FROM NOVELS TO MOVIE RIGHTS

How did British authors engage with the ‘new media’ of the 1920s and 1930s?

British film producers sought to adapt successful plays and novels for the movies.

Hollywood studios invited British authors to America to write scenarios for the film industry.

But there was resistance...
...copyright was ill defined
...theatres didn’t want competition
...authors weren’t sure of the benefits of cross-media co-operation

This is direct evidence that audiences in 1930 crossed between media to read, listen to or watch novel adaptations.

Terms of the 1919 Contract between Hearst’s American International magazine Company and the British author Elinor Glyn:

The author agrees that she will within three years from this date deliver to the publisher the manuscript of three new & original novels, together with the exclusive serial rights of publication.

The term novel shall mean a fiction story of approx. 80,000 words a novelette a story of substantially less than 80,000 and a short story not exceeding 10,000 words.

The author agrees to submit not more than one novel a year. The publisher agrees to pay the following sums:

• a) 15 cents a word for all short
  stories & novelettes;
• b) $12,000 for each novel;
• c) $2,000 for the motion picture
  rights for any short story;

Such options to be exercised within 3 months after the delivery.

Wealth at death

When Elinor Glyn died in 1943 she left £6,588 but her company had invested in an annuity which protected her from the consequences of the recession.

• – In America the average wage
  was $2000 pa and in Britain
  craftsman averaged £1a day,
  a labourer £3 a week.

• – Hugh Walpole left an
  equivalent £51,637.

• – AEW Mason left an equivalent
  £55,089.
• – Edgar Wallace left an
  equivalent £33,921.
• – Baroness Orczy left an
  equivalent £30,107.
• – Hall Caine left an equivalent –
  a spectacular - £370,023.