Because his father worked for Warner Bros. during its heyday, Wilk (They're Playing Our Song: Conversations with America's Classic Songwriters
; OK!: The Story of Oklahoma!
; etc.) grew up "a Warner brat," absorbing the many revealing life lessons a place like Warner Bros. threw in his midst. The prolific author singles out not the Hollywood legends populating the Warner studio but its unvalued screenwriters, the "schmucks with Underwoods," as studio honcho Jack L. Warner once quipped. Beginning in the early 1970s, Wilk interviewed some of the people who penned some of Hollywood's most enduring achievements going back to the 1930s and '40s, among them Donald Odgen Stewart (The Philadelphia Story
), Ben Hecht (Gone with the Wind
) and Sidney Buchman (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
). Wilk includes a wide swath of writers trying to fashion something artistic out of stern commercial mandates handed down by the studios, but occasionally flagging in that struggle—there are frequent recollections of cranking out scripts at a dizzyingly mechanical pace ("you are doing a chore assigned to you by your employer," Dorothy Parker decided). The subjects, however, are devoid of bitter regret. Wilk, himself a film and TV writer, punctuates his long profiles with short tales that cover the many legendary writers who at one time or another wrote for Hollywood (e.g., Aldous Huxley, Thornton Wilder). The variety of screenwriters Wilk interviews is gratifying, but his tendency to quote them at unending length may bore some readers. Still, Wilk's interviews uncover a smattering of wry, observant voices telling a largely neglected element of Hollywood history. 17 b&w photos, line drawings. (Feb.)
