Bombshells to Blasters, An Auction You Can't Refuse Pt. 1

First Time To Auction

20th Century Studios, 1955. Studio bound and bradded 113-page final script. Written by Billy Wilder and George Axelrod as adapted from Axelrod’s 1952 stage play of the same title. Dated on the cover and interior title page, August 10, 1954 and assumed a finalized shooting script as production filmed between September and October of 1954. While the play had clearly been “Richard Sherman’s” (Tom Ewell) story of a husband left to his own devices while his family is away on vacation, the picture was curated as a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe as “The Girl,” the upstairs neighbor who tempts nice guy Richard. On the way to final release, the film ran afoul of the cursed Hays Code and there was much back and forth between Zanuck and the studio, producer Feldman, director Wilder, and other forces in a tug-o-war to preserve the essence of the story under the strict and oppressive moral codes of the era’s censors. The frequent annotations, in pen and pencil, are primarily aimed at “Richard” (Ewell) dialog. The original play was very heavy on characters voicing their thoughts and heavy with narrative exposition. In adapting the play for the screen, the balance between monologue and action was a challenge right up to pre-views, when other agency and studio notes express a problem with many of Richard’s monologues being perceived as too long and repetitive. Right out of the gate in one of the first scenes where Richard is seeing his wife and son off at the train station, on page 7 the reader has made many notes of justification for cuts to the following dialog: “RICHARD Some husbands think that because their wives are away for the summer, they can just run wild. Do any terrible thing they want...Like Charlie Lederer last summer - Annie hadn’t been gone two days, when Charlie went out and got himself tattooed. A big green dragon on his chest- a butterfly on each shoulder... Not me!.. Oh, no! Work, work, work!” Written in the margins all around this dialog are notes including, in part: “This should be out,” “This is brought up time and again,” and “The only thing here is a too old line - which is again repeated - Scene 16, page 16.”And in fact the dialog in that scene in the resulting film is reduced to:“ RICHARD Look at them. Isn’t that awful? Train isn’t even out of the station yet.” Another good example of general notes is found on page 83, pertaining to the dialog: “THE GIRL Please don’t make me go back up to that hot apartment. I haven’t slept in three nights and I want to look good on my show tomorrow...I’ll just sleep right here in this chair...I don’t even need a pillow...I’ll be as quiet as a mouse...you won’t even know I’m around...Please! RICHARD(very relieved)Oh...oh...Well! That’s different! Of course, you can sleep here - why not? We’re not savages...we’re civilized people.” Here the script note is: “If we can cut will be more provocative.” In this case, the original dialog remains intact, verbatim in the resulting film. It seems that the primary wrestling match was in getting the movie to a desirable length and pleasing the censors without neutralizing the saucy story. The effort weighed on director Billy Wilder who was forced to alter the affair in the play to only the idea of infidelity to please the censors is known to have said about the experience of making the film and the results: “A nothing picture because the picture should be done today without censorship. Unless the husband, left alone in New York while the wife and kid are away for the summer, has an affair with that girl there’s nothing. But you couldn’t do that in those days, so I was just straitjacketed. It just didn’t come off one bit, and there’s nothing I can say about it except I wish I hadn’t made it. I wish I had the property now.” This copy of the screenplay is particularly significant in that Charles Feldman was instrumental in the filmmaking process while treading a line between pure matters of production, the artistic vision of Billy Wilder, the best interests of his client Marilyn Monroe, the demands of Darryl Zanuck and the studio, as well as negotiating the scrutiny of the censors. The wrappers exhibit production handling and torn edges. The interior includes a clipped coupon page and general contents exhibit handling, dog-eared corners and wrinkling. In production used very good condition.