Losing the plots in an antiseptic Hollywood
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.
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Budapest Times
20-07-2025
- 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
29-06-2025
- Budapest Times
Son recalls a Dad like few others
Robert Morley was a singular personality. Few actors could rival him for a good solid dose of peculiarly English eccentricity – when he appeared on screen (and no doubt on stage too) you pretty much knew exactly what you were going to get as he dominated proceedings, a blustering, pompous and overbearing character but lovable nonetheless. For us, the bushy-browed, fleshy-jowled and rotund Morley ranked alongside other mid-20th century British thespians who when they went into their particular acts were similarly offbeat – James Robertson Justice, John Le Mesurier, Wilfred Hyde-White and Alastair Sim come to mind; always fun, always individualistic, with no need to resort to clownishness. A scene-stealer supreme, could anyone possibly out-talk the quick-witted and very properly spoken gentleman Morley? What could he possibly have been like at home, off-screen, off-stage, as Dad? His eldest child, Sheridan Morley, tells us in this book, first issued in 1993. Father Robert was born in Semley, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, on May 26, 1908 and died in Reading, UK, on June 3, 1992 aged 84 years, three days after a stroke from which he did not regain consciousness. Son Sheridan was born on December 5, 1941 and died on February 16, 2007, having been an author, biographer, dramatic critic and broadcaster. He was the official biographer of Sir John Gielgud and wrote an authorised life story of this British actor that was published in 2001. Sheridan also produced some 18 other biographies of actors, including Noël Coward, David Niven, James Mason, Ingrid Bergman, Gene Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor. The son was named after being born on the first night of his father's role as Sheridan Whiteside in 'The Man Who Came to Dinner' at the Savoy Theatre in London's West End on December 1941. Later, Sheridan recounts, his father was asked in the Garrick Club in London what it was like having a critic for a son. 'Like being head of the Israeli army', Robert responded, 'and waking up to find your son is an Arab.' That was a typical rejoinder, witty and droll. In his twilight years he would become master of the television chat show, a venerable actor in the grand manner, overwhelming the host and any other guests. Rentaquote, as Sheridan calls him, a beacon of overweight oddness, a raconteur guaranteed to entertain and beloved of the studio audience and viewers. Robert was flamboyant, theatrical, larger than life. In 1975 he was engaged as a celebrity by a Yorkshire country-house hotel to tell stories to the diners and engage in light conversation. 'Is this the sort of thing you want, dears?' he asked the audience after telling a story about Greta Garbo. 'Would you like to ask some questions, perhaps?' 'Why are your flies undone?' a man in the front row asked. 'I had rather hoped', Robert replied, calmly adjusting his dress, 'that it added to the general air of informality.' What did he think of Yorkshire? 'The important thing', he replied 'is what Yorkshire thinks of me.' What did he think of media figure Malcolm Muggeridge? 'It is inconceivable that he would not bore God.' How did he get on with young directors? 'I usually give them a week to find out if they know more than I do, and if not I take over myself.' Did he enjoy entertaining people? 'As long as I am entertaining myself. I love hearing my own opinions, even if I don't always agree with them.' What about British tax exiles? 'I was born a pauper and I shall almost certainly die a pauper. If a man is fool enough to want to go to live in Jersey and take it all with him, then in my view he deserves everything he gets there.' Sheridan was the eldest of the five grandchildren of Dame Gladys Cooper, an illustrious British actress of the 20th century, and he also wrote a biography of her that came out in 1979. Dame Gladys, born in Hither Green, London, on December 18, 1888 was a great beauty of her day and in demand in both Britain and Hollywood. She died in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, on November 17, 1971, and had married three times, first to Captain Herbert Buckmaster from 1908 to 1921. They had two children, one of whom, Joan (1910-2005), married Robert Adolph Wilton Morley in 1940. Sheridan was the eldest of their three children, and thus the third generation of this eminent theatrical family. Bare facts don't do justice to this life story, and Sheridan fully delivers in this telling of the over-the-top personality who was his father. Robert's own father 'was a man of many careers, mostly disastrous. A compulsive gambler, he lived a life of regular crisis and constant financial adventure, bequeathing to his only son a passion for roulette and the rare ability… to live on the financial edge without serious loss of sleep or nerve'. Robert's father's constant and rapid escapes from creditors bred in Robert a love of adventure and a passion for touring ideally suited to the prewar demands of a struggling actor. The boy appeared in a school pageant in Folkestone when five years old and it was after seeing English thespian Esme Percy (1887-1957) in 1921 on a tour of 'The Doctor's Dilemma' by George Bernard Shaw that he decided to act, coming to believe that theatre as an art not only reflected life but extended and exaggerated it into the areas of magic. At school Robert was tortured by military and physical activities, and didn't do much better in the classroom, leaving with a deep lifelong horror of any sort of orthodox teaching. These were some of his unhappiest years. In 1926 aged 18 he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the best of London's theatre schools, more by good luck than talent, but he quit in July 1927 to start making his living as an actor in the real world of the theatre. His distinctive physical characteristics, portly and plummy, limited somewhat the characters he could portray, and for nine long years he toured the land in a series of regional tours, hardly any of which reached London. But he relished the life and he learned, despite a six-month gap as a travelling door-to-door salesman. He began to write his own first play. Robert first gained acclaim on the London stage for his title role in 'Oscar Wilde', then successfully reprised the part on Broadway in 1938, leading to an invitation to Hollywood and an Oscar-nominated film debut as Louis XVI in 'Marie Antoinette' (1938). For 20 years after the war he was in semi-permanent residence in West End of London theatres 'in plays which only he managed to turn into two-year hits', Sheridan notes. His first great success as an actor/author was his own 'Edward, My Son' in 1947, and 'he built up a special affinity with his customers almost akin to that achieved by a great head waiter or hotel manager'. Robert was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his first American film, 'Marie Antoinette' (1938) playing the doomed Louis XVI against John Barrymore, Norma Shearer and many of Hollywood's best character actors. Sheridan begs to differ with those critical colleagues who said his father was only good at playing versions of himself in essentially lightweight material. If he rejected playing Shakespeare's Falstaff, for instance, it was not out of fear or laziness but simply because, Sheridan believed, he knew he would not enjoy it, and thus how could his audience? There came almost 100 films for the big screen and television, 30-plus plays, tours down under, a sideline as a playwright and journalist, popular advertisements for British Airways and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He declined a knighthood. Robert was a good husband and father, albeit unusual, and great material for a marvellously entertaining biography that, even though presented by his son, maintains its objectivity.
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.
