Overview

In 1952, Charles Schnee won the Best Screenplay Oscar for ""The Bad and the Beautiful"", the story of a Hollywood producer who is part genius, part louse. Based loosely on ""Gone With the Wind"" producer David O. Selznick and played by Kirk Douglas, Schnee's protagonist is producer Jonathan Shields, who desperately needs the help of three enemies from his past to make a comeback. Schnee presents the story through a series of flashbacks in which the three - director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), actress Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner) and writer James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell) - describe their relationships with Shields. Nominated for six Academy Awards and winner of five, ""The Bad and the Beautiful"" unfolds against the background of the movie industry of the 1930s and 1940s, as producer John Houseman points out in his foreword to this filmscript. Houseman tells of his participation in the film, starting with his initial rejection of George Bradshaw's ""Memorial to a Bad Man"", the story upon which the script was based. Changing the Broadway producer to the story of a Hollywood producer renewed Houseman's interest. He tells of contacting Vincente Minnelli to direct and of selecting the rest of the cast: Gilbert Roland, Gloria Grahame, Elaine Stewart, Walter Pidgeon and Leo G. Carroll. In addition to the final script and Houseman's foreword, Matthew J. Bruccoli has provided the original ending to the screenplay and Anne F. Hardin's discussion of the David Raskin score that was used in the film and of adding music to film in general. The Bradshaw short story, ""Memorial to a Bad Man"", is also included in this volume.

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Author Information

Charles Schnee (1916–1962) wrote seventeen screenplays, including The Furies, Right Cross, Butterfield 8, They Live by Night, The Next Voice You Hear, and The Crowded Sky. Matthew J. Bruccoli, Jefferies Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, edited the Lost American Fiction series and the Screenplay Library series from Southern Illinois University Press.

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