William Faulkner, Screenwriter

by Stephen J. Gertz

A cache of screenplays by novelist William Faulkner is being offered by Bonham's - Los Angeles in its Fine Books and Manuscripts including Historical Photographs sale October 16, 2013. The trove comes from the Richard Manney collection via the late, great Serendipity Books of Berkeley.

You haven't lived until you've read Faulkner's hilariously contemptuous screenplay notes, i.e. "Lana tells Mary whatever sappy stuff we need here about love conquers all things, etc...."

Mimeographed Manuscript, dialogue cutting continuity script
of Today We Live, 121 pp, 4to, n.p., April 8, 1933,
in tan wrappers, the Dublin censor's copy, annotations
throughout in green, red and graphite pencil.

Today We Live is based on the Faulkner short story "Turn About," and is one of only two films based on an original story by the author, and the only screenplay based on his own work for which Faulkner received credit. Director Howard Hawks saw the piece in the Saturday Evening Post in March of 1932, bought the rights, and hired Faulkner to write the script. Soon after Faulkner turned in his first draft, Irving Thalberg asked that a part for Joan Crawford be created, since the star was available. Faulkner dutifully complied, and the film, now a love triangle between two WWI pilots and Crawford, went into production in late 1932.

The Dublin censor removed some seemingly inoffensive dialogue and imagery: a reference to sipping communion wine, a shot of a cockroach in a box, Crawford's character putting her head on her brother's shoulder.

Mimeographed Manuscript, final draft of Zero Hour,
140 pp, 4to, [Los Angeles], January 27, 1936
(with blue revision pages bound in as late as
February 2, 1936), in plain blue wrappers stamped
"Twentieth Century-Fox ... Stenographic Department"
and copy #32 to title page.

Faulkner and Joel Sayer developed the present script, originally titled Wooden Crosses, then Zero Hour, and finally released as The Road to Glory, between December of 1935 and early January of 1936. The film, set in France during World War I, details trench life during that conflict. During the same period, Faulkner finalized the manscript of his most complex novel, Absalom, Absalom!

The University of Virginia's Faulkner collection has a copy of the January 27 "final" screenplay, though theirs is apparently four pages longer than this one.

Mimeographed Manuscript, screenplay of The Last Slaver,
144 pp, 4to, [Los Angeles], December 3, 1936, in
blue Twentieth Century-Fox wraps stamped #1, with
initials to upper cover and annotations throughout
of studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck.

This is Darryl F. Zanuck's copy of The Last Slaver, with his initials to the upper cover and with his many annotations in ink throughout.

In July of 1936 Faulkner, his wife Estelle, and daughter Jill traveled from Mississippi to California for another swipe at the lucrative work of screenwriting, this time for Twentieth Century-Fox Studios. He was assigned to adapt The Last Slaver, based on a novel set on board a slave ship in 1845. The film would be released in 1937 as Slave Ship, starring Warner Baxter, Wallace Beery and Mickey Rooney; Faulkner received story credit for the film.

This copy is dated December 3, 1936, and though stamped "Final," a pencil notation indicates that it is not in fact the final draft. A penciled note at the lower right corner of the title page indicates this copy as the "Faulkner draft." The text is annotated throughout in pencil by Zanuck, editing dialogue and making important character suggestions ("Swifty should watch all this from a distance, taking no part").

The copy of The Last Slaver in the Carl Petersen Collection is identified as the revised final draft and bears the date of December 15, 1936 (with revisions as late as December 20). That copy is identified as the text of Faulkner's September 1936 draft minimally revised by Nunnally Johnson. The University of Virginia has Zanuck's copy of the September 24 and October 10 drafts of The Last Slaver. No other copies of a December 3 draft have been located.

Mimeographed Manuscript, first draft continuity
screenplay of Splinter Fleet, 130 pp, 4to,
[Los Angeles], December 22, 1936, in orange
Twentieth Century-Fox wrappers. WITH: Mimeographed
manuscript, shooting final screenplay of Splinter Fleet
(crossed out and re-titled in pen Submarine Patrol),
160 pp, 4to, [Los Angeles], June 23, 1938,
in tan Twentieth Century-Fox wraps stamped.

This is a rare draft of an early Faulkner screenplay, along with a copy of the shooting script.

In September of 1936, Darryl Zanuck assigned Faulkner to work on the dialogue Splinter Fleet, while Kathryn Scola was tasked with keeping an eye on the story line. Faulkner told Scola that producer Gene Markey had told him to "follow the story line, but I can't find the story line" (Blotner 373). Scola told Faulkner's biographer that the dialogue was "Good Faulknerian dialogue," but that it had little to do with the story at hand, as it seemed to relate more to aerial than naval warfare.

The presence of the later shooting final script here offers a rare chance to assess how much of Faulkner's work made it into the final script (Blotner claims nothing did).

The University of Virginia has a copy dated December 7, 1936 which is one page longer than this copy; no other copies of the December 22 version have been located.

Typed Carbon on yellow foolscap, treatment of
Drums Along the Mohawk, 26 pp, 4to, [Los Angeles],
March 14, 1937, housed in blue wraps bound with brads,
with typed title and date, marked "only copy" twice
at upper margin and with ownership signature of
assistant producer Ben Silvey to upper right corner.

On March 12, 1937, Faulkner began an extended assignment for Twentieth Century-Fox Studios (Blotner p 954). Three days later he turned in this 26-page breakdown of Walter D. Edmonds' best-selling novel, Drums Along the Mohawk. Never a fan of studio work, Faulkner injects a fair amount of contempt into this treatment. From page 21: "McKlennar's house. Two Indians enter the house, set fire to it, kill Mrs. McKlennar, find Lana in bed with her child which is about three years old. They tell her the house is on fire. They are drunk. Lana forces the Indians to carry the wedding bed outside of the house. Lana gets into it again with the child. The two drunken Indians are finally driven away by the child. This will be comedy. Lana lies in bed and watches the house burn." If that's not clear enough, in his final paragraph, as the next generation is taking up the challenge of settling the new frontier, he writes, "Lana tells Mary whatever sappy stuff we need here about love conquers all things, etc...."

The University of Virginia has a mimeographed version of this treatment bearing the same date, but no typescript or other typed carbons have been located.

Mimeographed Manuscript, dialogued treatment titled
Drums Along the Mohawk, 248 pp, 4to, [Los Angeles],
July 3, 1937, housed in blue Twentieth Century-Fox
wraps bound with brads, upper cover marked "only copy."

Faulkner's full-length adaptation of Edmond's novel: From March until mid-June of 1937 Faulkner worked on this "dialogued treatment," which includes a detailed list of characters with description, a sequence-by-sequence breakdown of location, and a 238 pp screenplay. After he turned this treatment in, Faulkner was taken off the project and Lamar Trotti and Sonia Levien took over (and earned final screen credit).

Walter Edmonds' novel of the hardships endured by settlers of the Mohawk Valley in the 1700s was a runaway bestseller in 1936. Faulkner was something of a logical choice to adapt the book, given his experience writing about rural life and tensions between cultures. The contempt evident in the short treatment (See lot 2301) is no longer present here. He apparently takes the assignment seriously, crafting the long novel into a workable three act structure. Among other things, he boils down Edmonds' long subplot of servant girl Nancy Schuyler's loss of innocence and later marriage to an Indian into a single scene: after a brave surprises Nancy at a stream, the two engage in a silent dance: "CLOSE SHOT OF BOTH -- Nancy shrinks slowly back, as the Indian lifts her shawl away and touches her hair. He takes it up and examines it with interest and admiration. He gestures and speaks to Nancy in Indian. Nancy stares at him. The Indian gestures to her to get up. She doesn't move. He takes her arm and helps her up, stands facing her, takes her hair into his hands again, speaks to her in Indian. Nancy's terror goes away. He takes a small pouch from his shoulder and hands it to her, still speaking. She takes the pouch, staring at him stupidly. He taps his chest, then he taps Nancy's speaking Indian. He hangs the pouch over Nancy's shoulder, points toward the forest, advances, stops, looks back, beckons. Nancy follows him. He looks down at her feet, speaks again, approaches, takes from the pouch a pair of mocasins, drops them at Nancy's feet. She sits down and puts them on, the Indian watching. he beckons again. She rises. He turns into the forest, Nancy following."

No copies of this treatment appear in WorldCat, though the Morgan library has later treatments by Trotti and Levien that are purportedly based on this one. This script provides the unique opportunity once and for all for scholars to determine the extent of Faulkner's contribution to the final film.

Mimeographed Manuscript, final screenplay of
The Bouncer and the Lady, 134 pp, 4to, [Los Angeles],
April 7, 1941 (blue revision pages dated as late as
April 19, 1941 bound in), in blue Twentieth Century-Fox
steno department wraps, stamped #21 to title page.

In March of 1939 Faulkner worked for two days on a project titled Dance Hall, before being once more listed by the studio as "unassigned." The film was released four years later under the original title of Dance Hall and starred Carole Landis and Cesar Romero.

Typed Carbon titled "Battle Cry—Hawks,"
144 pp, 4to, [Los Angeles], April 21, 1943,
treatment in prose and screenplay format,
moderate thumbing to leaves, housed in
plain blue wraps with typed title, story
department stamp, and penciled annotations
to upper right corner ("rec'd Geller9/16/43".

Faulkner's original story treatment of Battle Cry. Following Howard Hawks to Warner Bros., Faulkner was assigned to Battle Cry in early 1943. The film was to celebrate the U.S. and its allies in the world war. Hawks and Faulkner roughed out an outline, and Faulkner completed this 144 pp treatment on his own by late April. This draft was scrapped, however, and so Faulkner began again, completing a 231 pp script by June, at which point screenwriter Steve Fisher was brought in to collaborate.

Faulkner was excited about the prospect of an epic like Battle Cry making it to the screen, not the least because it would help restore the four-figure screenwriting salary he so desperately needed. The project, however, was canceled by Jack Warner, either because director Howard Hawks clashed with the studio exec, it was too sympathetic to the Soviets, or just too expensive to mount.

The 231 page expanded story treatment and the second temporary screenplay of Battle Cry were published in volume IV of Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection (Oxford, MS: 1985), but this, the first treatment, remains unpublished.

Mimeographed Manuscript, revised final screenplay
of The Left Hand of God, 140 pp, 4to, [Los Angeles],
July 18, 1952, in plain blue wrappers stamped
"Please return to RKO Story Files" and "20" at
lower right, minor toning to leaves, light staining
to upper and lower wraps. WITH: HAYES, ALFRED.
Mimeographed manuscript, final draft of The Left
Hand of God, 135 pp, 4to, [Los Angeles], February 22,
1955 (blue revision pages dated as late as
June 7, 1955 bound in), in blue Twentieth Century-Fox
wraps stamped copy #8 to lower right.

In early 1951 Howard Hawks reached out to Faulkner once more, asking him to come to Los Angeles and work on The Left Hand of God, a script about a former army pilot in China who escapes a warlord by masquerading as a priest (Blotner 537). Faulkner turned in a draft early, earning a bonus, and later that year the trades announced that RKO would make the film and Kirk Douglas would star. Faulkner revised the draft again in 1952 (the original typescript of the present draft appears to be with the Howard Hawks Collection at Brigham Young University), but again the project was delayed. In early 1954, Paramount and Hawks sold the property to Twentieth Century-Fox, which eventually produced the film starring Humphrey Bogart and Gene Tierney. The screenwriting credit went to Alfred Hayes.

• • •

There are many stories about Faulkner in Hollywood. My favorite: While under contract to Warner Brothers and unhappy and weary showing up for work to the Writer's Building on the Warner's lot in Burbank, he asked studio head Jack Warner if he could go home to write. "Sure, go ahead," Warner replied, presuming that Faulkner preferred to work alone in his house.

He did.

Days later, Warner was looking for Faulkner and couldn't find him. The writer had indeed gone home to write.

To Oxford, Mississippi.

___________

All images courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks.

A tip o' the hat to Bonham's cataloger.
___________
___________

Arthur Miller On Marilyn Monroe's Sense Of Humor, Etc.

by Stephen J. Gertz

By Richard Avedon, 1958.

 "I am quite conceivably prejudiced, but I think this collection is a wonder of Marilyn’s wittiness. As Lillian Russell, Marilyn sits [on] the solid gold bicycle just inexpertly enough to indicate that she is, after all, a lady… Her hands lace around the bike handles so much more femininely than they grasp the fan as Clara Bow. And here again is the difference between imitation and interpretation, between making an affect and rendering a spirit."

The above quotation was partially cut from Arthur Miller's feature article, My Wife Marilyn, which appeared in Life magazine, December 22, 1958, in its Christmas issue to accompany photographer Richard Avedon's spread, Marilyn Monroe: Fabled Enchantresses. Within, Avedon shot Monroe  as Lillian Russell, Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, and Jean Harlow. Miller’s essay describes Monroe’s “miraculous sense of sheer play” in channeling these celebrated sex symbols of the stage and screen and her role as their successor.

Miller's signed typescript draft of the article's final published version, with holograph corrections, revisions, and indicated cuts (almost a third of its final length), has come to market along with a signed typed letter by Miller to Life editor, Ralph Graves, dated October 31, 1958, that the playwright sent along with this final draft. They are being offered for $28,500.

 "Here is the article. The only stuff I have added is at the end, with the exception of one or two words in the body of the text. It reads like a precis of the original, I’m afraid, much of the feeling having been removed. But it will do, I guess. If you’ve got something better to use please do so. I’m sorry, again, that the wires got crossed and I conceived it for a much greater length. In any case, the photos are still miraculous."

The "feeling" remains within pages six through eleven of the eleven recto-only leaves of graph paper, which have been almost entirely struck through by Miller, who, once again, writes about Marilyn's sense of humor as evidenced in the photos. She possessed a keen sense of herself, completely self-aware and not only in on the joke but a collaborator in its creation. Though unschooled, this was a very smart woman; only the highly intelligent can play "dumb" with aplomb.

"As in life so in these pictures --- she salutes fantasy from the shore of the real until there comes a moment when she carries us, reality and all, into the dream with her, and we are grateful. Her wit here consists of her absolute commitment to two ordinarily irreconcilable opposites --- the real feminine and the man's fantasy of femininity. We know she knows the difference in these pictures, but is refusing to concede that there is any contradiction, and it is serious and funny at the same time."

The typescript, with its mounting revisions, examines in detail the nuances behind each pose and each portrait, exploring at length Monroe’s approach to portraying these prior stars and the cultural milieu from which they emerged.

Though a few lines and one longer passage from the original manuscript were salvaged for the published version, most were cut. These excisions, found here, include a comparison of Monroe’s face to “a lake under a changing sky” and Miller’s conviction that she is “the living proof that Boticelli was only painting the literal truth.” Where the published essay is a polished description of the electricity of Avedon’s set and Monroe’s ability to capture the “spirit of an age” and document “a kind of history of our mass fantasy, as far as seductresses are concerned,” this typescript reveals an unedited account of not only an inspired collaboration, but Miller’s beguilement over his wife’s many talents.

In Monroe's last interview before her death, appearing in Life on August 3, 1962, she discussed fame in general and hers in particular and pleaded to writer Richard Meryman, "Please don't make me a joke."

"The often bizarrely explained circumstances of her death and her image as a sex goddess/dumb blonde have at times prevented Monroe from being perceived as more than a caricature. She was, however, much more, and even in those 'dumb' roles she displayed an elegance worthy of respect. Her director in The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder, recognized this quality and called her 'an absolute genius as a comic actress.' Monroe never lost her desire for life or her sense of humor despite her tribulations, and she treated with humor and insight the depersonalization that came with her status and that often tormented her life and career" (American National Biography).

Once, in a throwaway quip employing a homonym to lampoon that dumb blonde sex-goddess image she, perhaps unconsciously, suggested a subtext that seriously addressed the inner conflict between what she represented to others and her true self:

"I thought symbols were something you clash."

__________

Typescript and letter images courtesy of Royal Books, currently offering these items, with our thanks.

Marilyn Monroe photographs from Avedon's Fabled Enchantresses series can be viewed here.
___________

Of Related Interest:

Marilyn Monroe: Avid Reader, Writer & Book Collector.

Heartbreaking Marilyn Monroe Letter Estimated at $30,000 - $50,000. 

The Most Significant Marilyn Monroe Autograph Document Comes To Auction.
___________
___________

Three Visually Arresting Modernist Judaica Posters

by Stephen J. Gertz

Designer Unknown.
"M". c. 1931.

We revisit the Swann Galleries Modernist Poster sale held May 13, 2013.

The linocut poster above is for the original release of film director Fritz Lang's "M" at the Moghrabi Theatre (built in 1930) in Tel Aviv.

After a distinguished career during the silent film era, Lang's first talkie - considered to be his best film - starred Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert, a hunted, haunted by "this evil thing inside me" child murderer who whistles Grieg's ominous In the Hall of the Mountain King when approaching his prey. 

Due to the lurid nature of film's subject matter Lang, who had made his films at the celebrated and artistically influential German studio, UFA (Universum Film AG), worked with Nero Films for this movie to deflect the political pressure bearing down upon him from UFA, a government-supported entity. When sound arrived UFA routinely released versions of major films in several languages. Given that Jews were  persecuted in Germany soon after the movie's release and, later, exterminated wherever Nazis found them, it is fascinating to learn that UFA felt the need to release a version in Hebrew to cater to the audience in then Palestine. It was strictly a financial decision. With the advent of sound movies and language barriers the studio could no longer depend on easy distribution and box-office receipts throughout the world.

Designer unknown.

This same, stark image of a hand, emblazoned with a red "M," appeared on the original German poster but did not have the repeating motif of the letter against the background.

Abram Games (1914-1996).
Give Clothing For Liberated Jewry. 1945.

As a Jew who had been exposed to Nazi atrocities through British war films, Abram Games (1914-1996) was in a unique position to be able to channel his horror in a manner which could potentially assist the decimated Jewish communities of Europe. His Give Clothing For Liberated Jewry (1945) starkly and dramatically captures the desperate plight of concentration camp survivors. (Abram Games: His Life and Work, fig 219).

Abram Games, one of the twentieth century's most influential British graphic designers, believed in using the simplest possible design to create the greatest possible impact.

Beginning as a commercial artist, when WWII broke out he was recruited as an Official War Artist and in that capacity designed over a hundred posters, later creating the symbols of the BBC and the Festival of Britain.

He experimented with "unusual juxtapositions of illustration and typography. Games strove to ensure that his wartime posters were as striking and seductive as the best commercial art.

The "Blonde Bombshell."

"Sometimes Games’ work was deemed too seductive, notably the glamorous ATS girl dubbed the 'Blonde Bombshell' which was criticized by the House of Commons for being too glamorous. Games favored stark, simple and, therefore, all the more arresting images produced by sticking to his philosophy of deriving 'maximum meaning' from 'minimum means'" (Design Museum).

Abram Games (1914-1996)
DP / Over 200,000 Displaced Jews Look To You. 1946.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Games designed "posters which demanded, rather than appealed to, the Jewish public to give aid to the refugees . . . [In Displaced Persons] two eyes stare out of the initials DP with an appalling urgency; the vestige of a face an embodiment of despair. The lettering underneath . . . is by contrast plain and tiny: no words are really necessary. This is Games at his most powerful" (Abram Games: His Life and Work, p. 177, and fig. 220).  

“All Abram Games’ designs were recognizably his own. They had vigor, imagination, passion and individuality...And he was lucky - and clever - in contriving, over a long and creative working life, to keep on doing what he did best” (David Gentleman).
 

__________

Images courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.
__________
__________

Jim Tully, Forgotten Hobo Novelist, Finally Gets His Due

by Stephen J. Gertz

This week, Jim Tully (1886-1947), the hobo novelist who wrote hard-boiled before hard-boiled became Hard-Boiled and a distinctly American and unique prose style, is the subject of a long overdue celebration of his life and books.

The Tully festival, occurring in in Los Angeles, kicks-off on Wednesday evening October 10, 2012 with a 7:30 PM screening at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood of Laughter in Hell (1933), based upon Tully's novel of the same title, and, until recently, thought long-lost. Starring Pat O'Brien and a young, gorgeous pre-Titanic Gloria Stuart in this chain-gang melodrama, it's only one of two films adapted from Tully novels, the other being the early Talkie, Beggars of Life (1928). 

Tully, the Ohio-born son of an Irish ditch-digger,  hit the road in 1901 at age fifteen, spending most of his teenage years in the company of hoboes. While chasing his dream of becoming a writer, Tully rode the rails and worked as a tree surgeon, boxer, and newspaper reporter. All the while, he was crafting his memories into a dark and original chronicle of the American underclass. He ultimately exploded onto the scene with a stream of critically acclaimed novels, among them Beggars of Life (1924), Circus Parade (1927), Shanty Irish (1928), Shadows of Men (1930) and Blood on the Moon (1931). Tully’s novel Ladies In The Parlor (1935) was declared obscene and most copies were destroyed,

Authentic and the real deal, Tully drew Hollywood's attention and he became friends with W. C. Fields, Jack Dempsey, Damon Runyon, Lon Chaney, Frank Capra, and Erich von Stroheim. Tully was a treasury of colorful anecdotes on two legs and what he didn't commit to paper spilled out of his mouth. Everyone in town wanted to share the company of this colorful individual.

By the mid-1940s, however, crippling physical ailments and personal heartbreak had the writer on the ropes. With his death in 1947, his name slipped from the front ranks of American Letters and into obscurity.

No more.

The Tully festival continues on Thursday, October 11th. Tully is subject of the Bonnie Cashin Lecture at UCLA (4 p.m.), in conjunction with the opening of an exhibit devoted to Tully,  The Life and Times of Jim Tully: From Drifter to Celebrated Author, in the UCLA Special Collections Dept., which holds Tully's papers.

On Sunday, October 14th at 3PM, starting out at Larry Edmunds Bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard, Tully biographers Paul Bauer and Mark Dawidziaka will conduct a walking tour of Hollywood to show off Tully-themed locations.  

The festival wraps on Monday, October 15 from 6-11 PM at the Los Angeles Visionary Association's (LAVA) salon at Musso & Franks, the famed Hollywood Blvd restaurant and writers hangout, with a formal dinner themed "Jim Tully: A Hobo in Hollywood," and presentations by his biographers,  literary historian and rare book dealer Howard Prouty, and Hollywood historian Philip Mershon. Attendance  is limited; reserve your seat at the table now. This is a trés cool event.

The Jim Tully revival has begun in earnest. Prices for Tully first editions in dust jacket currently range from $175 - $1050. As of this writing an European dealer is currently offering a copy of Tully's banned and print-run destroyed Ladies of the Parlor w/o DJ for only $356; he doesn't know what he has. 

I expect that, like the first editions of once-obscure novelist John Fante after Charles Bukowski declared his love for the writer, Tully firsts will rise in value.

Jim Tully,  a missing link in the evolution of modern American literature, is no longer missing in action.

• • •

In an amusing aside, the legendary "lost" status of Laughter in Hell turned out to be a case of  lazy researchers rather than gone-forever film.  A print had been sitting on a shelf in Universal's vault the whole time; nobody bothered to check. Enter Howard Prouty, ABAA proprietor of ReadInk and Acquisitions Archivist at The Academy Foundation / Margaret Herrick Library, who simply picked up the phone and called Universal. Voíla! Lost film found.

"Many saw the dark side of the American dream,
but none wrote about it like Jim Tully."

__________

All images courtesy of Howard Prouty, with our thanks.

__________

Tully's novels are now, finally, being reprinted, published by Black Squirrel Books, a division of Kent State University Press.

__________
__________

When Norman Mailer Met Actor Charles Laughton

By Stephen J. Gertz

Not too many years after Norman Mailer (1923-2007) published The Naked And The Dead in 1948, the screen rights were bought by actor Charles Laughton (1899-1962), who would direct, and his producing partner, Paul Gregory. Mailer received the then princely sum of $250,000. Though he was not hired to write the screenplay (ultimately written by James Agee) Laughton brought Mailer in to help with preliminary development, the two spending a week together working in Laughton's penthouse apartment in Hollywood.

The fruits of Mailer and Laughton's collaboration have survived. 

An archive of twenty-two original sketches for the film adaptation of The Naked And The Dead, in pencil on paper, and with many signed by Mailer, is being offered by Bloomsbury-London this Thursday, July 19, 2012 as part of their Printed Books Including Modern First Editions sale.

The archive's provenance could not be more sterling: from the estate of Charles Laughton and his wife, Elsa Lanchester. The lot is estimated to sell for £20,000 - £30,000 ($31,130 - $46,729).

Nine of the sketches relate to scenes in the novel, including views of the island from the invasion fleet's POV, views of the island pass, the structure of the rapids traversed by characters Croft and Wilson, and a scene from Croft's "time machine," one of a series of flash-backs interspersed within the novel.

The remaining sketches depict characters in the novel: Croft (3); Minetta (2); Cummings (3); Roth (2); Goldstein (2); Red (3); A Soldier (1); Dalleson (1); Hearn (1); Brown (1); Polack (1); Stacey (1); Ridges (1); Toglio (1); Wyman (1); Wilson (3); Hennessey (1); Gallagher (4); and Martinez (1).

In the portraits of Cummings and Croft, Mailer has drawn sketches for both their "outer" and ''inner'" aspects. Dalleson is referred to as "Wallace Beery the younger" and one of Wilson's sketches has the comment "should be more handsome." The sketches provide an insider's view into the  free and easy nature of this early leap into adapting the novel to film.

Based upon Laughton's hopes for The Night Of The Hunter, his first film directing assignment, it was expected that a Laughton-directed The Naked And The Dead would receive a studio's production green light. Sadly, alas, The Night Of The Hunter, while a critical success, was a box-office failure. Laughton dropped out of the project and The Naked And The Dead would ultimately be directed by Raoul Walsh and released in 1958.

"Charles Laughton was to do it," Mailer told interviewer Gerald Peary, "and we spent a week together at Laughton's St. Moritz Hotel penthouse. He had a great dedication to the novel, and he was coming off...The Night Of The Hunter, which he thought would do extraordinarily. It didn't. Laughton was not a young man, and it took everything out of him. He never directed again."

__________

Images courtesy of Bloomsbury Auctions, with our thanks.
__________
__________

Revisiting The Godfather, The Novel

By Stephen J. Gertz

There are strong similarities between Michael Corleone and Alexander Portnoy. Neither of them, for instance, wishes to enter his father's line of work. Each of them falls for a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant girl. Of course, there are some differences, too. When Alexander Portnoy's father is frustrated, he gets constipated; when Michael Corleone's father is frustrated, he gets someone killed.

'The Godfather' is the coming of age of Michael Corleone in a world that Philip Roth never knew. It is the world of the Mafia in America, and the dialogue and the logic of  'The Godfather' ring true enough to raise the suspicion that, at least by hearsay, Mario Puzo knows his subject well (Opening to NY Times review, April 27, 1969).

I can't remember if I read The Godfather when it was originally published, in 1969. It seems like I did. The book spent over a year on the New York Times Best Seller list; it was #1 the week of September 21, 1969. It was still #1 on November 30th, and then just sat around there lording it over everything else for a total of 67 weeks on the list.  But I was eighteen years old and avoided books on the Best Seller list on principle: I dodged anything popular; it offended my sense of hip. By 1975, the book had sold 12,000,000 copies, 12,00,000 reasons not to read it.

Still, when I recently handled a first edition, first printing copy and routinely thumbed through the book I felt  as if  I'd previously read it, even though there were passages that seemed alien to my memory.

Of course, I've seen the movie, which came out three years later, and the movie, Part II (1974); I saw them immediately upon  release. How many times since, I've lost count; at least twenty, easily. I was primed to plow through the  entire novel: let's just say that the book made me an offer I couldn't refuse. It was not a virginal experience.

"Sonny Corleone was tall for a first-generation American
of Italian parentage, almost six feet, and his crop of bushy,
curly hair made him look even taller. His face was that of
a gross cupid, the features even but the bow-shaped lips
thickly sensual, the dimpled cleft chin in some curious way
obscene. He was built as powerfully as a bull..."

Since the movies' release it is impossible to  read The Godfather without seeing and hearing Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, et al, while doing so. Seeing the movie in your head while you read is unavoidable. And it is equally difficult to not compare the movie with the book while reading it. The reality is that it is the movie  and not the book that has become deeply embedded into American consciousness and culture to take its place within the American mythos.

While reading, what becomes immediately apparent is that Francis Coppola, working with Puzo, did a brilliant job in adapting the novel to film. Remember Nino Valenti, the mandolin-playing singer, lifelong pal of Johnny Fontaine, and Don Vito's other godson? Ripped from the pages of the book and thrown into the trash can never to be seen again. Lucy Mancini, the maid of honor at Connie's wedding and the object of Sonny's lust, lingers in the novel long after Sonny is gunned down.

Corleone Family gunsels Al Neri and Rocco Lampone are given much more attention in the book than in the first movie. Puzo devotes an entire chapter to Neri's bio; who knew he was originally a cop before he became "Michael's Luca Brasi," a physical and behavioral comparison absent in the films?  Oh, and about Luca: his back-story you don't want to know; an infamy not for the faint of heart. Huge chunks of background material were cut out  for The Godfather Part I; some reappeared in Part II. Lucy Mancini - who, in the novel, winds up engaged to a Jewish doctor, an abortionist in Vegas - doesn't show up again in the movie trilogy until Part III, sans doc but with grown child, Vincent, son of Sonny and not conceived by Puzo.

"He was short and burly, not handsome but with the same
cupid head of the family, the curly helmet of hair over the
round face and sensual bow-shaped lips. Only, in Fred,
these lips were not sensual but granitelike."

All this improved the narrative  momentum of the first film. It is often frustrating to read the book; you become impatient for what you know is coming soon if only Puzo would get out of the way. Al Neri's story is presented as he's preparing to assassinate Don Barzini at the climax to the story. Knowing the film's inexorable, driving pace the Neri digression, however interesting, is annoying, and Puzo spends far too much time on Johnny and Nino's adventures in Hollywood. Did you know that after starring in Woltz International Pictures' anonymous stand-in for From Here To Eternity, the movie that brought Sinatra back from career death, Johnny became a successful independent producer?  With Johnny's help Nino became a big movie star but he, being a simple, good ol' paesano, hated Hollywood success and drank himself to death. Interesting, sure, but ultimately, who cares? The movie has spoiled us for the novel.

It's easy to see why the book became such a phenomenon. In the Sixties, the veil over organized crime had begun to lift. Genovese Family member Joe Valachi had captured the nation's imagination with his revelations before Congress in 1963. The history, structure, and personnel of the American Mafia, La Cosa Nostra (in the book we learn that Don Corleone coined the phrase), became common knowledge. The Godfather integrated truth, rumor, and fiction into a compelling tale and provided rich. complex characters whose motivations were made clear, people who we, despite their behavior, came to feel deep affection and sympathy toward.

"He did not have the heavy, Cupid-shaped face of the
other children, and his jet-black hair was straight rather
than curly. His skin was a clear olive-brown that would
 have been called beautiful in a girl. He was handsome
in a delicate way. Indeed there was a time when the Don
 had worried about his son's masculinity."

Of paramount importance to its success, however, was that this was the first gangster novel as family drama, with appeal to women as well as men of all ages. The Godfather has become one of the great stories in modern American mythology.

Puzo wrote a terrific story. Literary exposition of character provides details and insight not found in the movies though as a filmmaker Coppola was able to capture much of it with a gesture, a look, without a word.

What is left wanting is Coppola's vision of the story as an Italian-American Greek tragedy told with bravura operatic theatricality without sacrificing naturalism, a delicate balance.

This is best illustrated by the story's penultimate sequence, when Michael "settles" family business. In the novel, the multiple assassinations occur sequentially, with background digressions. The baptismal scene occurs the day before. It was Coppola's genius to have the baptism and executions occur simultaneously, the rituals and chanting in Latin and Michael's acceptance of Jesus and rejection of Satan inter-cut with the murders providing an acutely emotive, sharply ironic contrast not present in the novel, and brings the  religious sensibility of the final scene in the novel to the fore.

"She was too thin, too fair, her face was too sharply
intelligent for a woman, her manner too free for a maiden.
Her name, too, was outlandish to their ears;
she called herself Kay Adams."

At novel's end, Kay leaves  Michael after she learns that he lied to her about ordering Carlo's death. But when she discovers, from Tom Hagen, the rationale, and reasonable, in this world, justification for Michael's criminal acts she returns to him and converts to Catholicism, accompanying Mama Corleone to Mass every morning to pray for the soul of Michael Corleone, the man she loves. It's a satisfying end to the book.

But Coppola captured the drama better. By cutting that sequence and ending with Kay witnessing the fealty of the Family soldier-retainers, hearing Michael addressed at Don Corleone, and seeing his office door and life closed to her she knows everything she - and we - need to know. Michael is guilty as sin and a malignant shadow has fallen over their marriage. Though  Michael made his bones with Solozzo's murder, baby Anthony's entry into religious faith was Michael's,  too, his baptism by fire as Don Corleone and grand entrance into the church of the Mafia and damnation.

• • •

I read the book during lunch breaks and stolen moments at work. I could not stay away from it until I  finished it three days later; it is a compulsively great read,  despite  poor comparison with the film. In the evenings, I watched the movie. It was strange to read and watch the story in parallel as dueling media. In the end what became clear is that Coppola, more so than Puzo, understood that the novel was, first and foremost, the epic saga of a 20th century American family, and a parable about life in the U.S., the nation's values and ideals corroded by its post-WWII superpower status.

"Tom Hagen was thirty-five years old, a tall
crew-cut man, very slender, very ordinary-looking."

Overwhelmed by Copploa's trilogy (Parts I & II are considered to be in the top ten greatest movies ever made), the book is now merely a companion-guide to its cinematic incarnations, and  nobody will ever read the book without having seen the movie first.  There are no virgins to The Godfather, the novel. Yet I strongly recommend that readers take a look at it. It is, arguably, the best mainstream outlaw-romantic modern novel by an American writer, a genre that has a particular resonance in the American psyche. Though Puzo's prose is often poor his storytelling is always rich.

"Even as a young man, Vito Corleone became known
as a 'man of reasonableness.' He never uttered a threat.
He always used logic that proved to be irresistible. He
always made certain that the other fellow got his share
of profit. Nobody lost."

The book has certainly lasted longer in the popular American consciousness than  Portnoy's Complaint, also published in 1969; the two were the big American novels of the year. Americans love men of action. When Alexander Portnoy gets frustrated, he masturbates. When Michael Corleone gets frustrated, he waits, and then he kills. But anybody can jerk-off. Few, however, have the power and will to live by their own rules and moral code. We admire and sympathize with Michael even as we understand that he's going to Hell, hand-basket unnecessary. The Greek tragedy that is The Godfather trumps the Jewish neurosis of Portnoy. The Corleones have become one of the great American Families, nice folks to visit but you don't want to live with them.

 As of this date, it is estimated that The Godfather, the book, has sold approximately 21 million copies.
__________

__________

Scarce Letters of Movie Pioneer Georges Méliès, Hero of Scorsese's "Hugo," Surface

by Stephen J. Gertz

[MÉLIÈs, Georges] BESSY, Maurice and Lo Duca.
Georges Méliès: Mage et "Mes Mémoires" par Méliès.
Paris: Prisma, 1945. First French Edition, never translated into English.
One of 2000 numbered copies, this being No. 956.
With Melies' business card from 1909 laid in.

Between 1928 and 1932, when pioneering film director, Georges Méliès, was running a toy shop in Montparnesse Station in Paris - the period in his life covered by Martin Scorsese's splendid homage to Méliès and movie magic, Hugo - Méliès wrote a series of  letters of enormous interest to film lovers and historians. The content of the letters is quite broad and uniformly fascinating throughout.

This trove has just come into the marketplace, offered by Royal Books in Baltimore. Surviving ephemeral material representing Méliès' work is excessively rare; letters in his hand are virtually non-existent. OCLC indicates that there is no institution with autograph material, and auction records show no appearance of any letters since 1975. Virtually all known surviving material is held by the Cinémathèque Française in Paris.

From: A Trip To The Moon - Earth Rise.

An archive consisting  of six extraordinary signed autograph letters, five in French and one in English, by Méliès, generally considered to be one of the inventors of narrative cinema,  it reveals a great deal about his little-discussed but profoundly important origins in the Robert-Houdin Theatre in Paris, as well as his work as a magician and ultimately a film director. 

Equally interesting in these letters are various revelations regarding his character, great love for artists, magicians, and all performers whose work came under the umbrella of "illusion." His spirit, so finely captured by Scorsese on film, is animated on these pages.

Méliès began his career in theater at the Theatre Robert-Houdin, doing extremely creative work in an area that could be described as an intersection of live theater, pantomime, magic, and vaudeville. After seeing an 1895 demonstration by the Lumiere Brothers, he became very interested in cinema, and betweem 1896 and 1914 made over 500 short films. 

His film work utilized many of the elements from his live performance as a basis for content, and the portion of his work that has survived reveals a storytelling style that revels in Jules Verne-esque fantastical adventure fiction. The films ranged from 1 to 40 minutes in length, and many were completely abstract, with his intense interest in the effect of "illusion" on an audience that ultimately led to him becoming the inventor of "special effects." Importantly, the "effects" he invented on celluloid were not just a component of his cinema, they were the essence of it.

Equally important, Méliès made the first cinematic foray into science fiction and horror, and was a pioneer in the making of fantastical adventure films. Le Manoir du diable (The House of the Devil,"1896) and Le Caverna maudite ("The Cave of the Unholy One," 1898) are generally considered to be the first horror films ever made. A print of the former was acquired upon its release by Thomas Edison, who duplicated and distributed it with great financial success in the United States. Though Edison paid no royalties to Méliès, as a result the director's name became well-known to film-goers all over the Western world.

Six years later, Méliès produced what is today his most famous short feature, Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon, 1902), the first known science fiction film, and the first to depict space travel. The film was based very loosely on two popular novels of the time, by Jules Verne in From the Earth to the Moon, and The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells.

From: A Trip To The Moon - A Rocket In The Eye.

Méliès was forced into bankruptcy in 1913 by large French and American studios. Because the concept of film preservation was still nearly 20 years away, most of his films were ultimately melted down for boot heels during World War I or recycled to make new film.

The archive is divided into four  groups:

(a) A brief but extraordinary 1932 letter in English about his days as a filmmaker.

(b) A group of three letters from 1928 regarding his earliest days at Robert-Houdin Theatre, details regarding a series of short pieces he is writing about his life (for a magazine or newspaper), and a proposal to gather the pieces for publication in book form.

(c) A letter from 1929 regarding the proofs of caricatures that Méliès has drawn for the purpose of publication as postcards to be sold to fans of his work.

(d) A brief but significant letter from 1931 regarding the annual "magician's gala," mentioning several of the magicians who performed, a gathering of artists that was clearly at the heart of what preserved Méliès spirit during the years after his film company collapsed.

In the first letter, Melies writes candidly of his days as a filmmaker, and the collapse of his career: "You will find me every day, even Sundays, in the hall of Montparnasse station, from 10 o'clock A.M. to 10 P.M. I keep there a shop of toys and sweets, since I have unfortunately, lost 3 millions of francs during the war, which I had gained as a producer of motion pictures and pioneer of cinematography."

The next three letters represent the heart of the this archive, regarding Méliès' earliest days working as a magician in the Robert-Houdin Theatre. These letters deal in some detail with an ongoing memoir being written by Méliès, ending with a letter responding to a proposal for the memoirs to be expanded and published as a book.

From: A Trip To The Moon - Dream Sequence.

In the first letter, Méliès writes: "I think by now you must have received the first two articles... I   believe that information on the subject of the Robert-Houdin Theatre will interest your readers, so I won't hesitate to send more details... Today I constructed the exact floor plans of the stage and back stage from memory and I am enclosing them here. Your are right if you think that nothing that that happened in my little old theater has escaped my memory. With an average of 750 performances per year, that makes 27,000 performances! When I think about it, that is simply staggering."

He goes on to discuss the irony of his current situation: " [This is] written in great haste (and on my knees, above the market)...from my little store atelier where there is no space for me and I am crowded by, or should I say, drowned in merchandise. I, at 67, a merchant! I who was always an artist first and who always detested business? What is there to do!? Life has reversals like this, and the war has made me lose the result of 47 years of work [One must] resign oneself, and that is what I have done. That doesn't mean that I do not miss the good old days and I am never as happy as when I am together with colleagues, comedians, cinematographers, or magicians, when I am in my own element."

In another letter, Méliès refers to plans to produce an edition of his memoirs, which, though never published during his lifetime, is the probable foundation for the 1945 publication of Méliès' memoirs edited by Maurice Bessy. The letter goes on in great detail about all aspects of production, including how the linotype should be set up for the book, the importance of illustrations, etc.

The last letter, from 1932, is an enthusiastic review of Robert Evans' A Master of Modern Magic, a biography of Eugene Robert-Houdin (NY: Macoy 1932). The book is "very well written and as exact as possible concerning the dates," and that it "contains very few mistakes. It is certainly more near the truth than the book written against Robert-Houdin by Houdini, who seems to have been jealous of the posthumous reputation of our old master...[Evans] has evidently written this book in order to break this reputation."

Méliès  then expounds on the nature of his original trade, and the philosophy behind the illusion at the heart of cinema: "The conjurors (don't they?) work for the public, not for the professionals; if they have a success and seem extraordinary men to spectators, what do they require more? Nobody of us is really a 'sorcerer,' it is sufficient to look to be, and principally to know how to put our tricks, clever or not, in the maximum of value."

I had a chance to examine this precious archive at the recent 45th California International Antiquarian Book Fair.  It was no illusion. But it was definitely magic. Méliès was indeed the sorcerer of the Silent film era.

__________

Images courtesy of Royal Books, with our thanks. The Méliès biography, at top, is being offered separately from the archive of letters.

Stills from the colored version of A Trip To The Moon courtesy of Harvey Deneroff, with our thanks.

__________
__________