Wordfall

I’ve been reflecting recently on how writers and the art of screenwriting are one of the least understood and celebrated parts of the cinematic jigsaw puzzle. And yet a good story and well written characters are so essential to a good film.

To shine some light on the writing process behind great films, I’m going to go through 10 of my favourite films and examine their writers and screenplay histories. First up:

10. Holiday starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. (1938)

Holiday is set in roaring twenties New York and tells the story of Johnny Case (Cary Grant), a young man who is torn between his free-thinking lifestyle and the tradition of his wealthy fiancée’s family. He declares his intention to quit his job and travel to Europe, which goes down like a lead balloon with his fiancee Julia (Doris Nolan) and her capitalist father, but strikes a chord with the ‘black sheep of the family’, Julia’s sister Linda (Katherine Hepburn).

I love this film because of its celebration of irreverence and non-conformity, and also because it seems to really capture the zeitgeist of the late twenties before the Great Depression hit.

As with many of the golden age Hollywood films, it was originally a stage play, first performed on Broadway in 1928 and written by Phillip Barry, who also wrote ‘The Philadelphia Story’. The 1938 film version was a remake – there had already been a 1930 film starring Ann Harding, Mary Astor and Edward Everett Horton.

Interestingly, one of the writers of the screen adaptation, Donald Ogden Stewart, was a member of the Communist Party. In 1938, in the context of the Great Depression and the approaching shadow of the Second World War, a film about rich bankers and the theme of acquiring money vs. having a good life had a political resonance and controversial edge that the stage play did not in 1928. It was deemed subversive and its writers and producers investigated by the FBI, along with It’s a Wonderful Life.

The film’s other screenwriter, Sidney Buchman, was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Mr Smith Goes to Washington, and later won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941). He refused provide the names of American Communist Party members to the House Un-American Activities Committee, which led to a charge of contempt of Congress. Buchman was fined, given a year’s suspended sentence, and was then blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses.

The roots of the films subversive message, though, were deeper. Before Stewart or Buchman were involved, Phillip Barry had already been recognised for his anti-establishment tone. 

In the words of theatre critic Brooks Atkinson, “If [his plays] did not make Barry exactly a revolutionary, they made him a dissenter from the materialistic mythology of America.”

The film’s message continues to resonate in the post-neoliberal age, where wealth apparently abounds but so many feel that their quality of life has deteriorated.

Sources: 

Wikipedia

IMdB

Holiday (1938) or How Live to Work and Money Cannot Buy Happiness, Debora Espinosa Anton

Holiday (1938): Cukor’s Oscar-Nominated Masterpiece, Starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant