Abstract
The AM&B dispute was a local reaction to a general problem of duping in early cinema. The use of catalogues was another and, as in the case of George Méliès’ Star catalogues, one effect was to circulate beyond the immediate industrial confines of the production a range of textual materials that, however problematically, contribute to the origins of the screenplay. Copyright also helps to explain the textual form the AM&B scenarios took. For both AM&B and Méliès, however, the real purpose was to secure copyright on the film itself, so what we might call today ‘original screenplays’ were being created in the service of ‘original’ films.
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Notes
Tom Stempel, FrameWork: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film, 2nd ed. (New York: Continuum, 1991), p. 8.
‘The “Ben Hur” Case’, The Bioscope, 22 February 1912, p. 533; quoted in Torey Liepa, ‘An Uneven Marketplace of Ideas: Amateur Screenwriting, the Library of Congress and the Struggle for Copyright’, Journal of Screenwriting 2.2 (2011), p. 183.
Letter from Drury W. Cooper, on behalf of AM&B, to the Register of Copyrights, 6 December 1904, transcribed in Patrick Loughney, ‘Appendix: Selected Examples of Early Scenario/Screenplays in the Library of Congress’, Film History 9.3 (1997), p. 292.
For a detailed critical summary, see Steven Maras, Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice (London: Wallflower, 2009), pp. 139–40.
Maras, pp. 140–41; Torey Liepa, ‘Entertaining the Public Option: The Popular Film Writing Movement and the Emergence of Writing for the American Silent Cinema’, in Jill Nelmes (ed.), Analysing the Screenplay (London: Routledge, 2011), esp. pp. 17–20.
Edward Azlant, The Theory, History, and Practice of Screenwriting, 18971920, diss. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1980), p. 82.
Epes Winthrop Sargent, The Technique ofthe Photoplay, 2nd ed. (New York: The Moving Picture World, 1913), p. 8; quoted in Janet Staiger, ‘The Hollywood Mode of Production to 1930’, in David Bordwell, Janet Straiger and Kristin Thompson (eds), The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 118.
Gene Gauntier, ‘Blazing the Trail’, Woman’s Home Companion 55.11 (November 1928), p. 181; quoted in Staiger, ‘The Hollywood Mode of Production to 1930’, p. 119.
Louella Parsons, The Gay Illiterate (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1944) p. 21; quoted in Stempel, p. 11.
Quoted in David Emrich, Hollywood, Colorado: The Selig Polyscope Company and The Colorado Motion Picture Company (Lakewood, Colorado: Post Modern Company, 1997), p. 14.
James E. McQuage, ‘Making “Selig” Pictures’, Film Index 4.47 (November 20, 1909), pp. 4–6; reprinted in Kalton C. Lahue, ed., Motion Picture Pioneer: The Selig Polyscope Company (Cranbury, N.J.: A.S. Barnes, 1973), pp. 57–63. The quotation is on p. 58.
Cari Beauchamp and Anita Mary Loos, Anita Loos Rediscovered: Film Treatments and Fiction by Anita Loos (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 33.
Ibid., p. 33.
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© 2013 Steven Price
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Price, S. (2013). Outlines and Scenarios, 1904–17. In: A History of the Screenplay. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137315700_4
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