. Also in myexperience I’ve found, as some otherwriters have, that some directors havereacted badly to seeing this stuff inscripts and I’ve made a point of notdoing it.

ON WRITING: Was that true in the’40s, or less true?

LARDNER: It was less true. But I thinkonly some directors react that way.

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ON WRITING: In this script there’s a lotof dialogue in dialect, particularly inthe scenes in the gym.

LARDNER: It seemed particularlyimportant there because we wanted it tosound like a foreign language to Tess.And so we wrote the particular gram-matical and pronunciation mistakesmore specifically than we perhapswould have if there hadn’t been thisfactor of hearing it through Tess’s ears.

ON WRITING: Did you and Mike hangaround gyms? Did you do research?

LARDNER: Well, I was never a sports-writer myself, but both my father andmy older brother were. I was kind ofinterested in boxing and had talked tosome fighters. Also, in the course ofworking on a newspaper in New Yorkand occasionally going to the fights—they had fights in Hollywood and Iremember I went sometimes withBudd Schulberg and his father, B. P.Schulberg, who went weekly. So Iprobably picked up some of it there.My recollection is that I was the onewho did the main writing of thatdialogue, and Mike Kanin wasn’t asfamiliar with that as I was.

ON WRITING: How long did it take towrite the script?

LARDNER: Not too long because as Isaid we had worked it out in quite a bitof detail scene by scene. I would saythe first draft took about six weeks.Both Stevens and Mankiewicz hadsuggestions. And we did revisions atthe studio.

ON WRITING: Were you on set duringfilming?

LARDNER: MGM signed us to acontract—paying us each $1,000 aweek—and we started working onanother script. But because we were onthe lot we could walk onto the setanytime while they were shooting, andwe did. And sometimes Stevens wouldconsult us about a problem with a lineor a situation.

ON WRITING: What was the develop-ment process then? Or, was there adevelopment process then?

LARDNER: Not anything formal. It wassimply that you listened to what theproducer and the director had to sayeither together or separately. And youweren’t bound to accept everythingthey said.

ON WRITING: Was this an unusualsituation with Woman Of the Year interms of you and Michael being able tostay on the movie for the whole movie?Were writers kept on a movie, or werethey reassigned to different scripts?

LARDNER: Writers were reassigned,and many different writers wereassigned to the same script. Woman ofthe Year was exceptional in the sensethat we had a certain amount of powerthrough Hepburn and through the factthat the script had been received sowell. There was never any question ofanybody else working on it until theending thing happened. But there weremany times that a whole succession ofwriters worked on a project. Gone Withthe Wind was probably the mostextreme case.

ON WRITING: Is it true that in thestudio system the directors weren’tinvolved with editing the film?

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LARDNER: Some directors, even inthose days, had first cut. CertainlyGeorge Stevens did because he wasconsidered an important director. Alsohe had been a cameraman before hewas a director and knew a lot aboutediting. But some lesser directorsdidn’t have those privileges and thestudios preferred to just have theireditors take instructions from theproducer. And then you had extremecases like David Selznick who wouldreally supervise every bit of the editinghimself and run the film constantlywith different arrangements of editing.He really worked with a project fromthe first script and rewriting, trying tochange it through every phase of theproduction.

ON WRITING: On every movie, notjust Gone with the Wind? He wasalways like that?

LARDNER: Oh, yes.

ON WRITING: Was Mankiewicz anintrusive producer?

LARDNER: Not very. He was a littleuncomfortable being a producer, Ithink. Joe did some rewriting on thescript and strangely enough, unlikemost producers’ rewriting, it wasalways adding dialogue. Although hewas quite a good writer, his scenes hadmuch more dialogue than ours andlonger speeches. In almost every casewe persuaded him to go back to whatwe had or to cut a lot of what he hadrewritten. But it was the only time Iever had the problem of a producertrying to pad the lines.

ON WRITING: They usually tried to cutthe lines?

LARDNER: Yeah.

ON WRITING: Do you think that washis style as a writer as well?

LARDNER: I don’t know. When hebecame a writer-director and directedhis own stuff, I don’t think there wasany sense of it being overwritten. Ithink as he started directing he realizedthe value of having shorter speeches.

ON WRITING: What’s your favoritepart of writing? Does story come easilyto you?

LARDNER: I haven’t written manyoriginal screenplays, and a couple that Iwrote never got made. I think the mostinteresting part is working out scenes andtrying to tell things in visual terms.Trying—in many cases where I’veadapted books—to find ways of chang-ing things that are expressed only indialogue or description to something thatis what the audience sees on the screen.

ON WRITING: You’ve also writtennovels and a family memoir. Is itharder to go back to prose?

LARDNER: It’s a question of just doingwhat you’re supposed to do. I certainlythink differently about the effect. In anovel, I’m thinking of the effect of aparticular word or a turn of phrase andhow a reader will react to that. This isespecially true in a comic or satiricalnovel like the The Ecstasy of OwenMuir where the language is veryimportant to the points I’m trying to getacross. ■

On Writing ■ 35

Woman of the Year

Original Ending

FADE IN:

INT. TESS’S BEDROOM - NEXT MORNING - CLOSE SHOT TELEPHONE

At Sam’s side of the bed. The telephone is ringing. CAM-ERA PULLS BACK to disclose that Sam’s side of the bed hasnot been slept in. The CAMERA PICKS UP Tess asleep on herside. The telephone’s ringing awakens her. She reachesacross Sam’s pillow to answer phone.

TESS(into phone)

Hello...who’s calling him? Oh, yes, Mr.Whitaker. No...no, Sam isn’t here.He’s...well, he’s out...

(in disturbed surprise)He hasn’t?

(then)Have you asked in Pinkie’s?

INT. PINKIE’S - CLOSE SHOT - PHIL AND PINKIE

both standing by the phone into which Phil is talking.

PHIL(into phone)

I’m there now. Pinkie was with him lastnight, but he hasn’t shown anywhere since.

PINKIEI shouldn’t of left him go.

PHILQuiet.

(into phone)What?...Yeah, we got his column in. Put ittogether out of some stuff from his files.

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PINKIEI should of knocked him cold, even.

PHILQuiet.

(into phone)We’ve got to find that guy, Mrs. Craig --he’s got a feature to do on that fighttonight! Haven’t you any idea....

INT. TESS’S APARTMENT - CLOSE SHOT - TESS

She is worried and embarrassed. Sam’s disappearance isvery upsetting to her, but is also a problem she wouldlike to solve privately and without public knowledge.

TESSWell...well, not entirely... You see, hespent the night with some friends in --Westchester. I’m quite sure he’ll be backin time....

INT. PINKIE’S - CLOSE - PHIL AND PINKIE

Phil covers the mouthpiece with his hand and turns toPinkie, puzzled.

PHILShe thinks he spent the night inWestchester--

(into phone)Look, Mrs. Craig, this is a very importantstory! Prize fights may be a frightfulwaste of energy, but about two hundredthousand readers want to know what SamCraig thinks about the one tonight! Theminute you hear from him...

INT. TESS’S APARTMENT - CLOSE SHOT - TESS

She is very determined now. She sees her course aheadclearly.

On Writing ■ 37

TESSStop worrying, Mr. Whitaker. Sam will gethis story in on time. By the way, who’sfighting tonight?(pause — while Phil bellows his answer.She holds the phone away from her alittle distastefully)

I’m sorry, Mr. Whitaker, it seems I didn’tknow it was a world’s championship. Whatworld, Mr. Whitaker?

(she hangs up, dials another number,and makes a note as she waits)

Tess Harding, please...hello, Gerald. I’mcoming right in. Go down to the morgue andget me all the clippings on...

(referring to her note)Al Dunlap...what? Where’ve you been allyour life? He’s fighting the champion to-night...

(slight pause)How should I know which champion? Getthose clippings for me...

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. ACME GYM - DAY - FULL SHOT

A huge barn of a place. Two regulation rings dominatethe center. The rear of the gym is full of fighters ex-ercising and boxing, and that strange and colorful setof characters without which no professional gym would becomplete...big and small-time managers, trainers, ex-pugs, gamblers, casual gapers, chiselers and chiselerswho chisel the chiselers.

SHOT OF THE ENTRANCE -

This is a large archway leading to the outercorridor...guarded by a gnarled mastiff of a man.

Tess appears and stops hesitantly at the sight of theweird bedlam inside. A fighter, clad only in trunks andperspiration, comes hurrying out, puffing like a bellows.Tess jumps aside to let him pass. A few men circle her ontheir way in. Finding herself blocking traffic, Tesstakes a deep breath and starts in.

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DOOR ATTENDANTHey!

(as Tess stops and turns to him)Where ya goin’?

TESSI...I’m from the Chronicle.

DOOR ATTENDANTSince when?

(Tess takes her press pass from herhandbag and hands it to him. He holdsit off, and reads it not without aneffort)

Tess...Harding.(looking up)

Who’s ‘at?

TESSThat’s me.

DOOR ATTENDANT(handing back pass)

Outside.

TESS(a bit ruffled)

I’m afraid you don’t seem to...

A red-faced man with a stuffy piece of cigar in his mouthappears.

RED-FACEWhat’s up?

DOOR ATTENDANTSome dame...crashin’.

RED-FACE(to Tess)

What’s on yer mind, sister?

TESS(a bit angry now)

Look here, I’ve come to interview Mr.Dunlap...

RED-FACE(to Door Attendant)

Outside.

On Writing ■ 39

TESSIt’s an important story! Sam Craig sentme...

At the mention of Sam’s name, their faces brighten. Theyunhand her.

RED-FACESam Craig? You his sec’etary or somethin’?

TESSI’m his wife or somethin’.

RED-FACE(pumping her hand heartily)

So you’re the doll!! Pleased t’ meet’cha.(to Door Attendant)

What’sa matter wit’cha. It’s Missus Craig.

DOOR ATTENDANT(defensively)

She gimme a fake name.

RED-FACE(to Tess)

Come on in.

A loud bell rings throughout the gym. Tess looks aroundblankly.

SHOT - FROM TESS’S ANGLE -

All over the place men start into action, at the sound ofthe bell...whatever they’re doing they snap from relax-ation into full speed.

TWO SHOT - TESS AND RED-FACE

He follows her puzzled glance.

RED-FACEDey all work out like in real fights.Three minutes goin’...one restin’.

He leads her inside. CAMERA DOLLIES AHEAD.

RED-FACESam’s been sellin’ ya all over the joint.No more’n he unbuttons his kisser, he’ssendin’ on ya...

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TESS(doesn’t understand a word)

I beg your pardon?

A group of men leer at Tess as she passes.

RED-FACE(to the men)

Can it, y’ lugs...she’s Sam Craig’smissus.

They immediately tip their hats.

TESS(trying to be expert)

Tell me, do you think Dunlap’s going towin the fight?

RED-FACE(astounded at this question)

Dunlap? One’ll get ya ten. They’re namin’the round he kisses the canvas.

TESS(completely confused)

I’m terribly sorry. I just don’t under-stand a word you’re saying.

RED-FACEIt’s the noise in here.

(speaking louder)Dunlap’s got moxie t’ threw ‘way...but nopins.

TESSNo pins.

RED-FACEYeah, no pins...they fold ‘round the sixt’frame.

VOICEHey, Pete..!

RED-FACE(calling off)

Comin’!(to Tess)

The joint’s yours. Anybody get outa line,speak up. See ya ‘round.

On Writing ■ 41

TESS(gulps)

See ya’ round.

The red-faced man leaves her and Tess starts walkingaround the place, CAMERA FOLLOWING. She feels like Alicein Wonderland.... Five fighters in one of the rings, eachshadow-boxing individually, confound her for a fewmoments...a tough mug skipping rope with the grace of adancer...the rat-a-tat of the small punching bags, art-fully manipulated. The snatches of conversation she over-hears are, for once, in a language she doesn’t know.

VOICESThey turn in the towel, an’ it wuz on’y agash over the right peeper...Sweat dat lard off yer basket.I ast for a welter... I get bantams,feathers, flies...

At this point, when Tess is most bewildered, she spots awoman sitting and knitting complacently on the other sideof the gym. She’s the only other woman in the place, andTess makes a bee-line toward her...as to an oasis. AsTess approaches and sidles close to her, the woman looksup without interrupting her knitting and smiles...afriendly smile. She’s a full-bosomed pleasant woman whosemany tribulations have not warped her practical goodsense. Tess smiles back and comes closer.

TESSSweater?

MRS. DUNLAPMm-hm.

TESSWhat long sleeves!

MRS. DUNLAP(rather proudly)

He’s got an eighty-three-inch reach.

TESS(doesn’t quite understand, but

it sounds impressive)My!

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Just then, the bell rings again. Like all the fighterswho stop for their minute’s rest, Mrs. Dunlap puts downher knitting, too, and turns her attention to Tess. Tessis intrigued by this conditioned reaction...it tells somuch about the woman.

TESSMind if I sit with you?

MRS. DUNLAPI wish you would.

(as Tess does so)Your first visit here, isn’t it?

TESS(smiling)

I didn’t think it would be so obvious.(then)

I’ve come to interview Al Dunlap. I wonderif you could tell me which one he is?

MRS. DUNLAP(smiling)

Well, just look for the sweetest puss inthe whole place...that’ll be Al’s.

(as Tess begins to understand)I’m his wife...so maybe I shouldn’t be theone to talk.

TESSOh... you most certainly should.

(then warmly)I’m so glad to know you, Mrs. Dunlap. I’mTess...that is, Mrs. Craig...Mrs. SamCraig.

MRS. DUNLAP(pleasantly surprised)

You’re not!(then)

Why me an’ Al read his column more thanany.

(solicitously)He sick or somethin’?

TESSWell...sort of.

On Writing ■ 43

MRS. DUNLAPTch...too bad.

(then)But it’s sure nice you’re able to fill infor him when he’s laid up.

(laughingly)Wish I could do that much for Al.

A small boy, about nine, comes running up...he’s dressedin a gym suit and has large ten-ounce gloves on hishands.

DICKMa...Bobby don’ wanna box no more.

MRS. DUNLAPYou better leave him rest now... he’s onlya little boy. Go punch the bags some more.

(as the boy turns to go)Dick, say hello to Mrs. Craig.

TESSHello, Dick.

DICK(shyly)

‘lo.

He runs away. The two women smile.

MRS. DUNLAPImagine! Al wanted to take them to thefight tonight...got two extra tickets an’all. If I’d of let him, he’d take thebaby, too.

(then)Where you sitting?

TESSSitting?

MRS. DUNLAPAt the fight.

TESSI don’t know... I haven’t arranged...

MRS. DUNLAP(pleased)

Well, I’d love to have you sit with me ifyou’d care to.

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TESSI’d be glad to.

(looking off)How old are your children, Mrs. Dunlap?

MRS. DUNLAPNine, six, an’ ten months. We only had thelittle one because we wanted a girl. He’sa boy, too.(the bell rings and she resumes her knitting)

You got any children, Mrs. Craig?

TESS(somewhat embarrassed)

No...no, I haven’t

MRS. DUNLAPGuess you’ve got your hands full with theone you married.

(as Tess looks at her)Mr. Craig, I mean. They’re all just over-grown kids.

(smiling and pointing o.s.)Look at mine over there...showing off hismuscles.

SHOT OF AL DUNLAP - FROM TESS’S ANGLE

He’s at one of the light bags, posing for a newspaperphotographer...pulling in his slightly bulging midriff,and flexing his biceps. He’s past thirty...with a nicethough battered face.

SHOT OF TESS AND MRS. DUNLAP

They’re looking at Al Dunlap o.s. Tess turns and staresat the unashamed love and tenderness glowing in Mrs.Dunlap’s eyes...and is deeply moved.

MRS. DUNLAP(still looking off)

And it wasn’t six months ago, he came homeone night an’ cried like a baby...ashamed‘cause he couldn’t make a living.Somebody’s called him a has-been.Imagine...feeling like a has-been atthirty-three.

On Writing ■ 45

TESSHow did you do it?

MRS. DUNLAPOh, I just fed him, an’ kissed him...an’got him a fight. I made him think he couldwin it...an’ he did. That’s all.

TESSIt seems like a great deal.

MRS. DUNLAP(shaking her head)

No more than what you’re doin’ right now,is it?

TESS(a confusion of emotions)

I...suppose not.

MRS. DUNLAP(looking off toward Dunlap)

Big lug! When he tries to say he loves mean’ don’t know how, I get the feelin’ I’m‘way ahead by plenty of points.

(suddenly taking Tess’ arm)Here he comes now.

SHOT OF GYM - FROM THE WOMEN’S ANGLE

Dunlap is coming toward them.

MRS. DUNLAP’S VOICEPlease don’t ask him too many questions.He gets flustered when he has to think toofast.

SHOT OF TESS AND MRS. DUNLAP

Tess, moved, shakes her head. Dunlap joins them. He’s apicture of childlike confidence.

MRS. DUNLAPFinished?

DUNLAPYeah.

MRS. DUNLAPYou were pushin’ with that left again,instead of hittin’.

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DUNLAPEddie ast me. He’s got a bad eye.

MRS. DUNLAP(turning to Tess)

This is Mrs. Craig...Sam Craig’s wife.She’s writing a piece about you.

DUNLAPYeah? Hi’ya.

He shakes Tess’ hand...Mrs. Dunlap watches proudly.

TESSHello.

There’s an awkward pause.

MRS. DUNLAP(to Tess, helpfully)

Maybe there’s just one thing you’d like toask him.

TESS(at a loss)

Yes, of course. How...how are your pins?

Tess doesn’t know what “pins” are. She’s relieved to findout when Al slaps his thighs exuberantly.

DUNLAPGreat! Never better! An’ y’ can say for meI’ll knock that guy kickin’ tonight.

MRS. DUNLAP(chidingly)

Now, hush up, Al. Leave the sayin’ toother people. You do it.

TESS(impulsively)

He’ll do it, all right.(as the Dunlaps looks at her in

happy surprise)Somehow, I’m sure he’ll...knock that guykickin’.

On Writing ■ 47

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. TESS’S OFFICE - DAY - CLOSE SHOT - TESS

at her work table, typing. This is a Tess whose everyfeminine instinct and emotion has been aroused by herexperience at the gym. It’s the first time she’s everfelt really sentimental and she’s making up for pastomissions with a vengeance. Tears form in her eyes as shetypes. Suddenly she interrupts, flips the lever up on herinter-office communications.

TESS(into communication)

Gerald, how do you spell ‘moxie’?

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. PINKIE’S - NIGHT - SHOT OF BAR

featuring the radio behind the bar, over which is comingthe broadcast of the fight. On his side of the bar Pinkieis leaning on his elbows, unhappy and nervous, not payingany attention to the broadcast. Opposite him two or threecustomers are listening attentively.

ANNOUNCER(over radio)

...There goes the bell for the end of thethird, and the crowd’s just as excited asif it was the main event. Both boys arereally digging in there...looks like thetitle bout might be an anti-climax...afterthis...

The telephone at the end of the bar rings. Pinkie springsout of his lethargy as he reaches over to turn down thevolume of the radio and rushes to the phone. The men atthe bar react in dismay at the radio being turned down.CAMERA FOLLOWS Pinkie into a close shot at the phone ashe picks it up.

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PINKIE(into phone)

Yeah...?(in joyous relief)

Sammy! Where are ya? Phil called me fromringside...says ya didn’t show up....Huh?..But, Sammy, it’s yer job. Ya gotta...

(plaintively)Sure, it’s none of my business. That’swhat I’m saying...it’s your business.

(slight pause)Okay, okay. Why did ya call me then,if...? Huh? San’wiches and coffee f’ four?...Yeah, I’ll send it right over. Whereto?

(his eyes widen in surprise)Mademoiselle Sylvia...! Who...where...?

(then instinctively, he crowdsthe phone and his voice drops to

almost a whisper)Look, Sammy, I ain’t buttin’ in, honest,but...

(then, with unhappy resignation)Okay, what’s the address?

He writes something on pad, as he says this. He hangs up,very disillusioned.

DISSOLVE TO:

FULL SHOT - EXT. - BROWNSTONE HOUSE

Pinkie gets out of cab, carrying his provisions. He paysthe taxi driver and looks up at house as he does so. Heslowly climbs steps and opens door.

INT. BROWNSTONE HOUSE -

SHOOTING from the head of the stairs toward the entrance.Pinkie comes up the stairs, and CAMERA PANS him to a dooropening on the corridor. He reads sign on door:

“Mademoiselle Sylvia - By appointment only”

He reacts, starts to knock, then straightens his tie, andthen knocks.

On Writing ■ 49

WOMAN’S VOICE(from within)

Come in.

He slowly opens the door, enters.

INT. MADEMOISELLE SYLVIA’S - NIGHT

Pinkie enters, still looking back at the sign. This is thefront room of the apartment, fixed up with a few tablesand desks to serve as a classroom. At present, Sam is theonly pupil. He sits, head in hands, pouring over a textbook and muttering to himself. There is a determined driv-ing expression about the set of his mouth. His tie isloose, his jacket off. He looks like he’s on the tail endof a bat. As a matter of fact, he is — yet through thescene he has that driving, over-correct speech of a manwho has been drunk but is still stubborn enough to carryon with what he started when drunk. At the table with himis Mademoiselle Sylvia, a Swiss woman in her late forties.She looks exhausted. On a couch, in almost virtual col-lapse is a Spanish looking gent.

SAM(as Pinkie enters)

Hyah, Pinko - thanks - put ‘em there.(back in book)

J’si - tu as - Il or elle a - nous avons(noo avon) vous avez (voo avey)

He does not run the “s” and the “a” together.

MADEMOISELLE SYLVIA(correcting him, wearily)

Vous avez (You have) - please remember.

PINKIE(exploding)

What gives out here? Sammy - the fight!The preliminaries are on already!

SAM(to Mademoiselle Sylvia)

Let me get this straight -(indicating Pinkie)

He’s a friend of mine - an intimate. So Idon’t use the “vous” (you) on him - I givehim the “tu” (thou) - right?

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MADEMOISELLE SYLVIAIf you are affectionate with him.

SAMI get it.

PINKIEAffectionate!

SAM(to the Spanish guy)

Is it the same in Spanish?

SPANISH TEACHER(rising wearily)

Senor, it is enough for today...no?

MADEMOISELLE SYLVIAThirteen hours, Mr. Craig. After so long -- it is difficult to assimilate and...

PINKIE(peers at Sam closely, then to

Mademoiselle)You got a liquor license, lady?

SAM(munching on a sandwich)

You’re on the wrong track, Pinkie. None ofthat for me any more.

(determinedly)Soon’s I get the hang of these two lan-guages, I’m going after German and Rus-sian.

PINKIE(gently)

Maybe we better call a doc, huh?

SAM(overriding him)

And if my tongue’ll stand the gaff, Imight even try Chinese. Got to know how totalk your way around to be important.

PINKIE(worried)

But ya are important, Sammy...

On Writing ■ 51

SAMMe...important? What did I everdo...except to put one empty word afteranother? But that’s all over with.

(as Pinkie tries to say something)Just wait and see, Pinkie...in a year,maybe less...I’ll have people hanging onmy words like mesmerized grapes.

PINKIE(almost frightened)

Sammy, cut it out, will ya? Ya ain’ttalkin’ human!

SAMI don’t want to be human...I want to beimportant!

(turning to Mademoiselle)Okay, let’s have at it again.

PINKIE(miserably)

I knew it...I knew somethin’ was wrongwith ya. When I read in your column how yapicked Dunlap...

SAM(wheeling)

Column? What column? Who picked Dunlap?

PINKIEYa know the guy’s washed up.

SAMWhat are you raving about?

PINKIE(taking a folded copy of the Chronicle

from his pocket)The stuff ya wrote today...here! Don’ charead it when ya write it?

Sam grabs the newspaper from Pinkie, and looks at it ap-prehensively.

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SAM(in slow horror)

Little Woman’s faith will win for Dunlap,says Craig. Love and the Comeback Trail...

(looks at Pinkie - stands upquickly, looks around for coat

and hat)I’ve got to get out of here.

MADEMOISELLE SYLVIAThe day’s tuition is eighteen dollars, Mr.Craig.

Sam hands paper to Pinkie and rips out check book andpen.

SAMRead me that story.

PINKIE(reading with difficulty)

Al Dunlap will whip the champion tonight -as surely as the puny power of muscle mustalways bow to that invincible spirit whichsprings from the tender, constant devotionof a woman for her man...

By this time even the Spanish teacher sits up, amazed.

SAM(signing check)

That’s enough!

He hands Mademoiselle the check and frantically collectshis coat and hat, straightens tie.

SAM(accusingly)

Who did it? Who wrote that tripe?

PINKIE(bewildered)

Who wrote it? Don’t do this to me, Sammy!

SAM(putting on his coat)

Was it Whitaker?

PINKIEWasn’t it you?

On Writing ■ 53

SAMLet’s go!

PINKIETo the fight — ?

SAM(as he goes out the door)

Yeah. There’s going to be an added attrac-tion tonight, but it can’t go on withoutme!

Pinkie hurries after him, as we --

DISSOLVE TO

INT. MANHATTAN ARENA - NIGHT - FULL ESTABLISHING SHOT

It’s filled to the rafters for a championship fight. Themain event is about to begin; the fighters, Al Dunlap andthe champion, are getting their instructions from thereferee.

CLOSE SHOT - TESS AND MRS. DUNLAP

sitting together about sixth row ringside. Mrs. Dunlap’seyes are fixed on her man in the ring, but Tess’s aresearching what she can see of the press row for Sam. Sud-denly her face lights up with joy and relief.

SHOT OF SAM AND PINKIE

walking down the aisle toward the ring. Pinkie reachesthe row his seat is in, gives Sam a farewell slap on theback and makes his way in toward his seat. Sam continuesdown the aisle, CAMERA DOLLYING in front of him. His hatis pulled down over his eyes and he’s trying generally tolook as inconspicuous as possible. His face is set ingrim resolution.

MED. SHOT - SECTION OF PRESS ROW

A half or dozen or so sportswriters, including Ellis andPhil Whitaker, are seen. Sam pauses in the aisle by thepress row. As he starts to make his way in -

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A MAN’S VOICEHere he is, boys...greatest little wifeand mother a newspaper ever had...

Sam stops and throws a cold glance along the press row.An uncertain baritone starts humming “Hearts and Flow-ers.” The cracks fall thick and fast about Sam’s ears ashe pushes his way toward his seat, which is about sixfrom the aisle.

AD LIBSBring a couple of extra handkerchiefsalong, Sam? In case it’s a long fight?

It won’t be. I don’t see how the champ canstand up under Dunlap’s tender, constantdevotion...

I hear Dunlap’s gonna lead with an invin-cible spirit to the heart...

...an’ get clipped with a puny power ofmuscle on the chin.

Sam reaches his seat between Ellis and Phil and sinksinto it gratefully.

ELLIS(as he sits)

It was beautiful, Sam. Best thing of itskind since little Goody Two-Shoes.

He and Phil both laugh. Sam is not amused.

SAM(to Phil)

Who did it?

PHILIt happened to me once. A feller dropped aMickey in my milk, and I picked Willard tomurder Dempsey in a round --

SAM(quietly)

I know it wasn’t you, because you’d knowbetter than to be here if it was — who didit?

On Writing ■ 55

PHILI know just how it happened. Everythingwent black, and when you came to - therewas that smoking pistol in your hand...

During the preceding, the ring has been cleared of sec-onds and the fighters stand up, waiting for the gong. Thegong sounds and Phil’s eyes turn to the ring. Sam takesone last look along the press row, then he, too, looks atthe fight.

CLOSE SHOT - TESS AND MRS. DUNLAP

Tess is straining to catch a glimpse of Sam. The suddenpressure of Mrs. Dunlap’s hand on her arm switches herattention to the ring.

LONG SHOT - RING

Dunlap rushes out with such speed and force that thechampion is thrown off his guard. The first four blowsare all Dunlap’s, and the last of these drops the champto the floor.

FLASH SHOT - SPORTSWRITERS

They react in astonishment, their glances switching in-voluntarily from the ring to Sam, who’s the most sur-prised of all.

FLASH SHOT - TESS AND MRS. DUNLAP

Now it’s Tess who’s gripping the other woman’s arm inexcitement.

LONG SHOT - RING

Dunlap’s in a neutral corner. The referee’s raising hisarm for the count of one when the champ bounces up to hisfeet again.

MED. SHOT - SPORTSWRITERS

featuring Sam and Phil. Sam is not any happier about itthan before. Phil pulls up his sleeve, and bares hisforearm.

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PHIL(pointing to a vein)

May I have a loan of your needle, Profes-sor?

Sam throws him and annoyed look.

DISSOLVE TO:

SHOT OF ROUND INDICATOR

above the ring. Number eight is lighted up.

CAMERA PANS DOWN to SHOT OF THE ring. Dunlap is stillholding his own.

THREE SHOT - SAM, PHIL, AND ELLIS

featuring Sam, who’s in the middle. Ellis is looking athim with genuine respect.

ELLISWho tipped you off, Sam?

SAM(impatiently)

Look, for the last time...I don’t knowanything about it. I didn’t...

Phil’s elbow digs sharply into his other side. Sam turns,looks around. CAMERA ANGLES to take in Tess who is stand-ing directly behind him.

TESS(smiling tentatively)

Hello, Mr. Craig. Remember me?

SAM(quietly)

Aren’t you a little off your beat?

TESSNo, I’m exactly where I should be.

Sam doesn’t get it...he stares at her, trying to figureher possible angle.

On Writing ■ 57

TESS (cont’d)Isn’t it wonderful...I mean, Dunlap win-ning?

SAMYeah...

TESSCertainly makes you a pretty smart picker.

SAMOh, so you read that column! Probably thefirst column of mine you ever read, andyou had to pick that one.

(Tess is confused)Now get this straight: I didn’t pickDunlap, and I wouldn’t have written thattear-jerking hokum at the point of a gun!

TESSSam — I wrote that story.

Phil gives them a quick look, and then, back to the ring:

PHILOh, brother.

Sam looks at Phil. Then, back to Tess. The ensuing sceneis played intimately, at first quickly and then growingwith the increasing clamor of the crowd about them.

SAM(coldly)

Why?

TESSWe didn’t know where you were. It had tobe written.

SAMThen why not tell Phil you didn’t knowwhere I was, and let him write it? OrEllis. Or anyone of a half dozen friendsof mine?

TESSBecause it wasn’t their job. It was mine.

SAM(incredulously)

Take it easy, Tess...you’re still writingthat column.

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58 ■ On Writing

TESSNo, darling, I’m trying to live it now.Meeting Mrs. Dunlap’s made everythingclear to me. I haven’t been a woman or awife or anything!

The crowd grows suddenly wild at the activity in thering. It mounts. Tess and Sam are forced to speak louder.

SAM(with heavy skepticism)

And now you know just how to go about it?

TESS(enthusiastically)

Yes, Sam...we’ll move out of the apart-ment, get a little house out of town some-where. I’ll make it a real home, honest.I’ll learn how to take care of it...andyou.

SAMAnd you’ll cook, sew and order the grocer-ies? Drive me to the station every morn-ing?

TESS(exultant now in the picture)

Yes, Sam -!

SAMYou’re not making sense.

TESSI am!

SAMYou’re confused. You can’t fix you and meup with an apron and a dusting cap. Forthe first time I’m a little disappointedin you.

TESSSam - it’s the answer. I know it is!

SAMNow you are off your beat. It won’t work!You can’t make it work, Tess!

On Writing ■ 59

TESS(like a candidate’s promise)

I’ll make it work! It’ll work just as sureas Al Dunlap will win this fight and bechampion of the world!

At this moment there is a screaming roar and the figureof Al Dunlap comes crashing through the ropes past CAMERAand sprawls at their feet. Tess and Sam, both look athim, Tess in horror and shock.

WIDER SHOT - RING - TESS AND SAM IN B.G.

The referee waves the champ back and is starting to counton the edge of the ring.

REFEREEOne - two - three - four - five - six -

TWO SHOT - TESS AND SAM

Tess is staring at Dunlap, her mouth open, Sam turns andlooks at her, a gentle, tender smile growing on his face.

REFEREE’S VOICESeven - eight - nine - ten!

By this time, Al is struggling dazedly to his feet. Sampats him on the back in affection. You can hear nothing inthe bedlam. The handlers arms come in and help him throughthe ropes o.s. Tess watches him go.

EFFECT SHOT - HER ANGLE - RING

Cops are trying to keep the crowd out. The referee hasthe champion’s arm raised. Mrs. Dunlap climbs through theropes and throws a mother’s arms around Dunlap.

TWO SHOT - TESS AND SAM

There are tears in Tess’s eyes. She suddenly covers herface with her hands. Sam takes her hand.

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60 ■ On Writing

SAM(gently)

Al will have a little headache, but a nicepiece of money goes with it. And he andMrs. Al are going to buy that farm up inthe country. And they’re going to live upthere - where they belong...

They stand. He turns to her.

SAM(smiling at her)

Why do you always go to extremes. Firstyou want to be just Tess Harding and nowyou want to be just Mrs. Sam Craig. What’swrong with Tess Harding Craig?

During his speech the sense of what he’s saying graduallygets over to Tess. It’s a big emotional adjustment, butshe makes it.

TESSI think it’s a wonderful name.

She looks at him adoringly and he responds in kind. Sud-denly she notices his hat.

TESS (cont’d)Sam, you’ve got a new hat.

Sam looks puzzled for a moment, raises his eye to thebrim. Then he takes it off and looks at it with growingdistaste.

TESS(with false enthusiasm)

I like it.

Sam gives her a suspicious glance. Searching his eyes,she realizes her faux pas. They both break into under-standing grins as Sam scales the hat away over the crowd.

FADE OUT

the end.

onwriting - brisbin...ring lardner, jr. maurice rapf with an introduction by doug mcgrath in this...

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