SCENARIO WRITER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21362, 3 June 1939, Page 11

SCENARIO WRITER

WOMAN WHO LEARNT FROM A SHILLING BOOK

One of the few women scenario, , writers in England, Mrs William ' Freshman, is a recent arrival in Sydney. accompanied by her husband. She will .write the scenario for the new Cinesound comedy' starring Will Mahoney, states the “Sydney Morning Herald.”

A little shilling book about the arc. of scenario writing was responsible for Mrs Freshmans start in her unusual career. She was formerly an actress, and one day when she went tp see Frank Bensons manager, she found him typing a scenario.

“How do you do scenario writing?” she asked, and was sent away with the little booklet and told to try her luck. It must have been prophetic that the first script she did was of Baroness Orczy’s "I Will Repay.”

Not only does Mrs Freshman—who writes under her maiden name, Lydia Hayward—write the screen plays for films, but she also does the shootingscript covering all the camera angles, and in many cases aids with the direction, and is on the floor all the time a picture is under production. When Mrs Freshman is stumped for an idea she plays patience, and sometimes plays for hours trying to think of material. “A maid I had was once completely baffled by all my patience playing, and told somebody that she couldn't understand what I worked at, because all I did was to play cards,” she explained. It is a tribute to Mrs Freshman's work that all the authors whose books she has adapted for the screen should have been delighted with the results. “I have done scenarios for 14 of W. W. Jacobs's books, and we sit hand in hand at all the trade screenings of the films,” she said. "Warwick Deeping was delighted with the scenario of ‘Sorrel and Son,’ and Noel Coward

| cabled from America, ‘Script to be | done as written’ when he read my ‘Bitter Sweet’ scenario.” I Since she has been a scenario writer, | Mrs Freshman has met great changes i in the production of films. “When I I first started with a small company a [ visitor came to see us on the set of I ‘The Monkey’s Paw.’ I was fixing the curtains on the window, the director. Manning Haynes, was plastering the walls, and the star. Moore Marriott, W'as hard at work on the carpenter’s bench,” she said. Among the better-known films for which Mrs Freshman has written the screen plays are "I Will Repay.” “Down on the Farm.” “It's a Great Life,’’ “Second to None,” from a story by “Bartimeus,” “The Last Post.” “The Ware Case” (silent version), and “To-morrow We Live.” At the moment she is completing the scenario for a film which will be directed by Jack Raymond, the director of the last two films Ruth Chatterton made in London— “ The Royal Divorce,” and “The Rat.”