THE NEW AGE OF THE WRITER

The first principal sound film The Jazz Singer opened on the 6^th October 1927. It was the talkies from then on. That meant writing for the screen was to come into its own. The Screen Writers Guild was initially formed in 1921 by a group of ten screenwriters in Hollywood. It affiliated with the Authors Guild (founded 1912) in 1933.

In 1952, the Screen Writers Guild—which had been founded two decades before by three future members of the Hollywood Ten—authorized the movie studios to "omit from the screen" the names of any individuals who had failed to clear themselves before Congress. Writer Dalton Trumbo, for instance, one of the Hollywood Ten and still very much on the blacklist, had received screen credit in 1950 for writing, years earlier, the story on which the screenplay of Columbia Pictures’ Emergency Wedding was based. There would be no more of that until the 1960s. The name of Albert Maltz, who had written the original screenplay for The Robe in the mid-1940s, was nowhere to be seen when the movie was released in 1953. (see the second blog of 31^st January 2011)

This was not a particularly illustrious period for the Guild and I’m sure the leadership would be far more robust if anything similar were to happen today.

The Hollywood Ten:

▪   Alvah Bessie, screenwriter

▪   Herbert Biberman, screenwriter and director

▪   Lester Cole, screenwriter

▪   Edward Dmytryk, director

▪   Ring Lardner Jr., screenwriter

▪   John Howard Lawson, screenwriter

▪   Albert Maltz, screenwriter

▪   Samuel Ornitz, screenwriter

▪   Adrian Scott, producer and screenwriter

*  Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter

Each one of them is worth a visit.