"The roads to becoming a creative artist. Music. Poetry. Painting. Photography. Drama. Film. An artist's life never ends with his death. He lives on through his work. Think about that, my young friend. Seriously." - Photographer Alfred Stieglitz, 1934 (as told to a 17-year-old Malvin Wald)

On Thursday, March 6, Malvin Wald died in his sleep and Creative Screenwriting lost one of its first and most important collaborators.

I first spoke to Malvin in 1994, right after the first issue of Creative Screenwriting had been published. I had reached out to film faculty across the country and Malvin called me, enthusiastic about my new journal. He wanted to help any way he could. I added him to Creative Screenwriting's original editorial board, and we created a new section in the journal, The Screenwriting Life, to accommodate the many amazing stories he had about his career in screenwriting. It is that life which I celebrate here.

Malvin Wald grew up in the working class Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and entered Brooklyn College at the age of 15. He wrote a weekly humor column and graduated cum laude in psychology and education. Later, he would add graduate studies in drama and a law degree.

In 1938, he followed brother, Jerry Wald, to Hollywood. Jerry was a prolific producer (An Affair to Remember) and the primary inspiration for Budd Schulberg's book, What Makes Sammy Run? Malvin wrote an original script called Benefit of Mankind, based on his experience as a "sometime student of undergraduate law courses" and his two years working in the Brooklyn Post Office. He got the script into the hands of agent Arthur Landau, once famous as the agent for Jean Harlow and Marie Dressler. "But when those two great stars died, Landau fell on bad times and was willing to accept anybody as a client, even unknowns like me," Malvin wrote.

Landau sold the screenplay to Warner Bros. for actor John Garfield. Signed to a Warner Bros. writing contract for $250/week as part of that deal, Malvin wrote a treatment for The Shadow, but Jack Warner told his producer, Brian Foy, "Never will Warner Bros. do a comic book. We do the great pictures. We will go out of business." I guess times have changed a little.

Being on the Warner lot had other advantages for Malvin. He met Jack and Harry Warner, and was invited by John Huston to dine at the legendary Warner Bros. writer's table. There he was introduced to Humphrey Bogart, Julius and Philip Epstein, Errol Flynn, and veteran writer, George Bricker, who told him, "If you don't make it big by time you are 40, you will be considered a washed-up hack." Maybe times haven't changed so much.

After his seven-month contract ran out, Malvin was unemployed. He sold a story to Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck, Ten Gentlemen from West Point, which he had researched in the history room of a local public library. The screenplay for the film was written by Richard Maibaum (From Russia With Love, Goldfinger) and George Seaton, with an uncredited $1,000/day polish by legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht (Wuthering Heights).

In April 1942, while working on an assignment at Columbia Pictures, Malvin was drafted. He entered the Army Air Corps, serving in the First Motion Picture Unit. He wrote more than 30 instructional films there, working with Ronald Reagan, William Holden, and other notable actors. Former Editor-In-Chief Den Shewman and I took Malvin to lunch about six months ago, and Malvin told us about his experiences working in the unit. One of the films he wrote, Ditch and Live, was very well regarded by the Air Force, and his vivid recollection of the story inspired me to begin a horror treatment on a related concept (a B-29 bomber crashing in the Artic). Such was the power of his enthusiasm.

After the war, Malvin was unemployed and he took up play and short story writing. His one act play, Talk in Darkness, was popular, with a young Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte appearing in it in Harlem. He credited that success with earning him the opportunity to write The Naked City.

In 1946 Malvin met Universal-International Producer Mark Hellinger and sold him on the idea of researching the NYPD homicide case files for a new kind of police story. Malvin wrote, "My concept was that the police department, with its fingerprint experts, crime scene photographers, autopsy physicians, solved murders, not Sam Spade type private eyes working alone.

"When I returned to Hollywood a month later with a notebook full of story ideas, Hellinger asked me eagerly, 'Do you have a good story?' 'I don't know,' I answered. 'There are eight million stories in the Naked City.' Hellinger replied, 'Forget about the eight million, just give me one good one.'"

Malvin worked for six months on the screenplay, and when it was finished, "Hellinger called me in and said he couldn't do it. It was too original. I had written a script where actual locations in New York were to be used instead of Hollywood studio sets. Hellinger said that would be too difficult to produce and was shelving the project. I begged him to get a second opinion, and he reluctantly gave the script to director Jules Dassin, who had just finished making a picture called Brute Force for him. Hellinger called me a few days later to say that Dassin loved the idea and told Hellinger that they would make film history with it," Malvin related.

The gritty, black-and-white film noir did make history, inaugurating the police procedural genre and popularizing the method of shooting scenes on-location. Because of some intrigues by the producer Hellinger, Malvin would share credit on The Naked City with Albert Maltz, and their screenplay would receive nominations for the Writers Guild screenplay award and the Academy Award for best story in 1949.

In 1948 Malvin teamed up with Washington columnist Drew Pearson to write an inside story about presidential politics called The Washington Story. This was one of two screenplays he would write for legendary Columbia studio head Harry Cohn. In the course of his research, Malvin sneaked into a Harry Truman press conference at the White House and was present at a confrontational congressional investigation between Alger Hiss and Richard Nixon.

The final screenplay was a hard-hitting exposé of corruption on the highest level in Washington. Cohn said he thought it was a great script, as good as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but he couldn't produce it. Why? Malvin remembers Cohn saying, "After the war, Jack Warner and I visited Germany as guests of the U.S. Army, and I discovered that Hitler had used Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as anti-American propaganda, claiming that the character of the crooked senator played by Claude Rains was typical of all U.S. politicians." Cohn screamed that he was ashamed of having made the film and would never again produce anything critical of our government.

In 1952 Malvin was hired to write and help produce a TV series called The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. During the course of this production, he gave John Neville his first movie job and encountered Peter Ustinov and Orson Welles. Welles told Malvin that he was interested in narrating the tales, but first he would need $75,000 for expenses -- actually money he needed to finish his film version of Othello. After Malvin's attorney confronted him on this, Welles responded, "Look at me, Mr. Wald, I'm 37 years old, fast approaching middle age. No longer the boy wonder. I have lost years and years of my life fighting for the sacred right to do things my own way and mostly fighting in vain. The tycoons think I'm crazy for trying to subsidize my own films. But I will never surrender. Better to live one day as a lion than your whole life as a sheep."

In 1959 Malvin was hired to write a screenplay based on the life of Fidel Castro. The deal to make the movie was struck between Castro and oil magnate Frank B. Waters at the Shamrock Motel in Houston, TX. Castro had approval over the writer for the film, and laid down the following conditions: "1) No goddamn gringo. He must speak Spanish perfectly. I don't want to be insulted by having a person who can't speak my language. 2) No Hollywood creep. The writer had to have an academic background. And 3) The writer had to have a recent success." Malvin had five years of Spanish and had just become adjunct faculty at the University of Southern California. Throw in Malvin's recent success with Al Capone, and he was hired.

Interviewing Castro in June 1959 in Havana, Malvin asked if the Russian Revolution had been an inspiration for him. Castro answered, "No, it was the American Revolution. Why has Hollywood never made an important film about the American Revolution? Are they ashamed of it?" When he returned to the United States, Malvin was interviewed by the CIA and threatened by a pro-Castro group not to publish the information he had received in Cuba. The film was never produced.

Continuing his film writing, Malvin adapted James Warwick's play, Blind Alley, into the film noir The Dark Past, and co-wrote, with Collier Young and Ida Lupino, the story for Lupino's Outrage, before moving mostly into television. During the '50s he wrote for anthology series including Lux Video Theatre, Fireside Theatre, Goodyear Television Playhouse, The Alcoa Hour, Playhouse 90, and The George Sanders Mystery Theater. He also wrote episodes for Cavalcade of America, Climax, Brave Eagle, The Silent Service, Have Gun -- Will Travel, Shirley Temple's Storybook, Peter Gunn, Combat!, The Great Adventure, and Perry Mason. Later, Malvin wrote for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Daktari, and The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.

Continuing his interest in documentary writing, Malvin worked with Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes fame on a Marilyn Monroe documentary shortly after her death in 1962, and was assigned to work with an aging Walter Winchel on a series about his life.

He was a writer with an insatiable desire for research, ferreting out new stories, exploring new ideas and innovative ways to tell a story. A long list of credits for largely forgotten TV shows and movies isn't nearly as impressive as the long bookshelf in his Sherman Oaks, CA home, filled with his produced screenplays bound in leather. From his screenplay Homicide (later retitled The Naked City) to his work as a story editor on Daktari, Malvin was proud of each of his screenplays. He was a man who worked.

Reflecting on his life, Malvin wrote, "One of the wonderful by-products of being a Hollywood writer is that occasionally you get to meet real writers -- world-famous authors and playwrights. In my long career I had brief encounters with Dorothy Parker, Jack Kerouac, Upton Sinclair, James Hilton, John Hersey, James Cain, Henry Miller, and Clifford Odets, but the most memorable experiences were with two Nobel Prize Winners -- William Faulkner and John Steinbeck."

Malvin Wald was a real writer -- one of the finest and most prolific screenwriters in Hollywood history. But he was also my friend, mentor, and the nicest, most giving person I have had the privilege of meeting in Hollywood. He is gone now, but the stories he created and the lives he shaped live on.

Erik Bauer was the founding publisher and editor of Creative Screenwriting. He is currently developing feature screenplays for production and can be reached at erik@erikbauer.com.

1/8/08 - There are several chances to catch Felix Racelis' Tel Aviv Take-Off, a hilarious apocryphal romp. A Southern matron visits her son who’s studying in Tel Aviv, and makes his school an offer that’s hard to refuse.  But did we say she’s got an agenda? FirstStage’s 2008 Stage Odyssey - Friday and Saturday, January 11, 12, 18 and 19, 2008. all at 8pm @ Hollywood United Methodist Church, 6817 Franklin Ave (at Highland).  Directed by Peggy Chane, with Elizabeth Farley and Bryna Weiss.  Also on the bill: plays by Michael Sadler, Herman Poppe, Keith Neilson, Thomas J. Misuraca and Jennifer Kristin Hugus.  $10, or donate what you can.  Reservations and info:  (323) 850-6271 or FirstStageLA@aol.com -- or -- @ DramaWest, Saturday, January 12, 2008, Edendale Library, 2011 W. Sunset (at Alvarado), Los Angeles, CA 90026. Directed by and starring Helen Duffy, with Marcie Lynn Ross. Free. Info:  dramawest@cox.net

10/17/07 - DramaWest Productions presents a free staged reading of Felix Racelis' "Bride of Godzilla" on Saturday, October 20, 2007 2pm @ Edendale Library, 2011 W. Sunset Blvd. (at Alvarado), Los Angeles.  A young couple who are part of a studio diversity writing program have one last chance to pitch a project to an impatient producer.  It's a matter of life or debt. Directed by Jacque Lynn Colton, with Hettie Lynn Hurtes, Brian Westerey, Cathy Chang and Tony Rayner.  The afternoon features other original works by L.A. writers.  Info: dramawest@cox.net or felixnash@sbcglobal.net.  Six of Felix's short plays are available at JAC Publishing & Promotions.

9/19/07 - JAC Playwright Garret Mathews Releases New Book - Defending My Bunk Against All Comers, Sir

8/31/07 - JAC Playwright Mark Lambeck's "Lucky Day," which won the Audience Choice Award in a one-act festival at the Eastbound Theatre in Milford in July will be going up at The Producer's Club (44th St. at 8th Avenue) in an equity festival in NYC being produced by Emerging Artists Theatre Company from October 18 through November 4th, 2007.

8/2/07 - JAC Playwright Robert Eiland Featured in the Harvard Post

7/12/07 - LATV Fellowship Diversity Program Accepts 4 CAPE Members: JAC Playwright Lucy Wang Included: CAPE proudly congratulates writers Leo Chu, Eric Garcia, Young Il Kim and Lucy Wang who have been accepted into the prestigious LATV Fellowship Diversity Program.  "Thanks to CAPE, I've been accepted into the LATV Fellowship Diversity Program where Carole Kirschner will be my mentor and I will be able to network with some of today's finest TV professionals," said Lucy Wang.  Chu sits on CAPE's Board of Directors, and executive produces and writes Spike TV's "Afro Samurai" starring Samuel L. Jackson. With his writing partner Eric Garcia, who has penned Disney's "Recess" and "Lloyd in Space," he is currently writing a feature for Sony Pictures Animation. Young Il Kim was the 2006 CAPE Foundation New Writers Award Screenwriting winner for his feature script, "Hyung's Overture." Wang was the 2006 CAPE Foundation New Writers Award Television winner.  CAPE is thrilled to continue to foster the development of these talented writers, and others like them, to advance diversity in entertainment.

The Valley Players
is now accepting submissions for their 2010 Vermont Playwrights Award. Established in 1982 by the Valley Players, a community theater group, the intent of the award is to promote the theater arts and to encourage and support the creation of original plays by residents of VT, NH and ME. Deadline: March 1, 2010.
Award submissions must be a full-length, non-musical play suitable for production by a community theater company. The contest is open only to residents of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The play must not have been previously published or produced. Entrants may obtain the rules and entry form from our website or by sending a self addressed stamped envelope to: Vermont Playwrights Award, The Valley Players, P.O. Box 441, Waitsfield, VT 05673.  For info: Sharon Kellermann ~ 802-583-6767 (day) 802-583-2774 (eve). www.valleyplayers.com  ______________

... And 2nd Gay Play Reading Festival

ALAP has once again been awarded a grant from the City of West Hollywood’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission, to present a Reading Festival of new lesbian and gay plays during the City’s Pride Month Celebration in June. The grant isn’t large, but it provides for prize money to the playwrights selected ($150 to the writer of the chosen full-length, $150 to be divided among the authors of the shorts), as well as tiny – and we do mean tiny! – stipends to the directors and actors. Submission deadline: March 15, 2010. Download the application form. Please read the rules carefully, then send your stuff!
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VT Playwrights Circle
Call for Scripts

It's time to break out the pen and paper and write a 10-minute play, or crack open your files and send what you've got! Ten-Fest will take place at The Valley Players' space in Waitsfield in August of this year.
Deadline is March 15, 2010.
Submissions Guidelines
Send submissions to: Jeanne Beckwith, "Ten-Fest Submission", P.O. Box 333, Roxbury, VT 05669
or email: rialto@tds.net
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Support Women Artists Now (SWAN)

SWAN (Support Women Artists Now) Day comes around on Saturday, March 27.  We're in the third year of an international, grass-roots effort. Back in 2008, Carolyn Gage, Danie Connolly, Karmo Sanders,
and Cynthia Thayer, put on staged readings in Portland (ME) to a packed house at a free event held at the UNE Art Gallery.  2009 there was no SWAN Day event. Question: Who among Maine's talented women playwrights wants to produce and/or perform 20-30 minutes on Saturday 3/27/2010  in the greater Portland area? Monologues are highly prized.
Short plays with several characters are fine too.  If this is a go, I will find a venue, spearhead PR, create a program to hand out, figure out the food and finances. These will be plain vanilla readings, that is to say, performers standing or seated on stools with a reader of staged directions. Rehearsals will be up to the playwright to arrange. Also, SWAN Day can and should be
more inclusive. So, male playwrights are welcome to step forward with monologues or scenes that feature women actors. If you do, plan to cast performers with an acting resume. Is anybody out there?  Contact Laura Emack,
LKECPA@prexar.com; (207) 567-3437
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THE KENNEDY CENTER PLAYWRITING INTENSIVE
July 9-17, 2010

Led by Gary Garrison, Executive Director for Creative Affairs, The Dramatists Guild Associate Director: Cathy Norgren

A ten-day playwriting intensive at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Participants are university students, faculty and professionals from across U.S.

Guest Artists are being determined, but the recent teaching roster has included: Lee Blessing, David Dower, Mark Bly, Melanie Marnich, David Ives, Dael Orlandersmith,
Carl Hancock Rux, Karen Zacarías, Ken Ludwig, Carlos Murillo, Caleen Sinette Jennings, Heather McDonald, Marsha Norman, Howard Shalwitz and many others.

The program consists of rigorous writing workshops and discussions of the art, craft and business of
playwriting with the Program's Director, Gary Garrison and a wide range of distinguished guest artists.

Classes will meet 10am-12:30pm, 1:30-6pm daily. Informal concert readings of participants' work
will be scheduled in the evening during the ten-day period.

Playwriting Intensive participants will be accepted in two tracks in 2010 (all tracks will have sessions with each of the guest artists):

-Fundamental
-Intermediate/Advanced
Tuition: $500

Housing: Travel, housing and meals are the responsibility of the participant. Space in the George Washington University Residence Halls, in the Kennedy Center neighborhood, has been reserved for the participants at a range of $32-$70. For those whose budgets will allow, there are a number of hotels in the Kennedy Center vicinity.

Deadline: April 1, 2010

-a writing and/or teaching resume
-a letter of intent
-ten pages of a playwriting sample
Attached Microsoft Word or PDF documents & send to: ghenry@kennedy-center.org

Invited participants will be notified by April 23rd.

(Early submission and acceptance notification is possible if applicants' home institutions have earlier professional development funding deadlines. Please inquire.)
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IGNITION Victory Gardens Theater
 Announcement of Six Festival Participants: 6/15/10
Festival Dates: 8/15-22, 2010

Submission Guidelines
There is no restriction as to subject matter. Victory Gardens hopes that a diversity of perspective will inform the plays, but the plays do not have to deal specifically with race, ethnicity or identity issues. The initiative is open to all playwrights of color under 40 years old. Playwrights must not yet have received a full production at a major regional theater. Submitted plays must unproduced and must be in English or primarily in English.
Playwrights may only submit one full-length play.  Plays must be submitted by mail, not electronically, and should not be permanently bound. Please include a biography or resume. Please include a return addressed postcard if you wish to be notified that the script arrived. All scripts will be recycled after reading and will not be returned. There is no submission fee.

Submit to: IGNITION
Victory Gardens Theater
2257 N. Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60614 60614
Deadline 4/15/10
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Submissions Invited for Claire Donaldson “8 in 48” Short Play Festival

Augustana College (SD) and The Great Plains Dramatist Exchange seek submissions for the Claire Donaldson ‘8 in 48’ Short Play Festival. Submissions are accepted from January 15, 2010 to May 15, 2010. Eight ten-minute plays will be selected by a national panel of selectors; winners are notified by June 15, 2010. A scholarship and cash prizes are offered. This festival is founded in honor of the late Claire M. Donaldson, a 2000 Augustana College graduate passionate about the art of playwriting.

All submissions must be previously unproduced, 10 minutes or less in length, and can focus on any topic or genre. No more than two submissions per playwright, please. Submissions by electronic attachment are encouraged. Winning selections will be mounted during the ‘8 in 48’ Festival on September 18, 2010 at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD.

A call for Festival directors, designers, and actors will go out March 1, 2010. Augustana’s community and alumni are strongly encouraged to participate. All interested individuals are invited to bring their talents to this unique opportunity. For more information regarding the Festival, contact Julia Bennett at julia.bennett@augie.edu.  Direct any submission inquiries to Heidi S. Meyer at haleyhayworth@hotmail.com. 

Send all submissions to: haleyhayworth@hotmail.com, Subject: 8 in 48 Submission, or via snail mail to: Augustana College Theatre – 8 in 48, 2001 S. Summit Ave., Sioux Falls, SD 57197
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