HOLLYWOOD'S BOOTLEG SCRIPTS
Opotowsky, Stan
Hollywood's Bootleg Scripts by STAN OPOTOWSKY Hollywood THE FRONT gates of the Hollywood movie studios are emblazoned "No Communists Allowed." But the ostensibly forbidden Reds slip through the...
...It deals not in rationed gasoline or bootleg hootch, but in movie scripts...
...Meanwhile, officially unemployed, the black market writers thrive...
...Hollywood chose to use these blacklisted men and not use them at STAN OPOTOWSKY, staff writer for the New York Post, recently returned from Hollywood where he studied the workings of the film colony's black market in movie scripts...
...This is the Hollywood black market...
...Wolton Trumbo, one of the Holly-andTen who is steadily employed pjtthe never-never land, says: "I don't know if I ever want screen credit again...
...sent me...
...But Pete would be hauled before the committee, branded a Communist amid all the fanfare of the times, and booted from his studio in disgrace...
...others were driven into more...
...The favorite hangout restaurants are off limits, lest they embarrass an employer by confronting him fablicly...
...It created the black market...
...But the ostensibly forbidden Reds slip through the back door regularly, carrying their bootleg goods in plain wrappers...
...As it is now, I get credit in Hollywood for ghost writing eyery good script credited to an unknown...
...Bierly later was asked to explain his handiwork...
...Paul V. McNutt, as attorney for a group of anti-Communist actors, said a blacklist would be "a conspiracy without warrant of law...
...Representative J. Parnell Thomas, who hit the first postwar headline paydirt investigating Communists in Hollywood, promised to show up the Red propaganda in films...
...Columbia rushed to professional fixer Ken Bierly and engaged his services...
...And their fees are small compared to the whopping salaries they commanded in happier days...
...They are churning out of sripts that they sometimes get splt for those they didn't write...
...For the good of their souls I surround myself with legally phony bank accounts, mysterious rituals, and awesome oaths...
...With this kind of fixing in vogue, it was inevitable that Hollywood would soon scoff at its own blacklist...
...Eric Johnston, president of the producers association, objected to any blacklist...
...These poor souls couldn't tell all, because they had nothing to telL Some gradually wormed back into the movies after a couple of lean years...
...They controlled some of the unions, particularly the Screen Writers Guild, at one time, and they definitely cared for their own within the industry where they could...
...Wall Street won...
...He said: "You might put it that I had something to do with getting the right facts before the right people...
...Trumbo says, "I have as much work •as I can handle...
...Hollywood never really wanted the blacklist in the first place...
...So one ex-actor is a liquor store clerk, another a baker, and still another the man who holds down patients during shock therapy at a mental institution...
...Then this year a black market script did indeed win the Oscar: The Brave One, by Robert Rich, was so honored, and to this day no one has found Robert Rich...
...The only thing they have to fear is an overdose of success...
...The Motion Picture Producers Association formally blacklisted the ten: it announced it would hire none unless he purged himself of the contempt...
...Communism was fashionable...
...The independent producers, who have been growing in power and prestige, don't feel compelled to participate in such shenanigans...
...The blacklist not only was approved, but two anti-blacklist men, Johnston and producer Dore Schary, were forced to announce it to the world...
...Then Hollywood began fighting back...
...They apparently were capitalists from 9 to 5, and turned Red only at the quitting whistle...
...Some of the untouchables were top writers: men with a sure hand in the intricate and highly specialized art of tooling movie scripts that made big money...
...And thus a new trade arose in Hollywood: the fixer...
...In the unlikely event that the author's true identity is exposed, the studio can always plead ignorance and escape with a few outraged howls at the offending agent...
...Some of the smaller studios couldn't afford such a full-time luxury (fixing wasn't cheap), and so two or three would band together and share a fixed ex-union boss, Roy Brewer, becard the star fixer...
...And, honestly, I don't write them all...
...They could see no evil in a Communist writer turning out a non-political film if he were the best man available for the job...
...It nearly happened a number of times, when black market scripts were nominated for Academy awards...
...They are breaking no law except their own...
...Well, almost hopeless...
...The Communists did have their power...
...The best of these writers earned $44,000 last year—nothing to spurn, even if he did top $100,000 in his best years before the purge...
...The men who secretly buy these scripts are men who have vowed publicly they will have no dealings with Communists...
...Wall Street despises governmental control of anything and didn't want Communists in the studios tempting Congress to continue investigations and, perhaps, pass restrictive laws...
...But the writers thrive...
...They could be fixed...
...They are always in trouble when they call me...
...Wall Street controls Hollywood...
...In the frenzy of the times, the official blacklist of ten men was extended unofficially to cover some 300 movie workers who were Red, pink, or, in a few unfortunate cases, simply the victims of a little green: the envy of someone more powerful or better connected...
...Naturally, he and his cohorts would prefer to be making the higher pay...
...The unreconstructed Reds would not be saved by the fix, but they could be used through the black market...
...The Hollywood people felt that they were sophisticated enough to spot any Communist propaganda in their movies and take it out before the films ever got to the public...
...Columbia Pictures, her studio, investigated and announced it was convinced she was no Communist...
...If they want a black marketeer's script, they buy it...
...The procedures became routing first a detailed confession of Com munist activity to the FBI, then jj letter to the studios showing tota^ reformation, finally an appearance before the committee, and, witi that, salvation...
...The fixers were not phonies...
...The producers don't mind the inconvenience of a few clandestine street corner meetings if the result is a good script at cut rates...
...Adrian Scott is in both movies and TV...
...the only rule is no public credit for the author...
...It you were too small, however, you might find yourself in real trouble...
...The fees collected by the black marketeers are good ones, even though lower than their pre-blacklist salaries...
...Remember, the official blacklist covered only ten men, the Hollywood Ten...
...Hollywood did without these people for a while, and then began to wonder if this wasn't bad riddance...
...Thus began a brief tug-of-war between two Hollywood terrors: the terror of renewed Congressional fury if movieland reneged on its ban of Communists, and the even worse terror of foregoing money-making scripts at a time they were desperately needed to combat a television-made movie depression...
...The battle ended in a tie...
...Novelist Norman Mailer, who was in Hollywood at the time, recalls: "There would be swaps as the studios fought to save their most valuable properties...
...They must use phony names and clandestine meeting places...
...prosaic occupations by the pressing, grocery bill...
...In most cases, the studio deliberately permits itself to be hoodwinked if the script is good enough...
...Only writers operate in the black market...
...But they have long since lost this type of influence...
...Sometimes the studios—particularly the major studios which are less likely to get so desperate for the services of a black marketeer—buy a Communist's script unawares...
...In effect, a studio would tell committee investigators, 'If you'll lay off Joe, we'll give you Pete.'" A deal would be made...
...Poor Pete...
...I talk tough to them...
...But they are the only ones in Hollywood really unhappy at the present system...
...Hollywood's bypass of its own blacklist is not entirely cynicism...
...Why...
...Wall Street saw it differently...
...Listen to one "blacklisted" writer's account of his employment in this twilight world: "I get a call from a harassed producer who's in trouble...
...Their only headache is the sham...
...The others were only on the graylist...
...You can't meet an actor or a director on a Los Angeles street corner and slip his services under your coat...
...They either have a sick script that will ruin them if it's not re-written properly or they have no script at all and a bunch of actors on the payroll eating them out of house and home until they can get a picture before the cameras...
...Paul Jarrico says, "I write movies all the time, for less money...
...They are employed in a bootleg hooch atmosphere bordering on the ludicrous...
...They just sit at home and count peir money and wait for the nocturnal knock on the door and the jfrispered password: «?*'<5...
...One reason why Hollywood seems to need its Reds, or, a least, its pinks, that so many of the top people were involved with the party at one time— especially just before and during World War II...
...I tell them I'll take their low fee the first time, but warn them my fee for the second job will be twice that of the first...
...Most of the Hollywood Reds never moved beyond the parlor talk stage...
...By emphasizing the hellish peril of having me in their houses, I compel them to drive 42 miles to my back door...
...Now the best of these blacklisted writers are working steadily...
...The big studios all hired one...
...It is peddled through an agent under a phony name...
...Just as Judy Holliday became a; big star, she was branded a Red and her movie was picketed by the Cath-* olic War Veterans...
...Some so-called Communists never were Communists at all, but simply the victims of jealousy or vindictive-ness...
...I permit them one conference at the beginning of a script and bid them come well prepared...
...This presents their only real danger of public exposure...
...The fix was needed, and fast...
...Within a very short time the pickets disappeared...
...They cannot simply telephone a producer for whom they work and propose an idea...
...His case was hopeless...
...Taeyj produced...
...But this doesn't happen often...
...First came the deals...
...the same time...
...The pickets and the accusations remained...
...They do not get public credit for their work...
...Jack L. Warner of Warner Brothers, who was one of the most ferocious of the anti-Communists in Hollywood, once said he would not join such a blacklist...
...There is no evidence that even the hard-core Hollywood Communists ever got any propaganda into the films...
...One guess...
...No one mentioned Joe, though he be an out-and-out Communist...
...If you were big enough, you could even get a secret session of the conv mittee to hear your self-castigation and there would be no publicity...
...The supposed ban on the services of Communists dates back to the "Hollywood Ten" of 1951—a group of ten writers, directors, and producers who went to prison for contempt of Congress when they defied the House Un-American Activities Committee...
...I invent assumed names which, spoken to their secretaries, bring them leaping to the telephone like startled hares...
...There is no risk...
...A second conference is granted upon completion, but between conferences not a word or a page...
...But his search for it was so fruitless that the investigation was abandoned and no report ever made...
...But that wasn't good enough...
...But these are Hollywood people, and Hollywood people do not control Hollywood...
Vol. 21 • September 1957 • No. 9
