Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Raymond Chandler (co-screenwriter on Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia, Strangers on a Train, etc.) (via latimes.com) On Hollywood: “Like every writer or almost every writer, who goes to Hollywood, I was convinced in the beginning that there must be some discoverable method of working in pictures which would not be completely stultifying to whatever creative talent one might happen to possess. But like others before me I discovered that this was a dream. Too many people have too much to say about a writer’s work. It ceases to be his own. And after a while he ceases to care about it. He has brief enthusiasms, but they are destroyed before they can flower. People who can’t write tell him how to write. He meets clever and interesting people, and may even form lasting friendships, but all this is incidental to his proper business of writing. The wise screenwriter is he who wears his second-best suit, artistically speaking, and doesn’t take things too much to heart. He should have a touch of cynicism, but only a touch. The complete cynic is as useless to Hollywood as he is to himself. He should do the best he can without straining at it. He should be scrupulously honest about his work but he should not expect scrupulous honesty in return. He won’t get it. And when he has had enough, he should say goodbye with a smile, because for all he knows he may want to go back.”

Raymond Chandler (co-screenwriter on Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia, Strangers on a Train, etc.) (via latimes.com)

On Hollywood:

“Like every writer or almost every writer, who goes to Hollywood, I was convinced in the beginning that there must be some discoverable method of working in pictures which would not be completely stultifying to whatever creative talent one might happen to possess. But like others before me I discovered that this was a dream.

Too many people have too much to say about a writer’s work. It ceases to be his own. And after a while he ceases to care about it. He has brief enthusiasms, but they are destroyed before they can flower. People who can’t write tell him how to write. He meets clever and interesting people, and may even form lasting friendships, but all this is incidental to his proper business of writing.

The wise screenwriter is he who wears his second-best suit, artistically speaking, and doesn’t take things too much to heart. He should have a touch of cynicism, but only a touch. The complete cynic is as useless to Hollywood as he is to himself. He should do the best he can without straining at it. He should be scrupulously honest about his work but he should not expect scrupulous honesty in return. He won’t get it. And when he has had enough, he should say goodbye with a smile, because for all he knows he may want to go back.”

Frances Marion (1915), the first woman to twice win an Academy Award for screenwriting & Hollywood’s highest paid screenwriter from 1917 to the mid-1930s “In her autobiography (Off With Their Heads), Frances Marion recounts how, amused by her letter requesting a screenwriting job at the then outrageous salary of $200 a week, producer William Fox granted her an interview, but when he sees her, he is mystified by her desire to write screenplays since she is good-looking enough to be an actress.  ‘Why does a pretty girl like you want to be a writer?’ he asks incredulously, and goes on to tell her how she would look in ‘the most expensive outfits they got at Saks Fifth Avenue, earrings, bracelets, no phonies, all real stuff.’  ‘Actresses -yes! They got glamour-‘ he says later, ‘but writers, the poor schliemiels! Now if you’re smart you’ll gamble on yourself. Easy, just like tossing a coin.’ ‘A coin, Mr. Fox, can only fall heads or tails,’ Frances Marion says she said, and even if it’s staircase wit, it should go down in history as the true shooting script, ‘and I’ll gamble on heads, they last longer.’” -Molly Haskell, Films of the 1920s

Frances Marion (1915), the first woman to twice win an Academy Award for screenwriting & Hollywood’s highest paid screenwriter from 1917 to the mid-1930s

“In her autobiography (Off With Their Heads), Frances Marion recounts how, amused by her letter requesting a screenwriting job at the then outrageous salary of $200 a week, producer William Fox granted her an interview, but when he sees her, he is mystified by her desire to write screenplays since she is good-looking enough to be an actress. 

‘Why does a pretty girl like you want to be a writer?’ he asks incredulously, and goes on to tell her how she would look in ‘the most expensive outfits they got at Saks Fifth Avenue, earrings, bracelets, no phonies, all real stuff.’  ‘Actresses -yes! They got glamour-‘ he says later, ‘but writers, the poor schliemiels! Now if you’re smart you’ll gamble on yourself. Easy, just like tossing a coin.’

‘A coin, Mr. Fox, can only fall heads or tails,’ Frances Marion says she said, and even if it’s staircase wit, it should go down in history as the true shooting script, ‘and I’ll gamble on heads, they last longer.’”

-Molly Haskell, Films of the 1920s


The rejection slip the motion picture studio Essanay Film Manufacturing Company (1907-1925) sent screenwriters whose submissions were found wanting. Essanay is best remembered today for its series of Charlie Chaplin films. (via Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture)

The rejection slip the motion picture studio Essanay Film Manufacturing Company (1907-1925) sent screenwriters whose submissions were found wanting. Essanay is best remembered today for its series of Charlie Chaplin films.

(via Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture)