A History of the Screenplay

A History of the Screenplay

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A History of the Screenplay Steven Price School of English, Bangor University, UK Palgrave macmillan

Steven Price 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-0-230-29180-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-29181-2 ISBN 978-1-137-31570-0 ( ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137315700 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1 Prehistory of the Screenplay 22 2 Copyright Law, Theatre and Early Film Writing 36 3 Outlines and Scenarios, 1904 17 52 4 The Continuity Script, 1912 29 76 5 The Silent Film Script in Europe 99 6 The Coming of Sound 120 7 The Hollywood Sound Screenplay to 1948 140 8 European Screenwriting, 1948 60 163 9 Master-Scene Screenplays and the New Hollywood 182 10 The Contemporary Screenplay and Screenwriting Manual 200 11 Screenwriting Today and Tomorrow 220 Conclusion: The Screenplay as a Modular Text 235 Notes 239 Bibliography 260 Index 271 v

Acknowledgements I am indebted to the British Academy for an award under their Small Research Grant scheme, which in combination with Bangor University s sabbatical arrangements enabled me to conduct some of the primary research and to write up the results. The book has its origins in a few chapters originally proposed as part of a project that became The Screenplay: Authorship, Theory and Criticism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). I am grateful to the anonymous readers of that proposal for recognising that the material would be better organised as two separate projects; to Christabel Scaife, who acted as editor on the first of them; and to Felicity Plester, whose infectious enthusiasm and commitment to this area of research has been a continuing source of encouragement. It has latterly fallen to Chris Penfold actually to drag the thing out of me; many thanks to both Felicity and Chris, and to Cherline Daniel, for their extreme patience and unfailing courtesy. The biggest change in the field since I completed the first of the projects has been in the flowering of the Screenwriting Research Network (SRN). While conducting research for that book I was under the impression that I was almost alone in writing about this area; it turns out that several other people were independently working on screenplays, all of us under the same misconception. It has taken the growth of the SRN to put these people in touch with one another. For that and much more, I, like many others, am indebted to the tireless efforts of Ian Macdonald and Kirsi Rinne, and to those who have been instrumental in organising the annual conferences I have been fortunate enough to attend: Kirsi at Helsinki in 2009, Eva Novrup Redvall at Copenhagen in 2010, Ronald Geerts and Hugo Vercauteren at Brussels in 2011 and J. J. Murphy and Kelley Conway at Madison in 2013. Two further, related developments have been the founding of the Journal of Screenwriting, under the editorship of Jill Nelmes, and the establishment of the London Screenwriting Research Seminar, co-ordinated by Adam Ganz. Through these means I have encountered so many people whose comments, advice and scholarship have been helpful that I could not possibly name them all, but I must give warm thanks to Steven Maras, J. J. Murphy and Paul Wells, while Margot Nash saved me from a howler I was certain I hadn t committed, but had. David Bordwell, Ian vi

Acknowledgements vii Macdonald, Jill Nelmes and Claus Tieber all generously gave me access to some of their research findings. Outside the conference circuit I have been grateful for the discussions, face-to-face and by email, with Joanne Lammers, Patrick Loughney, Tom Stempel and Selina Ukwuoma. What has emerged is a kind of loose-knit research community in which there is no party line, people from a remarkably diverse range of specialisms are welcomed, and while disagreements may sometimes be pointed, they are always good-humoured, generous and free of the aggressive pursuit of self-interest. Who knew? What has not changed is the unfailing helpfulness and meticulous scholarship of the staff at the many different libraries whose archives I have explored. I must especially thank Barbara Hall and Jenny Romero at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles; Karen Pedersen and Joanne Lammers at the Writers Guild Foundation Library, Los Angeles; Patrick Loughney at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and Jonny Davies at the Reuben Library, British Film Institute, London. On a much earlier visit to the United States I benefited greatly from the assistance of Ned Comstock at the Doheny Library of the University of Southern California, and Charles Silver at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Closer to home, I learned a great deal from my doctoral students, Ann Igelström and Chris Pallant, and Chris s post-doctoral work continues to interact productively with my own interests. Julia Knaus s internship at Bangor University in 2013 has been a godsend, and Michelle Harrison has uncomplainingly tidied up several loose ends left behind when I embarked on a period of research leave. I am grateful to Domini Stallings for the cover illustration, and to Russell Hall for assistance with the final design; my thanks to Domini more generally, and to Joey and Abigail, are beyond words. Some of the material in Chapter 1 considerably expands on arguments I previously presented in The First Screenplays? American Mutoscope and Biograph Scenarios Revisited, Journal of Screenwriting 2.2 (2011); conversely, the section on the AM&B scenarios in Chapter 2 is considerably condensed from the same article.