Popular Writer's Views on Film Industry

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23009, 9 April 1938, Page 18 (Supplement)

Popular Writer's Views on Film Industry

SANE BUDGETS NEEDED Ben Hecht, thousand-pound-a-week writer on Goldwyn's pay-list, recently walked out on Sam rather than write another "Goldwyh Follies.'' Back in New York ho admitted ingenuously: "I left in a childish huff." Then he proceeded to say a few things about Hollywood, producers and public, in the trenchant manner of his dialogue in "Nothing Sacred".

"Catering to the imbocillic type of moron who clutters around lirst nights pleTuling for autographs is so much pap," Hocht said. "Half of these whacky kids never go into a picture house, because they might miss 'l)olly DeJovely' at a theatre a lew blocks away." Hecht's despairing solution is simply "to have Hollywood go into the state of collapse it is heading for and start anew with a sane production budget." There is sound sense in Hecht's recollections of the "Scarface" salaries. "Paul Muni came over to United Artists playing for 200 dollars. We signed a young Valentinoish-looking Italian for the second male lead and gave him 75 dollars —his name was George Baft.

"The girl who played the heroine had been an extra —we gave her 50 dollars. Her name is Ann Dvorak. The picture grossed 3,000,000 dollars." Of "Nothing Sacred", Hecht says: "there was nothing sacred about my stipend either. It was positively indecent. I would have taken less, but nobodv asked me to."

All the same, he concluded, "I would rather do a movie any time than a stage play." He would like his next to be for W. C. Fields. Once Hecht and Gene Fowler wrote a story for Marie Dressier. Tt was turned down because it came out as a starring vehicle for Fields with Miss Dressier in a less interesting | part.