Screenwriter of the Week- Johnny Guitar
Another film I haven't seen this week and one I plan to catch
(which probably means I'll forget it's on). Johnny Guitar
(1954) is on More 4 at 10am on Wednesday and was written by...
well let's see...
A few weeks ago I wrote about the question of who wrote Casablanca, where there is considerable confusion over authorship because of the old studio practice of assigning multiple writers to a project without letting the writers know they are not alone, and then getting multiple re-writes. The other reason for their being confusion over who wrote classic films is somewhat darker; the blacklist. Any discussion of 50's screenwriting runs into the blacklist, I've mentionned it a few times in these blogs and I just assume people know what I'm talking about but, just in case, the blacklist was a list of Hollywood screenwriters who were denounced as having communist sympathies during the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee)hearings; if you were on the list studios would not employ you and you risked jailtime. The hearings resulted in the jail for the so called 'Hollywood Ten' and cut short the careers of many others, mostly writers, mostly Jewish. The only way to get leniency was to 'name names', to give the committee names of people with communist ties; little more proof was ever required.
But writers write, and studios were loath to lose good writers, so the practice of blacklisted writers 'borrowing' the name of another writer emerged. Philip Yordan, the screenwriter of Johnny Guitar, leant his name to at least 5 black-listed writers (which sounds altruistic but Yordan did make a good living out of it). Yordan in fact head a headstart, he was using other writers and putting his name to the script before the blacklist and continued after, he basically employed a staff like a rennaisance painter with his apprentices. This was no secret, nor was it unique to Yordan (the impossibly prolific Ben Hecht is believed to have had a similar system), but it does lead to some difficulty when it comes to his filmography, especially when memories differ. In Patrick McGilligan's backstory interview (to which I am massively indebted) he lists a separate filmography for Yordan's 'disputed' films.
And among these is Johnny Guitar. Ben Maddow certainly wrote films using Yordan's name and Yordan has never denied this, but both men claim to have written Johnny Guitar. To be honest, based on the interviews, Yordan's claim is a lot stronger, he gives a full account of writing the screenplay based on an existing treatment by the author of the original novel ,Roy Chanslor, while Maddow on watching the film did not even recognise it (though remained sure he had written it!). On the other hand, Yordan arguably has more to gain; because of his use of 'surrogates' he was not the most respcted writer amongst his peers. His best known and most respected credits are almost all disputed, the stand out being The Man from Laramie. Man from Laramie is a brilliant film but Johnny Guitar is a unique one, a cult classic. Yordan's reputation largely rests on this one film.
In his McGilligan interview Yordan called Maddow an outright liar. Maddow went further and claimed that not only did Yordan not write Johnny Guitar but that he never wrote anything, that he was 'incapable of writing' and always used other people. That seems unlikely, and makes Maddow sound bitter, but he probably was, Yordan had a very long and successful career while Maddow lost a decade of his. But there is a final twist; in his interviews McGilligan found Maddow accused by other writers of 'naming names' to HUAC, McGilligan re-interviewed Maddow and (althought the exact situation is more complex than I have space for) in essence Maddow admitted that he did co-operate with HUAC.
In many ways this has not been a blog about writing, as with Casablanca I am in no way able to say who wrote Johnny Guitar, but the confusion would not have existed were it not for the saddest period in Hollywood history.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the question of who wrote Casablanca, where there is considerable confusion over authorship because of the old studio practice of assigning multiple writers to a project without letting the writers know they are not alone, and then getting multiple re-writes. The other reason for their being confusion over who wrote classic films is somewhat darker; the blacklist. Any discussion of 50's screenwriting runs into the blacklist, I've mentionned it a few times in these blogs and I just assume people know what I'm talking about but, just in case, the blacklist was a list of Hollywood screenwriters who were denounced as having communist sympathies during the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee)hearings; if you were on the list studios would not employ you and you risked jailtime. The hearings resulted in the jail for the so called 'Hollywood Ten' and cut short the careers of many others, mostly writers, mostly Jewish. The only way to get leniency was to 'name names', to give the committee names of people with communist ties; little more proof was ever required.
But writers write, and studios were loath to lose good writers, so the practice of blacklisted writers 'borrowing' the name of another writer emerged. Philip Yordan, the screenwriter of Johnny Guitar, leant his name to at least 5 black-listed writers (which sounds altruistic but Yordan did make a good living out of it). Yordan in fact head a headstart, he was using other writers and putting his name to the script before the blacklist and continued after, he basically employed a staff like a rennaisance painter with his apprentices. This was no secret, nor was it unique to Yordan (the impossibly prolific Ben Hecht is believed to have had a similar system), but it does lead to some difficulty when it comes to his filmography, especially when memories differ. In Patrick McGilligan's backstory interview (to which I am massively indebted) he lists a separate filmography for Yordan's 'disputed' films.
And among these is Johnny Guitar. Ben Maddow certainly wrote films using Yordan's name and Yordan has never denied this, but both men claim to have written Johnny Guitar. To be honest, based on the interviews, Yordan's claim is a lot stronger, he gives a full account of writing the screenplay based on an existing treatment by the author of the original novel ,Roy Chanslor, while Maddow on watching the film did not even recognise it (though remained sure he had written it!). On the other hand, Yordan arguably has more to gain; because of his use of 'surrogates' he was not the most respcted writer amongst his peers. His best known and most respected credits are almost all disputed, the stand out being The Man from Laramie. Man from Laramie is a brilliant film but Johnny Guitar is a unique one, a cult classic. Yordan's reputation largely rests on this one film.
In his McGilligan interview Yordan called Maddow an outright liar. Maddow went further and claimed that not only did Yordan not write Johnny Guitar but that he never wrote anything, that he was 'incapable of writing' and always used other people. That seems unlikely, and makes Maddow sound bitter, but he probably was, Yordan had a very long and successful career while Maddow lost a decade of his. But there is a final twist; in his interviews McGilligan found Maddow accused by other writers of 'naming names' to HUAC, McGilligan re-interviewed Maddow and (althought the exact situation is more complex than I have space for) in essence Maddow admitted that he did co-operate with HUAC.
In many ways this has not been a blog about writing, as with Casablanca I am in no way able to say who wrote Johnny Guitar, but the confusion would not have existed were it not for the saddest period in Hollywood history.
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