Category: Plays/Films/Dramas
At the time of my mother’s death some fifteen years ago, we found among her cherished possessions a soiled and tattered old manuscript written in a scrawling school-boy hand, and inscribed in her neat and graceful lettering—“Owen’s first play, when he was just nine years old.”...
At the time of my mother’s death some fifteen years ago, we found among her cherished possessions a soiled and tattered old manuscript written in a scrawling school-boy hand, an...
2. CHAPTER II ◆ SELLING THE FIRST ONEAlthough I am rambling about a little ahead of my story the reader will have observed that by this time I had crossed the Rubicon and had sold my first play and was steaming ahe...
3. CHAPTER III ◆ THEN AND NOWDramatic criticism, like all of the other arts having to do with our theater, has changed, and like the others the change of the last few years has been for the better. When I f...
4. CHAPTER IV ◆ “HOLD, VILLAINGus Hill and I, started so prosperously with THROUGH THE BREAKERS, kept up a very pleasant association for several seasons, and whenever I meet him now after the passing of more...
5. Act II he threw her off Brooklyn Bridge and in the third he bound her tothe tracks of the elevated railroad just as a train came thundering along. In the fourth act he climbs in her bedroom window at an early hour of the morning and when both modest...
6. CHAPTER V ◆ UP FROM MELODRAMAAbout 1911 I saw the fate of the popular-priced game, and got out of it before the final crash, as did Sam Harris, Al Woods and a few of the others. I started to look about for...
7. CHAPTER VI ◆ HOW TO WRITE THREE HUNDRED PLAYSI love farce, but of all the forms of dramatic writing it is by all odds the most difficult and demands more hard work and more technical dexterity of the writer than any other.
8. Act 2 equal Act 3. I have altered that a little in my own work, and Ithink I could express it as: the characters of Act 1 multiplied by the emotions of Act 2 equal Act 3. A play really is a character driven by an emotion along a definite line to...
9. CHAPTER VII ◆ THE DRAMATIST’S PROFESSIONAs time went on I found myself fully versed in all of the troubles that beset a dramatist and armed against all of them but one. I had learned a good substitute for patiently wa...
10. CHAPTER VIII ◆ HOLLYWOODOf late years I have been jumping between the New York theater and the studios of Hollywood, searching for the old spark of enthusiasm that made our lives so colorful, and I fin...
11. CHAPTER IX ◆ I’D LIKE TO DO IT AGAINIn June my contract was up and for the moment at least I had had enough of Hollywood. Some day I am going back, but not until I get some real assurance of going there as I go in...