Famous novelists were no exception in scratching out a living during the Depression. Famed author William Faulkner augmented his salary by working for film studio MGM, with his first screenplay in April 1933's "Today We Live." Faulkner's royalties from previously published books were becoming slimmer by the day and his magazine short stories weren't enough to sustain his standard of living. MGM reached out and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Faulkner scholar Andre Bleikasten noted the writer "was in dire need of money and had no idea how to get it. So he went to Hollywood."
Faulkner's screenplay "Today We Live" was based on his Saturday Evening Post short story, 'Turnabout."
The script was the only one Faulkner adapted from his own work. Director Howard Hawks was intrigued by Faulkner's original story and signed on, only to find out Irving Thalberg, head of the studio's production, wanted actress Joan Crawford, idle while collecting her $500,000 salary, to be injected into the all-male screenplay. Faulkner's original script was handed off to an assembly of studio writers, who added the female element to make it into a love-triangle.
"Today We Live" has Diana Boyce (Crawford) showing American Richard Bogard (Gary Cooper), the buyer of her family's home on the day she's told her father died in France on the front in 1916. Diana has a fiancee, Claude Hope (Robert Young), as well as her brother Ronnie (Franchot Tone) to lend emotional support. Bogard falls in love with her and joins the British Royal Flying Corps. One assignment he receives coincidently has Claude as a gunner in his plane before the two and Diana's brother go on a sea-bound torpedo mission.
"Today We Live" was raked over the coals by film reviewers, who knew some scenes were reshot, trimmed, cut and then reshot again. Its original 135 minutes was sliced to 113 minutes, with Hawks tearing his hair out at every revision. "Crawford was unconvincing, the 'Gowns by Adrian' were extreme and annoying, and the story was superficial," wrote the reviewer for Variety. Critic Richard Watts of the New York Herald Tribune wrote, "It is a lugubrious romance of the war. It is only when one of the characters begin to play quaintly with a cockroach that you see any particular traces of the Faulkner influence at all."
The film reviewers did enjoy its aerial war sequences, most lifted from Howard Hughes' 1930's "Hell's Angels." The German battleship sunk in the end was footage of the USS New Jersey targeted by pilots in General Billy Mitchell's demonstration on September 1923, showing airplanes had the ability to sink enemy ships.
The movie, despite its star power, lost money. Crawford, who had specifically requested Gary Cooper, got her wish when MGM borrowed the actor from Paramount, the only time the two appeared in a movie together. Crawford, recently divorced from her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., appeared for the first time with Franchot Tone, and were immediately attracted to one another. Although she felt it was too soon to jump into another relationship, the two married in 1935. Tone, a New Yorker, loved stage acting, and his Broadway appearances from the late 1920s was noticed by Hollywood scouts. He made his 1932 film debut in 'The Wiser Sex' opposite Claudette Colbert. "Today We Live" was Tone's first feature with MGM.
Despite all the headaches Faulkner faced with his first movie assignment, he stuck with Hollywood off and on for the next twenty years, working on more than 50 films to earn, as he said, "a consistent salary that supported his family back home." "Today We Live" introduced the writer to Hawks, beginning a close friendship. Faulkner hired the director's brother, William, to be his movie agent, who was able to find consistent work for the writer in Hollywood.
The script was the only one Faulkner adapted from his own work. Director Howard Hawks was intrigued by Faulkner's original story and signed on, only to find out Irving Thalberg, head of the studio's production, wanted actress Joan Crawford, idle while collecting her $500,000 salary, to be injected into the all-male screenplay. Faulkner's original script was handed off to an assembly of studio writers, who added the female element to make it into a love-triangle.
"Today We Live" has Diana Boyce (Crawford) showing American Richard Bogard (Gary Cooper), the buyer of her family's home on the day she's told her father died in France on the front in 1916. Diana has a fiancee, Claude Hope (Robert Young), as well as her brother Ronnie (Franchot Tone) to lend emotional support. Bogard falls in love with her and joins the British Royal Flying Corps. One assignment he receives coincidently has Claude as a gunner in his plane before the two and Diana's brother go on a sea-bound torpedo mission.
"Today We Live" was raked over the coals by film reviewers, who knew some scenes were reshot, trimmed, cut and then reshot again. Its original 135 minutes was sliced to 113 minutes, with Hawks tearing his hair out at every revision. "Crawford was unconvincing, the 'Gowns by Adrian' were extreme and annoying, and the story was superficial," wrote the reviewer for Variety. Critic Richard Watts of the New York Herald Tribune wrote, "It is a lugubrious romance of the war. It is only when one of the characters begin to play quaintly with a cockroach that you see any particular traces of the Faulkner influence at all."
The film reviewers did enjoy its aerial war sequences, most lifted from Howard Hughes' 1930's "Hell's Angels." The German battleship sunk in the end was footage of the USS New Jersey targeted by pilots in General Billy Mitchell's demonstration on September 1923, showing airplanes had the ability to sink enemy ships.
The movie, despite its star power, lost money. Crawford, who had specifically requested Gary Cooper, got her wish when MGM borrowed the actor from Paramount, the only time the two appeared in a movie together. Crawford, recently divorced from her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., appeared for the first time with Franchot Tone, and were immediately attracted to one another. Although she felt it was too soon to jump into another relationship, the two married in 1935. Tone, a New Yorker, loved stage acting, and his Broadway appearances from the late 1920s was noticed by Hollywood scouts. He made his 1932 film debut in 'The Wiser Sex' opposite Claudette Colbert. "Today We Live" was Tone's first feature with MGM.
Despite all the headaches Faulkner faced with his first movie assignment, he stuck with Hollywood off and on for the next twenty years, working on more than 50 films to earn, as he said, "a consistent salary that supported his family back home." "Today We Live" introduced the writer to Hawks, beginning a close friendship. Faulkner hired the director's brother, William, to be his movie agent, who was able to find consistent work for the writer in Hollywood.