Even in editorial rooms, where a higher class of intelligence is usually found in authority over the story departments, one notices this instinctive urge to get a finger into the pie and the theater is cursed with it; as the picture business is superlative in all things this very human failing may be found here in its fullest flowering. Just as Tom Sawyer’s young friends all wanted a turn at whitewashing the fence so do the picture executives—supervisors, directors, script-girls, cutters, film-editors, messenger boys, stage-hands and scrub-women—all yearn to make just the least little bit of a change in a story to satisfy some instinctive lech to be an author. I have seen so many plays and screen stories ruined by this enforced collaboration that I honestly look upon it as the major evil that threatens a young writer’s success. In the first place it’s a silly custom because once the author surrenders the integrity of his story he is helpless to even be a fair judge of the hybrid product that takes its place, and as plays and stories do not succeed on account of their structural perfection but by virtue of their spiritual and inspirational qualities, it is obvious that no man without a creative talent has any right to mess about with them. Duncan knew the folly of all this and his skill and instinct resulted in a fine and sensitive performance. Again a play of mine was to have its first performance at a holiday matinée and again, as had happened to me during the first matinée of THROUGH THE BREAKERS, I was to be given the benefit of an honest lay opinion of my talents. We opened in Asbury Park, New Jersey, famous among people of the theater for drawing the prize boob audiences of America. An audience at any seashore resort is a terrible thing, but in Asbury Park for some reason its reactions are amazing. Good plays die and terrible plays are heralded as great, so that the wise author simply sits in suffering silence with cotton in his ears. Personally as I sat with my wife through this first performance of THE DETOUR I had been very happy, so happy in fact that I neglected the cotton, and on my way out of the crowded theater I heard the first critical opinion of this, the first attempt on my part to write of life simply and honestly. “Do you know,” remarked a very pretty young woman as we passed, “I think I could write a better play than this one myself.” In spite, however, of this completely honest expression of opinion THE DETOUR gave me a new standing as a writer of serious plays. Another rusty old saw of the trade is the one about all the great plays resting in closets, trunks and unread in managers’ offices, plays so fine that, were they to be produced, a new drama would spring full grown into being. I have been looking for one of those for twenty years, but so far it has escaped me. In all the hundreds of these neglected manuscripts that it has been my sad fate to have read I found just one real play. When I demanded a