Wodehouse goes to Hollywood

Here is PG Wodehouse, writing to his chum Guy Bolton from an address in Beverly Hills, in July 1930:

"Dear Guy,

I really believe that I must have the softest job on record. A horde of scenarioists have already constructed the script I'm working on, even to the extent of writing the dialogue. All I have to do is revise and adapt their dialogue. However, I fear I shall not be able to string out the work on this dear old movie much longer, as they seem determined to start shooting on Monday, and I fear they may give me something tougher to do next time. Still, I shall always have lots of time for other work..."

At this moment in his life, Wodehouse was a published novelist and prolific writer of short stories, contributing to magazines in England and the USA. He had also enjoyed a distinguished theatre career, working with Jerome Kern and the Gershwins: he wrote lyrics for 18 musical comedies staged in London and New York from 1915 to 1928. It was this theatre work that brought him to the attention of Hollywood, with the advent of talking pictures. Producers such as Irving Thalberg at MGM believed that stage plays would be a crucial element in the new medium: "Writing a silent movie is like writing a novel, but a script for a talkie is more like writing a play." Plays by Noël Coward and Eugene O'Neill could be adapted, and their involvement would also enhance the status of this low-brow entertainment, that had its origins in fairgrounds, amusement parks and vaudeville. So the new Gold Rush began, and "Eastern scribblers" were shipped west in droves. A legendary telegram from Herman Mankiewicz to his friend Ben Hecht in Chicago promised: "MILLIONS ARE TO BE GRABBED OUT HERE AND YOUR ONLY COMPETITION IS IDIOTS. STOP. DON'T LET THIS GET AROUND! STOP."

It was his canny wife Ethel who negotiated Wodehouse's contract with MGM: $2,000 a week for six months, with an option to renew. This was his first commission to write for the movies, although several of his stories had already been adapted for silent films. Piccadilly Jim was produced by David O Selznick in America and several Wodehouse golfing stories were filmed in England by the Stoll Company. One of these is a silent treasure: The Long Hole, in which two rival suitors battle for the hand of a flapper in a golf match. The contest takes them miles off the course, through a village street, a graveyard, a green-grocer's shop and a moving vehicle. The title cards simply record the number of shots accumulated by the players: 7 – 27 –165 – 374 – 1022!

Wodehouse was 49 when he arrived in Los Angeles. The actress Elsie Janis, who had starred in his musical comedies Oh Kay! and Miss 1917, rented him her home at 724 Linden Drive, Beverly Hills. The English writer created a stir at the studio on his first day, by insisting on walking the 12 miles from his home to Culver City. "Even the hookers don't walk in LA!" his producers warned him.

His first task was to tweak an existing script, Those Three French Girls. A rush job. He didn't like the poky office they allocated him in the aptly named Writers' Block, and instead stationed himself on the back lot with a folding card table for his typewriter, where he worked away in the sunshine amid the traffic of cowboys and pirates and chorus girls. When he went to lunch, a prop man removed his desk. Wodehouse assumed that he was no longer needed, and walked home.

My diligent researcher tracked his script for Those Three French Girl to a dusty file in the Margaret Herrick Library, which is in the Oscars' offices in Los Angeles. Dated 8 July 1930, the script gives a clue to the bizarre set-up in the writers' department at MGM. It lists the various writers who had a hand in its completion. Original story was by Dale Van Everey, Arthur Freed and Richard Schayer. Adaptation and continuity was then added by Sylivia Thalberg (sister to Irving, who was head of production) and Frank Butler. Dialogue then supplied by P G Wodehouse. The script also carries the legend that it had been "OK'd by Mr Rapf". Harry Rapf was a senior producer at MGM, brought in from vaudeville theatre to oversee routine productions, tear-jerkers and broad comedy. Known as The Anteater because of his gigantic proboscis, Rapf was a figure of derision at the studio, where Joan Crawford was his mistress. When he was going abroad on a cruise liner, one of his gag writers, Bob Hopkins, advised him not to stick his head out of the porthole or "the boat will turn around".

Those Three French Girls is a farce, with a flimsy romantic plot that would sit more easily on the musical comedy stage. But in the yellowing pages of the shooting script it's possible to detect some scenes that have the ring of Wodehouse. The Earl of Ippleton has a valet, Parker, who controls his master's life in a Jeevesian manner.

SCENE 17: LUXURIOUS BATHROOM

The Earl of Ippleton in his bath. He is a stoutold gentleman. His valet enters with telegram.

Valet

You rang, m'lord?

Earl

Parker: I've lost the soap.

Valet

If your lordship will be good enough to move your lordship's left foot, I fancy your lordship will discover the desired object...

Scene 69 also has some good comedy business involving a restorative powder:

SCENE 69: INT. THE CASTLE LIBRARY

Earl sits by the fire. Valet enters.

Earl

Parker, I have a funny feeling...

Valet

Yes, m'lord?

Earl

Here! [Feeling his heart] What do you think it is?

Valet

Off hand, m'lord, I would say it is gas.

Earl

Parker, you're an ass... it is love.

Valet

Will your lordship kindly put out your tongue?

[He gestures fold of paper towards Earl's lips. Earl puts out his tongue. Valet shakes powder on to tongue.]

Earl

[Thickly, powder on tongue] I wonduh ith I look ath young ath I feel...

FADE OUT

Those Three French Girls was filmed in 30 days, at a cost of $250,000. Released in October 1930, it proved quite profitable for the studio. Wodehouse was typically modest about his own contribution. In a letter to his chum Denis Mackail, he recalled:

"I altered all the characters to earls and butlers, with such success that, when I had finished, they called a story conference and changed the entire plot, starring the Earl and the butler! So far I have had eight collaborators. The system is that: A gets the original idea, B comes in to work with him on it, C makes a scenario, D does the preliminary dialogue and then they send for me to insert Class and what-not, then E and F, scenario writers, alter the plot and off we go again. I could have done my part in a morning, but they took for granted I should need six weeks..."

The eccentric English author also persuaded his producers to let him work from home. There he swam in the pool, played with his pekes, and concentrated on his real writing – the completion of a novel, Hot Water. "This is a delightful house with a small but lovely garden and a big swimming pool, the whole enclosed in patio form. The three wings of the house occupy three sides, a high wall looking on to a deserted road the other. So one feels quite isolated.

"Often I spend three or four days on end without going out of the garden. I get up, swim, breakfast, work till two, swim again, have a lunch-tea, work till seven, swim for the third time, then dinner and the day is over. It's wonderful. I have never had such a frenzy of composition."

His wife Ethel meanwhile was the belle of the ball. Their social circle included Marion Davies, Frederick Lonsdale, Maureen O'Sullivan, Boris Karloff and George Grossmith (who played the Earl in Those Three French Girls). There were parties galore. "Once Ethel makes up her mind to give a party, no man nor elemental power can stay her course! She starts by asking two people to lunch, then it's: 'Who can we get to meet them?' This gets it up to four. Then come all the people who would be hurt at being left out, and eventually the thing becomes a Hollywood orgy..." Wodehouse's own social style was to greet his guests and then slip away. This was known as "the Wodehouse glide". He would simply vanish when he was bored. If invited to other people's homes, it was his habit to bundle up his raincoat and leave it behind the front door, so that he could make a speedy exit. He claimed that Ethel loved solitude as much as he did – "but then she has occasional yearnings for all of that 'Act 2: the Terrace at Meadowsweet Manor' stuff..."

A theatre play by H M Harwood was the next project to arrive on the Wodehouse desk, requiring further adjustments. The completed script in the MGM archive files reveals that it had already been adapted by Sarah Y Mason before Wodehouse was given the task of supplying additional dialogue. "The lot of a writer of additional dialogue in a movie," he would later observe, "is not an exalted one: he ranks just above the script girl and just below the man who works the wind machine."

The story revolves around two brothers. Raymond is just out of jail, while Claude wants to marry an heiress. Raymond pretends to be a butler to his brother's girl-friend, but finds himself waiting on his own family when they come to visit. Good slapstick comedy ensues.

SCENE 65: INT. DINING ROOM

As the family settles themselves at the table, there is a loud crash from the kitchen.

SCENE 66: INT. KITCHEN

Raymond is standing by table with broken glasses and tray on the floor. Clara looks at him furiously.

Raymond

I must have put it too close to the end.

Clara

You can wait at table, can't you?

Raymond

I don't know, I've never tried.

Clara

[A quick look heavenward] Well... you take from the right and serve to the left. [She picks up an empty dish from the kitchen table, removes it from the right of the chair, replaces it from the left]

Raymond

[Repeating the action] Take from the right, serve to the left, take from the right, serve from the left.

SCENE 67: INT. DINING ROOM

As Raymond comes in with plates, there is renewed tension until he deposits plates on serving table. Raymond's lips move, forming "remove from the right, serve from the left". He now removes Father's dish and puts it in front of Crystal. Crystal suddenly notices that she has two plates.

Crystal

[Sharply] Take them away, Raymond!

Giving up any organised plan, Raymond now grabs plates and puts them 1-2-3-4, any old way, in front of anybody. There is a renewed effort on the part of everybody to resume normal conversation.

Crystal

I have a dreadful time with servants. My house is so small I can only have two or three servants, and of course a good butler won't stay unless he has a staff.

The English actor Charles Aubrey Smith played the role of Father in The Man in Possession. He and Wodehouse became good friends, and together launched the Hollywood Cricket Club. Five cartloads of English grass seed were brought across the ocean for planting at Griffith Park. Smith was a stickler for proper attire, and was never seen without his boater, snowy white flannels and striped blazer. Wodehouse helped to pay for the Club's equipment, and became a life member.

And then there was Rosalie. This was to be the straw that broke the English writer's back. Originally a musical comedy starring Marilyn Miller, Wodehouse had had a hand in the Broadway production, writing lyrics with Ira Gershwin. He took no credit for the original libretto, which was created by his friends Guy Bolton and William McGuire, and was apparently inspired by a visit to the USA of the exotic Queen Marie of Rumania. US audiences confused Rumania with Ruritania. It's understandable.

At the same time Louis B Mayer had come up with the notion that it was music, rather than dialogue, which would be the key to success in the new era of the Talkies.

So, by the time Wodehouse arrived in Hollywood, a Rosalie script had already been rotating through the MGM Writers' Block for 18 months. The first draft had been prepared by Frances Marion, with dialogue changes by Salisbury Field. Then it went to Elliot Nugent and Harry Beaumont. In 1930 Gene Markey did a new treatment, followed in turn by Hans Kraly and Fred Niblo Jr. It was then revised by Robert Z Leonard (who was to be the film's director), who passed it to Wodehouse for "additional dialogue". Given the massed ranks of writers who had tinkered with it, perhaps it's not surprising that the script preserved for posterity in the MGM archive is a dog's breakfast. On stage, the Gershwin songs – "Oh Gee! Oh Joy!" and "Say So" – would have made it just about palatable. On the page, it's a puff of air. Two West Point cadets are vacationing in Romanza, where times are hard. One falls for the King's daughter, not knowing of her royal connections. They fall out and separate. The royal family then come to the USA to negotiate a loan: the lovers meet again, and the Princess decides to give up her throne for love. Fade out.

Wodehouse 's involvement with Rosalie was launched at a story conference where Irving Thalberg reeled off yet another scenario for the ill-fated movie. This was his method. Although he took no screen credits, every film that he supervised carries the Thalberg imprint. A dedicated workaholic, he absorbed information like a sponge. He could devise whole scenarios, invent characters, and decide on casting, while pacing around the conference room, flipping a 20-dollar gold coin and chewing on glucose tablets.

Transcripts of his briefings were then distributed and became the gospel until the next story conference, where he would change everything. According to Wodehouse, after this Rosalie briefing: "Thalberg asked me if I wanted to have it read over to me. I was about to say 'Yes' (just to make the party go), when I suddenly caught the stenographer's eye and was startled to see a look of agonised entreaty in it. I gathered that for some reason she wanted me to say 'No', so I said 'No'. When we were driving home, she told me that she had a lateish night the night before and had fallen asleep at the outset of proceedings and slept peacefully throughout, not having heard or taken down a word."

However my archive researcher discovered an eight-page document in the MGM files, which undermines that PGW account. But maybe there were many conferences? The document dated 18 October 1930 is a verbatim transcript of a Thalberg briefing, and also graphic evidence of his story-telling ability. Here's an extract:

"We start in the royal palace of Romanza. It's summer, and the King's too hot in his heavy purple robes. He's played by Roland Young. He hates to be a King anyway, would prefer to be playing golf or going to the races. The Queen – she's Marie Dressler, she loves court and is for ever conferring medals of honour on all sorts of people, from gold diggers to chicken fanciers. They have two children – the Crown Prince who is bored with life and dominated by his mother, and a daughter, Rosalie, who the King dotes on. He would prefer her to succeed him.

"Now: the court is receiving foreign visitors, a quiet little shindig of about 400 people. Among them is a vacationing American – we'll call him Bob – a wealthy West Point cadet, slightly egotistical, thoroughly charming, very suspicious and very spoiled. He thinks that she's just another girl who's after him for his money. For the first time in her life, the Princess meets someone who tells her the truth about herself – in fact, the brutal truth. The scene ends with a battle of wills between the two: Bob on top – and the Princess liking it tremendously.

"In the third reel, we have the Royal family touring America where the King hopes to raise a loan. The Princess sends a wire to Bob, telling him that she is one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting on the tour (he still doesn't know that she is a Princess). There is to be a grand ball at West Point: the fanfare of approaching royal, salutes and bows – and Bob discovers that Rosalie is the Princess! The jig is up. There is a scene later between the Princess and her father, where he comforts her, but says sadly that romance and charm are things that we cannot buy, things that kings and queens cannot often get, things that are not for their lives..."

By this time, Thalberg had also worked out that Wodehouse's attempts at writing screenplays were being hampered by his ignorance of the technicalities of film-making. He wanted to find a way to free up the Englishman's creative skills, and his solution was to suggest that the new draft should be written as a book, rather than a film script. Wodehouse protested in a letter to his friend Guy Bolton: "They have done the dirty on me! The big boss has now worked out a new story for Rosalie on his own, which isn't at all bad, and he has told me to do it. But – and here is the catch – he wants me to write it as a novelette – which is about eight times as much sweat as just doing dialogue. This is going to take me a couple of months and is a ghastly fag."

Typically, this conscientious writer then settled down to the task. PGW could only ever do one thing, and that was to write. He also believed in an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. Anything less than that was not playing the game:

The King of Romanza, is conferring with his daughter, the Princess Rosalie, in her suite at the Palace.

"Why are we going to America, father?"

"To float a loan. Apparently we need one. The Chancellor says so..."

"Anyway," said Rosalie, changing the subject abruptly, "I'm not going to marry Prince Carl of Slosstein."

"Why ever not?"

"I don't like him. He has watery eyes..."

Sadly, the 140-page script that came out of this "ghastly sweat" only offers occasional glimpses of the master's comic skills. The King is a familiar Wodehouse character, perhaps distantly related to Lord Emsworth. He would prefer not to be King, and not to have to travel to America: "The Chancellor told the press today that our visit to America would be a milestone of the new era of civilisation and international amity, although everyone knows that we're just going to borrow money and that I, for one, would have been delighted if they had let me stay at home and just mailed me a check!"

In Boston the King meets a chap who tells him he could make a bum out of him in just 10 days, he wouldn't need to have a castle or anything. He could throw away his uniform, take a real name and become a regular fellow.

The script also includes several memos from Wodehouse to his producer: ......... 

"NOTE for Mr Thalberg.

You will notice at this point that I have deviated from the construction you laid out in the story conference, and have made the scene where Bob and Rosalie spend time together take place BEFORE Bob leaves Romanza. I think that another scene is needed to build up the love affair between the two. This brings Bob recognising that Rosalie is the Princess earlier in the story. That'll make the parting between them a really sharp, dramatic break..."

But none of these genuine Wodehouse touches would survive the Writers' Block paper chase. The "temporary complete screenplay" supports Wodehouse 's prediction that "it will be a perfectly rotten picture". And in the event, nobody was too broken-hearted when the Rosalie project was quietly shelved. The moguls had decided that 1930 was not the year for old-fashioned musical comedy. Depression audiences, it was noted, wanted more red meat: so films like The Big House and The Sin of Madelon Claudet were the order of the day: gangsters and hookers, corruption and unemployment. The seamy side of life.

Wodehouse recognised that the Hollywood party was over. In another letter to Bolton, he complained: "They don't rate the spoken word very highly out here. They keep their writers in hutches, you can hear the pitiful whining. On the doors of the hutches you can read the names of the best writers and dramatists of Europe and America. You see their anxious little faces peering through the bars. Some of them have been on salary for years without ever having a line of their work used. It's like the Bastille. They just sit in their hutch and grow white beards and languish..."

And then he took his revenge. He gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times reporter Alma Whitaker. Unbelievably, the MGM press office had authorised this.

As they sat beneath the coconut palms beside his swimming pool, this unassuming English writer took the unusual step of biting the hand that had fed him for the best part of a year. He said:

"MGM paid me $2,000 a week – $104,000 – and I cannot see what they engaged me for. They were extremely nice to me – oh, extremely – but I feel as if I have cheated them. You see, I understood that I was to write stories for the screen. After all, I have 20 novels, a score of successful plays and countless magazine stories to my credit. Yet apparently they had the greatest difficulty in finding anything for me to do! Twice during the year they brought completed scenarios of other people's stories to me and asked me to do some dialogue. Fifteen or 16 people had already tinkered with those stories. The dialogue was really quite adequate. All I did was touch it up here and there – very slight improvements.

"They set me to work on a film called Rosalie, which was to have some musical numbers. It was a pleasant little thing, and I put in three months on it. When it was finished, they thanked me politely and said that as musicals didn't seem to be going so well, they guessed they would not use it! That about sums up what I was asked to do for my $104,000. Isn't it amazing?"

Hollywood was scandalised. Wodehouse became the most talked-of man in town: "That interview," he said, "seems to have had had a similar effect to the late assassination at Sarajevo (which, if you remember, led to a nasty disturbance)!"

In New York, the bankers took steps to prune the studios' extravagances. The President of Loew's Inc called Thalberg to protest: "You are silly boys out there. You throw away our money." Thalberg replied: "If you know how to make pictures without writers, just tell me how!"

Wodehouse planned his exit. At this time he also owed $32,753 in unpaid US taxes. And the Inland Revenue were pursuing him for £40,000 UK taxes due on his US earnings. His accountants advised him not to return to London while they tried to negotiate a settlement that would not involve punitive double taxation. So he took a year's lease on a house in Auribeau, in the hills outside Cannes.

"I got away from Hollywood because the gaoler's daughter smuggled me a file in a meat pie. Not every author accepted his fate so equably. I suppose I was lucky to get mine while the going was good. It's like having tolerated some awful bounder for his good dinners, then to go to his house and find the menu cut down to nothing and no drinks. But I don't really care that my career as a movie-writer is over. I don't think I can do picture writing. It definitely needs an unoriginal mind.

"In a way I'm not sorry that this tax business has reared its ugly head. I can now spit on my hands and start sweating again, feeling that it really matters if I can make a bit of money..."

Released from commitment to the studios, Wodehouse cannily turned his Hollywood experiences into the source material for stories and novels. "While I was there, I was restraining myself from satire out of love and loyalty for dear old MGM. Now I can let rip." Nine short stories published in The American, and two novels – Laughing Gas and The Old Reliable – were this writer's satiric riposte to those who had made a monkey out of him.

"Ah, Hollywood. Bright city of sorrows, where fame deceives and temptation lurks, where souls are shrivelled in the furnace of desire and beauty is broken on sin's cruel wheel." Here are the merchant-bandits, the Nodders and the Yessers: Jacob Schnellenhamer, founder of Colossal-Exquisite pictures, "whose brains resemble soup at a cheap restaurant – it is wisest not to stir them"; Montrose Mulliner (assistant director at Perfecto-Zizzbaum studios); George Phybus (press officer); Little Johnny Bingley – "the child with a tear behind the smile" – who was in reality a 40-year-old midget from Connolly's Circus; producer Sam Glutz, "who had about 47 guilty secrets, most of them recorded on paper"; the playwright Eustiss Vanderbilt, who had been "shipped to the studio as one of a crate of 12 writers".

Vanderbilt had been working on script drafts for Scented Sinners since he was a young man and had now reached the stage where he saw spiders running up the walls. Another recruit to the writing team was a missionary who came to the studios hoping to recruit the extra girls to something or other. He too started a treatment, but then escaped to Canada. "And that's Hollywood. Home of mean glories and spangled wretchedness, where the deathless fire burns for the outspread wings of the guileless moth, whose streets are bathed in the shamed tears of betrayed maidens..."

This is a very different Wodehouse from the creator of Blandings whimsy. This is Wodehouse the observant commentator, exposing a world seething with greed, corruption, philistinism, immorality and extravagance: "Louis B Mayer, the most powerful man in Hollywood, isn't completely illiterate, but reading is a struggle for him, and making sense of what he reads an even bigger one..."

Last year I had the idea to turn this bizarre episode in Wodehouse's life into a radio play, and so it has worked out, thanks to Susan Roberts and Jeremy Howe at BBC Radio 4. In revisiting these historic events, we have taken our dramatic licence from PGW himself. When pulling together his own theatrical memoir, Bring On the Girls, he told his collaborator, Guy Bolton: "I think we shall have to let truth go to the wall if it interferes with entertainment. And we must sternly suppress any story that hasn't got a snapper at the finish. WE MUST BE FUNNY!"

'Wodehouse in Hollywood' is broadcast on Radio 4 on Monday at 2.15pm. Tim McInnerny supplies the voice of Wodehouse; Fenella Woolgar plays his wife Ethel. 'P G Wodehouse and Hollywood' by Brian Taves (McFarland and Company) lists every Wodehouse adaptation on film and television, from 'A Gentleman of Leisure' (1915) to 'Piccadilly Jim' (2006)