LATE EDGAR WALLACE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21130, 12 March 1932, Page 10 (Supplement)

LATE EDGAR WALLACE.

LIKING FOR HOLLYWOOD.

FOUR SCENARIOS WRITTEN. The late Edgar [Wallace, -who was engaged in the writing of scenarios in Hollywood at the time of his death, found life in the great film centre extremely congenial to his active spirit.. •'I am a. newspaper man who has spent my life getting on the inside of obscure situations, and the situation in Hollywood is a fascinating studyhe said in a newspaper interview published just before his death. " People who think of me only as a man who turns out stories with a rapidity which they regard as uncanny do not realise that I am first and foremost a publicist, and newspaper work is the breath of my nostrils. I'd sooner dig out an inside story, than write a best seller. "It isn't all straight-away writing. I have done some doctoring, though I refuse to have my name as a credit title to any story which I have not wholly written, even if I have doctored the greater part of it. " I have been in Hollywood six weeks, and I have written four complete scenarios. One of them in its present form is no use whatever, but I have a twist for it which will make it filmable. Nobody on the executive staff has told me it is no use, and I don't have to be told. " I have met very few stars, but those few have been worth meeting. In fact, I'haven't met anybody in Hollywood about whom I could say, ' I don't like that man or woman.' " Mr. "Wallace insists there is no mystery about his quick writing. " I'm a newspaper man, and in the hard training of a newspaper office I have learned to marshalmy thoughts and give them terse expression.

" The highbrows teli me that my writing is not literature, and I retort that literature is too often unintelligible. What is a highbrow ? He is a man who has found something more interesting than women. When I get that way I'll stop writing and take to art. " I work very early in the morning and very late at night, and well into the afternoon, and for three or four hours before lunch.

" Most of my work is dictated, but I write quite a lot, and it isn't all story ■work or newspaper work. Since I left England at the end of November my letters to my wife amounted to 40,000 words, probably more." He had found Hollywood a good place to play in or work in, and blasts against the film capital emanating of late from sundry authors who have come, lingered and departed, he attributed to an inferiority complex on their part. " There never was a time when motion pictures have been more in reed of story material," he asserted. "If these authors were unable to deliver, is that Hollywood's fault ? Certainly not. When I go back home and am asked, ' What's wrong with Hollywood ? ' the only thing I can say is that if anything is wrong, it is with me. " I have a, very big correspondence. All the time I am in Hollywood I keep in touch with my various activities in England, and I have probably worn out the boots of more telegraph messengers than any other client. " I have a play in rehearsal in London, which Sir Gerald du Maurier is producing and in which he is appearing. When he started rehearsals he discovered he did not like the end of the last act. To change it meant rewriting almost the •whole of the last act and a portion of the second. I got up early one morning, rewrote the acts and cabled them to London as a night letter. They were in rehearsal the next day.'l