Dumb hoods screw up in kidnap gone wrong
While not wanting to enter a debate about who might have been the better of the two, it has to be said that Leonard's output of some 45 novels outstrips Willeford's of 18 or so, with both maintaining a remarkably high standard of idiosyncratic plotting, characterisation and dialogue in a felonious field that includes many other notable penmen and penwomen.
(Leonard and Willeford have been great favourites at The Budapest Times for years, where we've consumed some 35 of Leonard's novels and just about all of Willeford's, but forced by threat of torture into a decision of some sort, rather than choosing one author we would at least opt for the latter's superlative 'Sideswipe' (1987) as nigh on unbeatable.)
Well, just about matchless, that is, for 'The Switch', first published in 1978. is top-notch story-telling too, with its requisite badasses who are basically too stupid to be successful badasses. The badasses here are Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara, Ordell a light-skinned Negro and Gara a dark-skinned Caucasian, so they are about even in shade (a typical Leonard touch, that).
Not only are Leonard's hoods often dumb and screwing up, they can end up trying to rip off each other too, with guess-what results. Louis is going to be the dumb-ass here. Leonard liked to write things in a bit of an oblique way, so when he tells us that 'Louis had been down in Huntsville, Texas, keeping fit, clearing scrub all day, having his supper at five P.M. and turning the light out at ten', that's Elmore code for Louis having been in jail.
Likewise, reading that 'Louis wore a cap – this summer a faded tan cap – straight and low over his eyes. Louis didn't go in for jewelry; a watch was enough, a $1,200 Benrus he'd picked up at the Flamingo Motor Hotel, McAllen, Texas', well, that's another roundabout for the reader to understand – he's a thief.
He has indeed been away for nearly three years, and so now that he's out of stir and back in Detroit, his pal Ordell is taking him for a ride in Ordell's tan Ford van so that he can see the latest sights of the Motor Capital. As they cruise past the monumental Renaissance Centre on the riverfront, all glass and steel rising 700 feet in a five-tower complex, all Louis can say is that, 'Wow. It's big'. Ordell is nonplussed, asking, 'That's all you can say? It's big?' to which Louis adds: 'It's really big. If it fell over you could walk across it to Canada.'
Another sight described by Ordell: '… a fine example of neo-ghetto… You can see it's not your classic ghetto yet, not quite ratty or rotten enough, but it's coming. Over there on the left, first whore of the day. Out for her vitamin C. And there's some more – hot pants with a little ass hanging out, showing the goods.'
Louis was jailed after gunning his car at someone he didn't like to make him jump but cut it too close and broke the man's legs. 'I was arrested, charged with attempted murder, plea-bargained it down to felonious assault and got two to five in Huntsville. Served thirty months, same amount of time I was in the Navy, and I'll tell you something. Even being at [naval station] Norfolk, Virginia, I liked the Navy a little better.'
Leonard is a master of casual humour. Ordell recounts how he went down to the Bahamas about seven, eight years ago. 'I had some money to spend, I said hey, go down to a paradise island and have some of those big rum drinks and watch the natives do all that quaint shit beating on the oil drums, you know?'
And then there's Richard, full name Richard Edgar Monk, a cultist, racist, anti-communist, anti-semite, ex-private security guard with an arsenal of rifles, revolvers, a musket, shotguns – one sawed-off – grenades, bayonets, knives, a gas mask, a German helmet, an Afrika Korps soft hat, Nazi armbands, belt buckles, an SS death's head insignia, and boxes of cartridges and shotgun shells. His car has a shotgun mount, roll-bar and police siren.
Richard is recruited because Ordell and Louis plan to kidnap the wife of a rich man and they need Richard's house to hold her until her husband pays a million-dollar ransom. Alongside Richard's World War Two memorabilia, the red, white and black swastika on the wall and photos of Hitler and Heinrich Himmler in his black SS uniform, Leonard notes in another nice touch that the couch and easychairs have crocheted antimacassars on the arms and headrests. There's something weird about Richard.
The kidnap victim will be Mickey Dawson, the 'tennis mum' of a spoiled brat teenage son, Bo. She's sick to the teeth of her husband Frank. 'He's a pure asshole,' she says. For the irritable Frank, nothing his wife does is right and he's on her back all the time.
Unknown to her, he has apartments in Detroit renovated with stolen materials and appliances, renting to pimps and prostitutes, grossing at least $100,000 a month but reporting only half as income, his money going into a numbered bank account. Frank also regularly goes to the Bahamas for a day or two, lately for several days, supposedly working on land development with foreign investors. He has a mistress there, Melanie.
Ordell and Louis have a selection of rubber faces including four Richard Nixons, Frankenstein, a vampire, a witch, monsters, Micky Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy for disguise. They grab Mickey and take her to Richard's. It has all the makings of a terrible mess, Elmore Leonard-style – the two hoods and their psycho pal, and the Frank-Mickey-Melanie triangle. Unfortunately, unknown to the kidnappers, Frank has divorce papers in the pipeline and he wants to marry Melanie, so why should he want to pay out a million dollars to secure Mickey's release? In fact it would save him a lot of trouble if the kidnappers kill her.
There's an interesting question that Leonard might be subtly leaving us to consider – are Ordell, Louis and Richard any more screwed up in their criminal ways than the 'respectable' Frank? The outcome is unseen and nicely absurd, a satisfying ending to an enjoyable book .
The other two newly resissued Leonard paperbacks alongside 'The Switch' are 'Swag' (1976) and 'Rum Punch' (1992). Another 10 will follow at the end of this year and in March 2026. It's all about keeping the catalogue alive. These latest paperbacks don't mean that Elmore Leonard is back, because he never went away, and probably won't either.
A couple of his tenets for good writing to keep the reader engaged were to never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue, and to never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said' to keep the focus on the dialogue itself. For these and his other rules we remark that we are exceedingly grateful.
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Budapest Times
5 days ago
- Budapest Times
Dumb hoods screw up in kidnap gone wrong
Latter-day editions of books by late American crime writer Charles Willeford (1919-1988) have featured the front-cover accolade by late American crime writer Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) that 'No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford'. That's exceedingly generous praise from a man for whom many would offer exactly the same sentiment, that 'No one writes a better crime novel than Elmore Leonard'. While not wanting to enter a debate about who might have been the better of the two, it has to be said that Leonard's output of some 45 novels outstrips Willeford's of 18 or so, with both maintaining a remarkably high standard of idiosyncratic plotting, characterisation and dialogue in a felonious field that includes many other notable penmen and penwomen. (Leonard and Willeford have been great favourites at The Budapest Times for years, where we've consumed some 35 of Leonard's novels and just about all of Willeford's, but forced by threat of torture into a decision of some sort, rather than choosing one author we would at least opt for the latter's superlative 'Sideswipe' (1987) as nigh on unbeatable.) Well, just about matchless, that is, for 'The Switch', first published in 1978. is top-notch story-telling too, with its requisite badasses who are basically too stupid to be successful badasses. The badasses here are Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara, Ordell a light-skinned Negro and Gara a dark-skinned Caucasian, so they are about even in shade (a typical Leonard touch, that). Not only are Leonard's hoods often dumb and screwing up, they can end up trying to rip off each other too, with guess-what results. Louis is going to be the dumb-ass here. Leonard liked to write things in a bit of an oblique way, so when he tells us that 'Louis had been down in Huntsville, Texas, keeping fit, clearing scrub all day, having his supper at five P.M. and turning the light out at ten', that's Elmore code for Louis having been in jail. Likewise, reading that 'Louis wore a cap – this summer a faded tan cap – straight and low over his eyes. Louis didn't go in for jewelry; a watch was enough, a $1,200 Benrus he'd picked up at the Flamingo Motor Hotel, McAllen, Texas', well, that's another roundabout for the reader to understand – he's a thief. He has indeed been away for nearly three years, and so now that he's out of stir and back in Detroit, his pal Ordell is taking him for a ride in Ordell's tan Ford van so that he can see the latest sights of the Motor Capital. As they cruise past the monumental Renaissance Centre on the riverfront, all glass and steel rising 700 feet in a five-tower complex, all Louis can say is that, 'Wow. It's big'. Ordell is nonplussed, asking, 'That's all you can say? It's big?' to which Louis adds: 'It's really big. If it fell over you could walk across it to Canada.' Another sight described by Ordell: '… a fine example of neo-ghetto… You can see it's not your classic ghetto yet, not quite ratty or rotten enough, but it's coming. Over there on the left, first whore of the day. Out for her vitamin C. And there's some more – hot pants with a little ass hanging out, showing the goods.' Louis was jailed after gunning his car at someone he didn't like to make him jump but cut it too close and broke the man's legs. 'I was arrested, charged with attempted murder, plea-bargained it down to felonious assault and got two to five in Huntsville. Served thirty months, same amount of time I was in the Navy, and I'll tell you something. Even being at [naval station] Norfolk, Virginia, I liked the Navy a little better.' Leonard is a master of casual humour. Ordell recounts how he went down to the Bahamas about seven, eight years ago. 'I had some money to spend, I said hey, go down to a paradise island and have some of those big rum drinks and watch the natives do all that quaint shit beating on the oil drums, you know?' And then there's Richard, full name Richard Edgar Monk, a cultist, racist, anti-communist, anti-semite, ex-private security guard with an arsenal of rifles, revolvers, a musket, shotguns – one sawed-off – grenades, bayonets, knives, a gas mask, a German helmet, an Afrika Korps soft hat, Nazi armbands, belt buckles, an SS death's head insignia, and boxes of cartridges and shotgun shells. His car has a shotgun mount, roll-bar and police siren. Richard is recruited because Ordell and Louis plan to kidnap the wife of a rich man and they need Richard's house to hold her until her husband pays a million-dollar ransom. Alongside Richard's World War Two memorabilia, the red, white and black swastika on the wall and photos of Hitler and Heinrich Himmler in his black SS uniform, Leonard notes in another nice touch that the couch and easychairs have crocheted antimacassars on the arms and headrests. There's something weird about Richard. The kidnap victim will be Mickey Dawson, the 'tennis mum' of a spoiled brat teenage son, Bo. She's sick to the teeth of her husband Frank. 'He's a pure asshole,' she says. For the irritable Frank, nothing his wife does is right and he's on her back all the time. Unknown to her, he has apartments in Detroit renovated with stolen materials and appliances, renting to pimps and prostitutes, grossing at least $100,000 a month but reporting only half as income, his money going into a numbered bank account. Frank also regularly goes to the Bahamas for a day or two, lately for several days, supposedly working on land development with foreign investors. He has a mistress there, Melanie. Ordell and Louis have a selection of rubber faces including four Richard Nixons, Frankenstein, a vampire, a witch, monsters, Micky Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy for disguise. They grab Mickey and take her to Richard's. It has all the makings of a terrible mess, Elmore Leonard-style – the two hoods and their psycho pal, and the Frank-Mickey-Melanie triangle. Unfortunately, unknown to the kidnappers, Frank has divorce papers in the pipeline and he wants to marry Melanie, so why should he want to pay out a million dollars to secure Mickey's release? In fact it would save him a lot of trouble if the kidnappers kill her. There's an interesting question that Leonard might be subtly leaving us to consider – are Ordell, Louis and Richard any more screwed up in their criminal ways than the 'respectable' Frank? The outcome is unseen and nicely absurd, a satisfying ending to an enjoyable book . The other two newly resissued Leonard paperbacks alongside 'The Switch' are 'Swag' (1976) and 'Rum Punch' (1992). Another 10 will follow at the end of this year and in March 2026. It's all about keeping the catalogue alive. These latest paperbacks don't mean that Elmore Leonard is back, because he never went away, and probably won't either. A couple of his tenets for good writing to keep the reader engaged were to never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue, and to never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said' to keep the focus on the dialogue itself. For these and his other rules we remark that we are exceedingly grateful.
Budapest Times
12-07-2025
- Budapest Times
A defiant lady looks back with no real regrets
Doubtless, many people younger than Veronica Lake wrote autobiographies, with hers having been published in 1969 when she was only 47 years old. But by 1973 she was dead; as legend has it, a washed-up, bankrupt Hollywood beauty who drank to oblivion. It would seem reasonable to assume that she had accepted her glory days would never return and it was time to set the record straight. Even, perhaps, that she felt her remaining days were few. Lake looks back with honesty, acceptance and understanding on a 30-film career between 1939 and 1970, an occupation towards which she often showed ambivalence. And equally she recounts the tumultuous issues that life dropped in her path – the death of her father in an accident, an overbearing mother who sued her, three failed marriages, guilt over inattention to her three children, a child who died, money struggles and the bottle. She apparently dictated her story to American author and ghostwriter Donald Bain, and between the two of them they produced a compelling account that doesn't seem to hold back. It reads nicely, as though Lake is addressing you the reader personally. However, the book fell out of print, becoming rare for years, and Dean Street Press, which specialises in vintage fiction and non-fiction, seemingly had to strive to track it down for this 2020 edition. It has an introduction by Eddie Muller, an American author and founder of the Film Noir Foundation that is dedicated to preserving and restoring films noirs , and he compares Lake to similarly torn actor Sterling Hayden, both having been reluctant stars and natural-born rebels who turned their backs on Hollywood, swapping fame for life as nomadic free spirits. Muller points out that 'while the public has granted Sterling Hayden, a legendary boozer and hash-head, a legacy as a heroic, larger-than life iconoclast, it has branded Lake's life after Hollywood a steady downward spiral of abasement, worthy only of pity. Blame a cultural double standard that applauds reckless rebellion in men but shames it in women'. Well put. Constance Frances Marie Ockelman, known to legions of moviegoers as Veronica Lake, was born in Brooklyn, New York State, on November 14, 1922, and her mother once intimated to her that she was a mistake, a very unwanted child. Connie was a tomboy in a normal comfortable middle-class family living in a fair neighbourhood. She spent her pre-school years in Florida, her grade school years back in Brooklyn and her high school years in Florida and Montreal, New York State. She had a lead in a school play at age eight, and was third of 85 contestants in a Miss Miami beauty contest and won first place in a Miss Florida contest – flesh peddling, slaves markets, as she described these. Her father died in February 1932 when she was 10 and her mother remarried a year later. Connie, her stepfather, mother and a cousin moved to Hollywood in summer 1938 when Lake was 16. She daydreamed occasionally of becoming an actress but had no compulsion, though her dominating mother had different ideas and enrolled her in acting school. One of the girls there had a casting call at RKO for 'Sorority House' in 1939 and she asked Connie to accompany her. Both were taken on as extras. Connie had further bit parts in 'The Wrong Room' (1938) at RKO, 'Forty Little Mothers' (1940) at Metro and a couple of others. She did a screen test for director Freddie Wilcox at Metro but the result was awful. A producer unzipped his pants and put his half-erect penis on the desk 'lying there like a sausage on display in the local supermarket'. She threw a book, hit her target and left him howling. She says she never succumbed to that Hollywood staple, the casting couch. Her fine, blonde hair was hard to manage and she was always trying to stop it falling in her eyes. Director Busby Berkeley decided instead that it distinguished her. She also tested for Paramount producer Arthur Hornblow Jr., and kept shaking her head to get the hair out of her eyes. The famous 'peek-a-boo' one-eyed look was born. 'Something I always considered a detriment to my appearance became my greatest asset. That's Hollywood, folks.' She had her first featured role in 'I Wanted Wings' in 1941. Hornblow wanted to change her name and he spent a restless night thinking about it. He told her that when people looked into her navy-blue eyes they saw the calm coolness of a lake, and her classic features made him think of Veronica. (Just a whim? Who or why Veronica goes unexplained). Working on 'I Wanted Wings' frightened her to death and she developed a self-defence, being very cocky and snippy. Her aloofness enabled her to get through the role but didn't endear her to the people working on the picture and gave her something of a poor reputation. However, it made her a star and she got a modest raise in salary. She scored with 'Sullivan's Travels' (1941), upsetting director Preston Sturges by not disclosing she was six months pregnant. 'This Gun for Hire' and 'The Glass Key', both with Alan Ladd, and 'I Married a Witch', with Fredric March, were further successes, all in 1942. Beauty shops nationwide began advertising the Veronica Lake hair-do, but government officials asked her to change it so that women working in war factories wouldn't get their long hair caught in the machinery. She wore it up in 1944's 'The Hour Before The Dawn'. Lake's successful teaming with Ladd continued in 'The Blue Dahlia' (1946) and 'Saigon' (1948). 'Blue Dahlia' writer Raymond Chandler called her 'Miss Moronica Lake'. Others joked. Groucho Marx: 'I opened up my mop closet the other day and I thought Veronica Lake fell out.' Bob Hope: 'Veronica Lake wears her hair over one eye because it's a glass eye.' She writes: 'I decided it was time to make Hollywood a thing of the past. At this point, cynics will say that quite the reverse was true; Hollywood decided to make Veronica Lake a thing of the past… I set foot in Hollywood again in June 1952, to obtain my final divorce from [Hungarian film director] André [DeToth]. I've never been back since.' Like others, DeToth had problems being 'Mr Lake', husband of a movie star, pin-up girl, sex symbol. Lake moved to New York and made a precarious living doing television and theatre. She broke her ankle and was laid low for a time, paycheck to paycheck. A newspaper revelation that she was a cocktail waitress at a New York hotel caused world headlines, but she insists it was something she liked and not forced by debts. A long section of the book describes her years drinking in bars with her sailor boyfriend Andy, until he died from alcohol ailments. Lake is quite matter of fact about her so-called decline. This reader is reminded of Edith Piaf's signature song 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien' – 'No! No regrets. No! I will have no regrets. All the things that went wrong, For at last I have learned to be strong. No! No regrets. No! I will have no regrets. For the grief doesn't last, it is gone, I've forgotten the past.' The Hollywood rebel had simply left glamour behind and wanted stardom without the usual trimmings. The book, recall, was published in 1969. Before reading it I saw her on YouTube interviewed on 'The Dick Cavett Show' in 1971, two years from death, almost unrecognisable with shorter hair and aged face but perfectly content and throwing her head back in wild laughter a couple of times. And there is a rather sad photo on the internet of her standing outside the gates of Paramount Pictures that same year, the former beauty looking like a dowdy housewife in a cheap tracksuit. But she is giving a little smile and appears composed. It seems the sadness is ours, not hers. Peace at last. 'And the memories I had I no longer desire. Both the good and the bad I have flung in a fire. And I feel in my heart that the seed has been sown. It is something quite new, it's like nothing I've known.' No regrets. Rest in peace Constance Frances Marie Ockelman, sometimes 'legend' Veronica Lake.
Budapest Times
31-05-2025
- Budapest Times
Losing the plots in an antiseptic Hollywood
Only Belgian author Georges Simenon (1903-1989) has had more of his books filmed than English author William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). We don't have the number for Simenon but for Maugham, to date and if television films are included, there have been more than 90 made from his novels, short stories and plays. Both writers are great favourites at The Budapest Times, and as well as reading them extensively we also look out for the films, so Robert Calder's book is an invaluable, and cautionary, reference point for Maugham. Of course, film-makers have always had a habit of setting their own scriptwriters to work 'bettering' the source material for which they already paid a handsome sum. And the result often causes the original writers to throw up their hands at the travesty that their creation has become. And that's very often the case here, as Calder details. He will advise. Calder is a Canadian, Professor Emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan, and he wrote a book of literary criticism, 'W. Somerset Maugham and the Quest for Freedom' in 1972, and a biography, 'Willie, The Life of W. Somerset Maugham' in 1989. In this new book he tells how Maugham and Hollywood not surprisingly formed a long, productive partnership. Maugham had a varied and prolific career from the 1890s to the 1950s, during which he achieved success both as a novelist, with 20 books, and a dramatist, with 32 plays. Few authors have achieved such success in both genres, Calder says, and Maugham completed an even rarer trifecta by writing around 120 short stories, some of which – notably 'The Letter' and 'Rain' – Calder describes as the most memorable in the English language. In Calder's assessment, Maugham's writing appealed to the film industry because a recurrent theme and preoccupation was his concern for freedom, whether physical, emotional or intellectual. His territory was autonomy and enslavement, seeing humans as surrounded by narrowness and restrictions, trapped by poverty or the class system, restricted by a role such as colonial administrator or humble verger, and imprisoned by their emotions. In the early 20th century, Calder writes, the moving picture was becoming the newest of art forms, embryonic compared to literature, drama, opera and the visual arts. Audiences were initially excited to see moving images but soon developed a taste for actual stories, and producers began scouring the world for plots and characters. In 1915 Maugham's fame as a novelist was still to come but he was a well-known dramatist whose plays were staged in London and New York, and he sold the rights to his play 'The Explorer' to pioneering film producer Jesse Lasky. Of the 10 films made from Maugham stories in the silent era, only one – the novel 'The Magician' – was not a play. Straight away, the films shifted from Maugham's original stories, downplaying sexual struggles and revising endings, for instance. 'The Ordeal' in 1922, based on a 1917 Maugham play called 'Love in a Cottage', was extensively rewritten, making the play unrecognisable. Despite such revision and censorship, it's an unfortunate cinematic fact that many silent films are lost, with most of the Maughams among them, never to be seen again. Occasionally today one might still turn up in an attic in New Zealand or somewhere, but the chances reduce. Calder recreates the lost films from contemporary newspaper reviews and such. Usefully, he informs of complete changes of titles, so we now realise that 'Charming Sinners', released by Paramount in 1929, is actually the Maugham play 'The Constant Wife' first performed in 1926, and 'Strictly Unconditional', released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1930, is a version of another play, 'The Circle'. And who has even heard of 'Dirty Gertie from Harlem', from Sack Amusement Enterprises in 1946, let alone suspected that the plot is essentially an adaptation of 'Miss Thompson', which in turn is 'Rain'. Maugham is not credited and it is claimed to have been an original tale written by the ironically named True T. Thompson. Sadie is disguised as Gertie La Rue. When sound arrived, 'Rain' offered particularly fertile material. This short story was originally published as 'Miss Thompson' in April 1921 and is set on a Pacific island, where a missionary's determination to reform a hardened, cynical prostitute leads to tragedy. It was filmed as 'Sadie Thompson' by Gloria Swanson Productions in 1930, with Swanson in the lead, then as 'Rain' by United Artists in 1932 with Joan Crawford, and as 'Miss Sadie Thompson' by Columbia Pictures in 1953 with Rita Hayworth. At one stage, in 1940 when Mary Pickford owned the rights, she was approached by three studios. RKO wanted the story for Ginger Rogers, MGM saw it as a vehicle for Ann Sothern and Warner Bros. had Bette Davis in mind, but these projects all remained just that. Calder's account of Swanson's determined efforts to make a film that was essentially too hot for the moral crusaders trying to rein in Hollywood 'excesses' is a particularly intriguing look at the machinations in play. The Hays Office and its 'code of decency' barred profanity, nudity, miscegenation, scenes of childbirth and ridicule of clergy. Single beds and no toilets. Despite Swanson's trickery to evade the censors and put Sadie on screen, her film is sanitised and ends not with a bang but a mawkish whimper, Calder recounts. It wasn't alone. Maugham's semi-autobiographical fiction 'Of Human Bondage' included what could well be his most compulsively page-turning section ever, as medical student Philip Carey repeatedly subjects himself to humiliation by the slutty waitress Mildred. Bette Davis played the tormentor in RKO's 1934 film and Leslie Howard took the kicks. Unknown to us until now, Warner Bros. filmed it in 1946 with Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker, and finally Seven Arts Productions did a version with Kim Novak and Laurence Harvey in 1964. Davis was also the murderess Leslie Crosbie in the Warner Bros. film of 'The Letter' in 1940, and Calder assesses that of all the Maugham adaptations it is the one that most enriches one of his stories with the artistic possibilities of the medium. As for the worst, this was surely 'Isle of Fury' starring Humphrey Bogart in Warner Bros.' 1946 version of Maugham's novel 'The Narrow Corner', seemingly 'the product of a team trying to win a quickie film contest'. Jeanne Eagels played Crosbie in Paramount's 'The Letter' in 1929, and Warner Bros. adapted it again as 'The Unfaithful' in 1947 with Ann Sheridan. Warners had also filmed 'The Narrow Corner' in 1933. Other 'multiples' were 'The Painted Veil' in 1934, 1957 (as 'The Seventh Sin') and 2006, 'The Beachcomber'in 1938 (as 'Vessel of Wrath') and 1954, 'The Razor's Edge' in 1946 and 1984, and 'Theatre' as 'Adorable Julia' in 1962 and 'Being Julia' in 2004. Calder details how Hollywood signed up eminent authors to write specifically for the studios because their names on posters guaranteed increased ticket sales, and while some of them adapted to the demands of creating film scripts, Maugham was not one. On a Hollywood sojourn in 1920 he got a $15,000 commission for a script but it was never used. After that he declined further offers. 'I'm amazed at the way in which producers buy my stories and then change the plots. If they like their own plots best, why bother to buy mine?' Calder gives us the eviscerations and revisions designed to satisfy the censor and the perceived tastes of moviegoers, if not the expectations of their author.
