Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-05-14
SCENARIO WRITERS
CAN'T SELL PLOTS
POORLY ORGANIZED
June Methis Warns Ambitious
to Avoid Half baked"
DramatizatiOns.

II you would write-doD't be half
baked. That's June Mathis advice to
young and ambitious scenario writer's.
BE sufficiently prepared so that
you understand story logic explained
Miss Mathis. MANY amateurs get very
clever single ideas, but they are unable
to fabricate other incidents to back
things. A clever original idea may
be the central point that sells a plot
but unless the plot as a whole is
fundamentally correct from a dramatic
standpoint it viii not sell"
When June Mathis urges preparation
she knows what she's talking about.
She prepared for two years before she
tried to sell a story. She was a girl
who had q reputation as an actress.
She had played ingenues and leads
with such stage successes as THE
Vinegar Buyer" with Ezra Kendall.
"Brewster's Millions" and with Julian
Eltinge in 1.-The Fascinating Widow"
Then she decided to write and now
she is one of the best paid and most
successful scenario writer's.
But June Mathis has never written
q half-baked Scenario.
Her debut as a motion picture
writer was vastly different from that
w II dNrIdkC DCISou IL ArtS IL StoIy
idea, spends half an hour writing it
ships it off to a motion picture COM
pany-and in two weeks receives the
story back plus a nicely worded rejec-
ton slip.
Stories thus written-and they make
up ID out of every one hundred re-
ceived at the average studio. are truly
"half-baked" because the writer is not
trained in dramatic essentials; he
knows nothing of motion picture pro-
cedure. he is not even familiar with
the great literary classics which form
the background for all truly successful
writings. In many cases your half
baked" scenario writer is not a suf-
ficiently thorough student Of pictures
as they are shown in the theaters to
be aware of the changing fashions of
cinema.
As an actress June Mathis was
once asked to write an article for the
paper Of a town in which she was
playing with Eltinge in THE Fascinat-
ing Widow
1t was a good article.
Why don't you write?' said the
editor. You have splendid ideas"
The seed stuck and s%prouted.
Success as q writer meant a cessa-
ton of the ten years of tiresome one
night stands, of moving from place to
place; it meant a home for Miss
Mathis and her mother.
But / was an actress and knew
oothing at all about writing as a pro-
-fession," Miss Mathis relates" I knew
that was a different matter. Who was
! to start right out, Immediately to
emulate professional authors who had
been studying their job for years."
And SO Miss Mathis did something
all young writer's gould well emulate
but they never do! For two years she
did nothing hut study writing. She
read everything Shakespeare ever
wrote. She read drama from the early
Miracle plays to Oscar Wilde and
Augustus Thomas. She read Poe, de
Maupassant. Dickens. Thackeray. Bal
FAC, every writer who possessed a
point Of style that might be valuable.
She read books or construction. She
wrote thirty stories, and rewrote them
50 that each had two or three differ
ferent endings. Shed take a story and
chop it up and twist it around and
play with it-and then put it back in
her trunk and start on another idea.
She didn't make the mistake of sub
hitting q half baked scenario. She
never tried to sell herself as a writer
until at the end of two years she knew
that she knew the fundamentals, the
basic principles of the art she was
entering.
At the end of that time she wrote
a scenario around the play of a we'll
known playwright.
After several days Director Edwin
Carews phoned the playwright.
Il don't want your play" he said,
but | would like to talk with the