Moving Pictures Read Online Free Page B
Author: Schulberg
along with Mary Pickford’s flamboyant brother Jack and the irrepressible Marshall (Mickey) Neilan.
Father in the year of my birth was ready to soar from a salary of two hundred dollars a week to a luxurious five hundred dollars. A writer with a facile, retentive mind, a flair for showmanship, and a sense of his own worth as a literate diamond in the murky field of illiteracy, he had come to the right business at the right moment, when it was growing out of its funky nickelodeon phase.
There was a stampede to “get into the movie game,” and if you couldn’t get a job in front of the camera as a featured player or as a five-dollar-a-day extra, or behind it as a director, cameraman, or technician, you could always try your hand at scribbling. When my father and mother wheeled my fancy carriage through Mt. Morris Park, they would be intercepted by passersby who had heard that young Schulberg was Edwin S. Porter’s Scenario Editor and would press on him their latest inspirations for Mary Pickford. Scenario writing became such a national madness that books on how to grind out these newfangled concoctions became bestsellers. While I was being pushed through that park, or being induced to eat with games like “Here we go down into the subway!” with my mouth encouraged to open to provide the subway entrance, associates of B. P. were writing books like The Reel Thing and The A. B.C. of Motion Pictures. In The Motion Picture Story, B.P.’s friend William Lord Wright advises, the trend of the motion picture is now upward, not downward, and the more refined one makes his stories the more will he contribute to the general uplift of cinematography…. Write of what you know; you have no business knowing anything about the seamy side of life. If you do know it, keep it to yourself.
As an example of an effective “heart-interest story,” Wrightrecommended Three Children, written by James Dayton and produced by Harry A. Pollard for the Universal Film Manufacturing Company. Here is the original synopsis:
Billy and Grandfather are ‘pals.’ One is not happy without the other. However, Billy’s mother is frequently annoyed by Grandfather’s old-fashioned ways and influences her husband to send Grandfather to the Old Folks’ Home. Grandfather realizes his son’s position and does not object. Billy misses Grandfather greatly. He visits him occasionally at the Old Folks’ Home. Grandfather tells Billy that he has no teeth, no hair, and can’t walk very well, and that Billy’s Pa and Ma cannot afford to have him around. A new baby comes to Billy’s home. Billy doesn’t think much of the new arrival, he would rather have his Grandfather. He notices the new baby has no teeth, no hair, and cannot walk so he resolves to trade it to the Old Folks’ Home for Grandpa. Grandfather brings Billy and the new baby home safely and Billy’s mother decides that all three children are indispensable to her happiness.
The book includes a 14-page shooting script, building to this climax:
SCENE 56. INTERIOR OF LIVING ROOM.
The husband and the wife both ashamed, uncomfortable—Billy brings grandfather in—asks his mother whether grandfather can’t stay and live with them—his mother smiles at her husband and goes to grandfather—shakes hands with him and asks him to stay—everyone happy—mother places the baby in grandfather’s arms—all fuss over the baby.
SUB-TITLE 16______THREE CHILDREN
CLOSE UP. Tint for firelight effect of the grandfather, Billy, and the baby lying on the couch asleep—
FADE OUT
That, says Mr. Wright, “is a good example of a heart-interest photoplay as written by a staff writer.”
These fustian little how-to books passed on to me by my father represent the missals of the new church of motion pictures into which Iwas born, and in which I was to be reared as an acolyte dedicated to the gospels of Porter and Griffith.
When the Screen Club presented its first Annual Ball in 1913, on the eve of my birth, it
Father in the year of my birth was ready to soar from a salary of two hundred dollars a week to a luxurious five hundred dollars. A writer with a facile, retentive mind, a flair for showmanship, and a sense of his own worth as a literate diamond in the murky field of illiteracy, he had come to the right business at the right moment, when it was growing out of its funky nickelodeon phase.
There was a stampede to “get into the movie game,” and if you couldn’t get a job in front of the camera as a featured player or as a five-dollar-a-day extra, or behind it as a director, cameraman, or technician, you could always try your hand at scribbling. When my father and mother wheeled my fancy carriage through Mt. Morris Park, they would be intercepted by passersby who had heard that young Schulberg was Edwin S. Porter’s Scenario Editor and would press on him their latest inspirations for Mary Pickford. Scenario writing became such a national madness that books on how to grind out these newfangled concoctions became bestsellers. While I was being pushed through that park, or being induced to eat with games like “Here we go down into the subway!” with my mouth encouraged to open to provide the subway entrance, associates of B. P. were writing books like The Reel Thing and The A. B.C. of Motion Pictures. In The Motion Picture Story, B.P.’s friend William Lord Wright advises, the trend of the motion picture is now upward, not downward, and the more refined one makes his stories the more will he contribute to the general uplift of cinematography…. Write of what you know; you have no business knowing anything about the seamy side of life. If you do know it, keep it to yourself.
As an example of an effective “heart-interest story,” Wrightrecommended Three Children, written by James Dayton and produced by Harry A. Pollard for the Universal Film Manufacturing Company. Here is the original synopsis:
Billy and Grandfather are ‘pals.’ One is not happy without the other. However, Billy’s mother is frequently annoyed by Grandfather’s old-fashioned ways and influences her husband to send Grandfather to the Old Folks’ Home. Grandfather realizes his son’s position and does not object. Billy misses Grandfather greatly. He visits him occasionally at the Old Folks’ Home. Grandfather tells Billy that he has no teeth, no hair, and can’t walk very well, and that Billy’s Pa and Ma cannot afford to have him around. A new baby comes to Billy’s home. Billy doesn’t think much of the new arrival, he would rather have his Grandfather. He notices the new baby has no teeth, no hair, and cannot walk so he resolves to trade it to the Old Folks’ Home for Grandpa. Grandfather brings Billy and the new baby home safely and Billy’s mother decides that all three children are indispensable to her happiness.
The book includes a 14-page shooting script, building to this climax:
SCENE 56. INTERIOR OF LIVING ROOM.
The husband and the wife both ashamed, uncomfortable—Billy brings grandfather in—asks his mother whether grandfather can’t stay and live with them—his mother smiles at her husband and goes to grandfather—shakes hands with him and asks him to stay—everyone happy—mother places the baby in grandfather’s arms—all fuss over the baby.
SUB-TITLE 16______THREE CHILDREN
CLOSE UP. Tint for firelight effect of the grandfather, Billy, and the baby lying on the couch asleep—
FADE OUT
That, says Mr. Wright, “is a good example of a heart-interest photoplay as written by a staff writer.”
These fustian little how-to books passed on to me by my father represent the missals of the new church of motion pictures into which Iwas born, and in which I was to be reared as an acolyte dedicated to the gospels of Porter and Griffith.
When the Screen Club presented its first Annual Ball in 1913, on the eve of my birth, it
Readers choose
Jewel Bella
K.A. Merikan
J.H. Knight
Gabrielle Lord
Lin Carter
Karin Tabke
Paul Kennedy
Ariadna Marrero Saavedra
Mary Kingswood
M. C. Beaton