1941-46 The Frustrating Years
In April 1946 Shirley started writing, over the course of a couple of weeks, a long letter to her close friend Reggie Grant, who was now living permanently in New York:
15th April 1946
....At the moment I am doodling around M.G.M. "hourly waiting for something to turn up".
I saw Boxall the other day, who is now with the Korda outfit separate from M.G.M. , and he said I could work with Anthony Kimmins (whoever he may be) on the story and then on the film. He said the Arliss picture which is next on the production list, has a completed unit. Well, knowing Boxall, I takes me up to Arliss, who I met with Wolf at the Screenwriters, and ask him. He says they haven't a full unit, haven't a continuity, and the Assistant is very doubtful!! The usual business of the left-hand not knowing what the right hand is doing!
Anyway, he said he'd put in a word for me with Ted Black, so I am waiting to hear, after Easter. Nevertheless, I am also going to have an interview with J. Gleghorn Thompson, personnel manager of the Rank Organisations, as I am quite keen on going into Documentaries, particularly with Mary Field, Children's films, etc. She has a program to go abroad and do films, which appeals to me as you know.
I went to see Harold Goodwin of G.B.I. who was very friendly, but the job was purely on the script side with a very very vague possibility of doing anything on production. The job was interesting, and good to start off in the film business, but was definitely no good for me.
M.G.M here in Belgravia is the complete antithesis to business life in New York, so I gather from you and Carol Brandt. After she went to Sweden I had a week's holiday in view of the intensive hours I worked, and then came back here. I get in at eleven, have tea, spend the rest of morning till lunch talking. Talk over lunch, come back and spend the afternoon in publicity where everybody gathers, and talk again! Today is the first of the second week, and I am beginning to go mad. There are about eight of us in the same boat. Could it happen anywhere else?
I have just got the Brandt episode in the right perspective in my mind. While with her, life was so hectic that everything was confused, and I don't like confusion. Her impact on me was very much like New York's impact on you, except that yours was a so much larger dose. My last letter to you was a little incoherent I know. Reggie, she lives! Every day is full, and she doesn't have to waste time on the boring, stupid little jobs that have to be done. She gets somebody to do it.
I found out her life story, which she told me in the few minutes before she left by plane for Sweden.
She comes from New England (that's enough), married at 19, (didn't love her husband but he had money), lived in Budapest for a year and then all over Europe. When she was 26 he died (don't know how), and two years later she married Carl Brandt. (He is a sort of Myron Selznick Ltd.) She is 42, looks about 30, and is gay, and so entertaining. Night clubbing until 4.30 and then start at 9.0 again in the morning. And what a pace! During the war she did a couple of war corresponding all over Europe with Toni Frissell.
Working with her for six weeks I now know nearly everything about American and English publishers and agents - personal and otherwise, and thousands (well scores) of authors came in and out of the apartment.
Brandt was looking for new writers, but nothing much came her way, and I personally do not think much of the type of literature and writers about whom she wrote to the States, with adjectives such as ‘great’, and ‘potential’. Any book which thematically was new and courageous, or had a social moral, M.G.M wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.
...The most interesting thing that came up, in my opinion, were two American women who had written a play 'MEN MUST WEEP'. They are Martha Gellhorn (Ernest Hemingway's ex-wife) and Virginia Cowles. The play is about two women war correspondents who get everywhere they shouldn't in the war sphere. (The play appealed to Brandt so much because she said it was almost identical with her experiences as a correspondent). They fall in love (pure affair) with two army officers, but then decide they would rather cover the Burma than get married and bottle fruit in Pennsylvania. Wise gals. I think the play might be put on in New York soon.
…..Marcia Davenport [the music critic and novelist : “Valley of Decision”, made into an Oscar nominated film in 1945 starring Gregory Peck and Greer Garson] stayed in the apartment for a week on her way back to the States from Prague. She was also young looking and gay, and rather temperamental. Both of them got so mad at the delays of transport, telephone, and hundreds of other things. If they wanted something it had to be done zoom, zoom, soom! A typical remark of hers one day to Brandt was: “If I’m still here tomorrow, let’ go to Christies and buy some odds and ends”.
29th April
I know what you’re thinking…..Will this letter never end!
…We all saw “LA BETE HUMAINE” at the Curzon on Saturday. It was simply superb. As always the French treatment of an “affair de coeur” was exquisite. One cannot help comparing it with the American naïve way, and the English simply embarrassing way. One in particular was the British National ‘ TROJAN BROTHERS’. The scene where they are together for the weekend is so crude and revolting that it made me want to crawl under the seat. And the most dreadful part about it is that the boys at Elstree hardly see it.
I met Bob (Robert Asher, a friend and film director, but then an Assistant Director) and Gerry for dinner the other evening, and Bob is really in a bad way, and frankly I don’t think he will ever do anything except remain all his life a good First [Assistant Director]. He thinks this way…..the film business to him is just a job, it isn’t particularly interesting at least no more than anything else. He is getting a decent salary…his job is safe (how I loathe that word and all it implies) and he is not even trying to get out. He said to me that I hadn’t done much since I left British National. Well, at least I have escaped being drawn into that deadly bog.
The evening I met them I went to the [Elstree] Studios first. They were shooting on a new stage which was until a week ago the machine shop of the factory there. It had no roof, no doors, the floor was metal, and one of the spider boxes ignited on it. But B.N. couldn’t possibly waste a day – the film must go on!
The most interesting person I have read about lately is a boy named Peter Brook. He is 20 and is at the moment producing ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ at the Shakespeare Festival, Stratford. Previously, and don’t forget he is only 20, he has produced and directed films, produced and put on a play at the Torch Theatre, written scenarios for Crown Films and became an Assistant Director, then went to Oxford and from there wrote and directed shorts for Gaumont British. Then produced two very successful plays for ENSA and one for the Chanticleer Theatre Club. He is the sort of person I would like to work with.
Wolf came in the other day - he is starting with Rank. Individual Pictures with Launder and Gilliatt, in three weeks time. They are going to a house outside Dublin for a month or so to write - but unfortunately they both type and do not need a secretary!
I mentioned in the early part of this letter - way back that I was waiting to hear about working with Korda after Easter. Well, it is long past Easter and I still don't know. But also nobody else knows. It is more than likely that Korda will entirely drop the idea of doing Bonnie Prince Charlie for which locations have been arranged, script typed, and even a certain amount of casting done! It's just typical. Swinburn, whom you know, told me that if the film is done, they will need three continuities, two in the studio and one on location. He said the two on location have got to be attractive - which counts me out - but I said perhaps he'd take me if I had a face-lift. However, I don't suppose anything will come out of it. The annoying thing is that M.G.M. will really be busy and start a heavy production schedule in about six to eight months. But I can't wait - or will I have to?
NEXT: THE FRUSTRATING YEARS continued....
Next:
1946 Holiday Camp