Cinema: The Play's The Thing

Most good playwrights get a break, but screenwriters are under a big bushel. Most screenwriters with big names made them elsewhere, like Ben Hecht, Robert Sherwood, Dorothy Parker. Some, like Grover Jones and Frances Marion, have big names in Hollywood that mean little to outsiders. Others, like Wesley Ruggles' Claude Binyon or Frank Capra's Robert Riskin, won fame as co-members of celebrated director-writer teams. Still others, like Darryl Zanuck and Alfred Hitchcock, got their glory in bigger jobs. As compensation for their comparative obscurity, screen authors work more steadily than playwrights and...

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