Hollywood Tales

Screenwriter Wendall Mayes on how he was hired to write a script with the legendary Billy Wilder.

My first screenplay was with Billy Wilder, who brought me from New York to Hollywood for The Spirit of St. Louis in 1955. The great problem with the film was we had a man sitting in an airplane by himself, and the problem was how to sustain the interest in the story. I think it was a picture that was made thirty years too late, and I think it should have been called “The Lindbergh Story” or something like that, because when they put it out as The Spirit of St. Louis, everyone seemed to think it was an old musical, and they didn’t know what the Spirit of St. Louis was.

There was something unusual about the way I was employed by Billy Wilder. He’s a great bridge player, and he read a man called Goring on bridge at the time. He had had one writer working on The Spirit of St. Louis, and they had either disagreed or the writer got sick or something, and he was looking for a writer. And he was reading Colin Goring on bridge, and right next to the column was John Crosby’s review of one of my television plays. He read that, and he called up New York and said, “Let’s hire this fellow Wendell Mayes.” So if he hadn’t been a bridge player, I would never have been employed.

Old Hollywood. So many great stories. For more Hollywood Tales, go here.