Ink in Their Veins (1917) 🇺🇸

December 08, 2025

Feeling the pulses of those whose life fluid is writing material.

by Ray Ralston

There is a race of men who have not only beaten their figurative plowshares into typewriters, but have also beaten said typewriters into submission, forcing that clever little machine to yield up to them a livelihood. From all sorts and conditions of men they come — and women — and from many walks of life. Their blood is composed partly of writing fluid of assorted colors and partly of a solution of typewriter ribbon.

When the succulent long green that comes from successful scenario writing began to appear in the land, these geniuses of the quill and cast-iron keys dropped whatever occupation — gainful and otherwise — that happened to be occupying their landlords’ attention at the moment, and made a concerted rush at the producers, who were reputed to have money. They did have money, and the process of divorce began at once. Now they both have money — the producers and the folk of the inspiration.

Let us take up, first, the case of Hector Turnbull, one of the prominent members of the photo-dramatic department of the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. Turnbull’s career has varied. At the age of seventeen he enlisted in the regular army, solely (as he says) with the intention of acquiring a certain amount of adventurous material for army film plays. He succeeded, and gathered unto himself much experience and many court martials. He found a still greater field of adventure in New York, whither he came after his discharge (honorable) from the army, and where he tried to sell uplift and ordinary articles to the magazines and newspapers. After exhausting this field — and many others in his search for the elusive wherewithal — he finally struck the most adventurous job of all, dramatic critic of the New York Tribune. For two years he wandered in the jungle of the legit producers, coming often upon the bleached bones of others who had been there before him. Finally he reached the exalted position of being the only critic in New York not engaged in a legal controversy with a theatrical manager. There was no more to be gained by a stay in New York, and Los Angeles beckoned. The call, so they say, was loud, and has been getting louder every few months. Turnbull is the author of such celebrated photo dramas as Out of Darkness, in which Charlotte Walker starred; the Geraldine Farrar production of The Temptation, and the new production for Edna Goodrich, among many others. He was born in Arlington, New Jersey, September 11, 1884, and was educated at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. He is still wedded only to his art.

Robert V. Carr, who has taken a step upward from poetry to the authorship of Keystone comedies, at a salary that precludes living in a garret, says that he has done every kind of work from skinning politicians to driving mules. He was born in Illinois, and spent his boyhood in herding cattle and reading every scrap of paper he could lay his hands on. At seventeen he was a real, honest-to-goodness cow-puncher in the summer, and he pottered around in a print shop in the winter, setting up what he considered great verse. Shortly afterward he shouldered a gun and went to the Philippines. He says:

“I have written about three hundred short stories and over a thousand poems. Some were pretty fair, and all were paid for. I have written poetry when I should have been pounding out a novel. And I have done some other foolish things. I have spent time, health, and money in the service of my country, and received neither appreciation nor thanks for it. I have told the truth when fiction would bring me money and an easy time. I have let friendship twist my judgment. I rode a broncho in Roosevelt’s inaugural parade when I should have remained home and saved my money. I have listened quietly when some motion-picture director announced that a man did not need to know anything about a story to get over a good picture. I went into motion pictures two years ago because I believed pictures to be the coming medium of expression for creative men. I may say that the hero of this play thinks well of himself, but more of his patient and all enduring friends.” Mr. Carr adds:

“And, I beg of you, please cast this in the third person.”

We are not listening to the prayers of script writers this season. He makes far too much money for us to pay the slightest attention to his modest moods.

Paul West is another man who began life as a newspaper writer. They say of him that more than twenty years ago he walked into the office of the New York World, and announced that he was there to do anything from sweeping the floor to writing feature stories. They did not let him write feature stories — yet. He made a hit with his verse, however, and remained on the Sunday World for fifteen years.

Six years ago he resigned in order to devote his time exclusively to writing. He is the author of many musical comedies, including The Man from China, The Pearl and the Pumpkin, Sergeant Brue, and others. He has written and produced more than a hundred photo dramas, including many of the Sidney Drew comedies. Some of his most successful pictures thus far are: The Chattel, for E. H. Sothern; The Velvet Paw, Gail Kane; The Dark Silence, Clara Kimball Young; and The Lash, Marie Doro. His salary is very discouraging to a poor writer who works on space. Lasky pays it.

Anthony P. Kelly [Anthony Paul Kelly], who has attained the mature age of almost twenty-five years, is another newspaper man. He admits, however, that as a reporter he was a joke. He was too imaginative, and the editor told it to him in words of one syllable. So he collected some of the surplus of his feverish imagination, tied them up in a bundle with a neat pink ribbon, and shipped them to Vitagraph. A check came back. He told the editor his candid opinion of him, also in words of one syllable, and resigned, just beating the editor to it. That was four years ago. He has done over a hundred scenarios since then, a few of which are: The Soul of a Woman, The Light at Dusk, “Somebody’s Paradise,” “Shadows in the East,” and “The Crucible.” It is rumored that he pounds out about fifty thousand dollars (no, this not a typographical error) a year. He recently refused to make a seven-reel adaptation of a novel for one thousand dollars.

Mary Murillo, a fair-haired little person in William Fox’s scenario department, was never on a newspaper. She was born in England, received an academic education, and, while still in her teens, came to America. For a short time she was in the chorus of Havana, but left to play the part of Mimi, the lead in The Only Way, with Reginald Barker’s company. She sold her first story, a comedy, to the Smalleys. They encouraged her, and she sold them two more. Some of her best-known films are: A Soldier’s Oath, The Green-Eyed Monster, Gold and the Woman, The Eternal Sappho, The Vixen, and Ambition. Many of the Theda Bara films emanate from the overworked little head of Miss Murillo, and it is said that her income by no means pales into insignificance besides that of the vampirish one.

Another plutocrat of the pictures, female, is Frances Marion, who collects twenty-six thousand dollars per year from William A. Brady for writing the continuity of two five-reel features weekly for the World Film Corporation. She was born in San Francisco not so many years ago, and educated there. After designing posters, illustrating for magazines, and later taking up newspaper work, she became cognizant of the fact that the high cost of living was something fierce, so, in order to learn the limitations of the camera — you didn’t know there were any, did you? — she went with the Bosworth Company [Hobart Bosworth] as an extra. She wrote The Foundling for Mary Pickford, The Feast of Life for Clara Kimball Young, A Daughter of the Sea for Muriel Ostriche, and The Battle of Hearts for William Farnum.

Anita Loos, another best seller in filmdom, was born in California of French parents. She was raised on the stage as a child actress, and was in stock in San Francisco. She began writing for the New York Telegraph at the age of sixteen. She does not state what delayed her. Six years ago she sold her first script to D. W. Griffith, The New York Hat, produced by Griffith and played by Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore. She left Griffith after about five years, and began to do the scenarios for Douglas Fairbanks [Douglas Fairbanks Sr.]. Now she writes most of his scripts and all of his subtitles, for which she has shown a diabolical ingenuity. Some of her Fairbanks pictures are His Picture in the Papers, American Aristocracy, The Americano, and In Again, Out Again. She says:

“After six years of ceaseless endeavor I can truthfully say that I am the only scenario writer in the world that weighs eighty pounds.” She weighs more on pay day.

Clarence J. Harris, feature writer for the Fox Film Corporation, is an ordained clergyman of two liberal denominations. Following an active interest in moving pictures, he began to write, and during the past three years has written and placed four hundred reels of photo dramas covering all lines of thought. Mr. Harris wrote the first dramas in which Alice Brady, Mary Nash, Lenore Ulrich, Fania Marinoff, and Mary Miles Minter played.

Another newspaper man is C. Gardner Sullivan, who was born in Stillwater, Minnesota, in 1886, and graduated from the University of Minnesota. After knocking about the country, he landed finally in New York, and got a job on the Journal. He sold his first scenario to Edison [Thomas A. Edison]. Then Ince [Thomas H. Ince] bought a few, and Sullivan decided that he had had enough of the Journal. They parted by mutual consent. Now he works for Ince, and receives six hundred and fifty dollars a week and a percentage of the profits. Pity the downtrodden scenario writer!

Monte M. Katterjohn also works for Ince. He was born in Boomville, Indiana, twenty-five years ago, and soon after started a publication called Motor Topics. It failed. He freelanced. That failed. He started a moving-picture scenario school. It failed. Then he took off his coat and began to make good for Ince, for whom he has been making good ever since, at a salary that nobody should permit himself to sneeze at.

We will now quit piking along at retail, and present them by the wholesale — three-quarters of a dozen assorted, plain, and fancy scenario’ writers. They compose the Balboa staff, and we are told that they live together in harmony. At their head is Will M. Ritchey, who is their editor in chief. The others are Dan F. Whitcomb, Captain Leslie T. Peacocke, who is the author of more than five hundred photo dramas; Douglas Bronston, Luther A. Reed, Lela Leibrand, Frances Guihan, L. Virginia Waters, and Sylvia Gibson-Gowland. Their combined salaries, if laid end to end, would reach from here to any national debt, and overlap said debt to a large extent.

Adrian Johnson, who prepares many of Miss Theda Bara’s manuscripts, was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and educated by the Jesuit priests. He was a clerk in an office for a while, but was not buried so deeply under his ledgers that the raucous shouts of the currency to be earned in the pictures could not reach to him. He has red hair, and has committed a novel, thus joining the vast majority, and it is rumored that his salary is twenty-five thousand. Some of his best-known plays are The Ruse, The Marriage Bond, The Tragedy of Wall Street, and The Lure of Heart’s Desire. His former employer in his commercial career recently took a glance at Johnson’s monthly check, and then entered bankruptcy.

J. G. Hawks, who is with Ince, has the startling distinction of never having worked on a newspaper. He was born in San Francisco in 1876 at a very early age. Part of his youth was spent at sea, and in various other unprofitable enterprises, such as ranching in Arizona, abalone and pearl expeditioning in Lower California, and as a sergeant in Company F of the First California United States Volunteer Infantry in the war with Spain. At the close of the war he appeared for a while in Belasco productions. He left to become stage manager and director for the Hill and Elmendorff forces. In 1912 the demand for moving-picture plays became very pronounced, and Hawks, who had written for the stage two three-act plays — Kathleen Acushla and Down Nogales Way — decided to write photo plays. He was successful — that is, he received checks. It is the same thing. Some of his most noteworthy contributions to the screen are The Hammer, The Conversion of Frosty Blake, The Shadowgraph Message, and The $100,000 Bill. Hawks sneers at the sheriff as he goes by, to and from the bank.

Roy L. McCardell is one of the pioneer scenario writers of the industry. As is customary, he was — rather, is — a newspaper man. Born in Hagerstown, Maryland, in 1870, he has since that date sold over nine hundred scenarios. He writes the Jarr Family series for the New York Evening World. There is lots of money in series and serials. McCardell received a prize of ten thousand dollars for his Diamond from the Sky serial for American. He dictates his stories, operettas, plays, poetry, and scenarios to a white-haired amanuensis, but indorses his own checks. He lives with his family, which is a large one, in New Rochelle, New York — but his work is uniformly good.

Charles W. Goddard, who is at present a free lance, is thirty-eight years old, and also writes serials. He wrote for the stage a while, including The Ghost Breaker, The Misleading Lady, The Last Laugh, and Miss Information, all of which were written in collaboration with Paul Dickey. He is the author of the following picture serials: The Mysteries of Myra, International; The Perils of Pauline, The Exploits of Elaine, The Goddess, Pathé. He earns at least twenty-five thousand dollars a year, but hopes, after more experience, to be able to earn enough to make both ends meet.

Bertram Millhauser is another serial writer. That is, he is engaged on a serial at present — The Mystery of the Double Cross, Pathé. He is one of the younger generation, if there can be such a thing where they are all young, but he has already achieved distinction, notably with his five-part Gold Rooster feature for Pathé, The Challenge. It is rumored that he was never on a newspaper, and that he has not a debt in the world. Oh, well!

Hampton Del Ruth, of the Keystone Company, is reported to be a man who never works more than twenty-four hours a day. He is managing editor and assistant manager of production, and each of these jobs keeps him busy twelve hours per each and every day. He was born in Venice, Italy, of American parents, studied literature and art at Oxford, and now he injects artistic value into the custard pies that are used in his pictures.

So here they are, plutocrats all, who earn their living by the perspiration of their typists and by dipping the fine quill of their imaginations into the fluid that composes their blood. They are all living and successful exponents of the theory that genius is merely an ability to work hard and to study the subject. To this, add gray matter, a trace, as the chemists say, a pinch of persistence, and a drop of courage in times of adversity, when checks are few and the landlord ceases to be subtle — and the result is a certain cure for all financial ills.