Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine

Articles from Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine

Immigration Hollywood-Style (Rob Wagner’s Script, 1935)

Apparently during the pit of the Great Depression there were complaints coming from a few frustrated corners about the number of foreign talents that were being hired to entertain us in the movie business. An old Hollywood salt answered this complaint head-on:

The average world-fan cares nothing that Chaplin is an Englishman, Garbo a Swede, Novarro a Mexican, Bergner a German or Boyer a Frenchman.

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To Live in Occupied Tokyo (Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1947)

A breezy account of American occupied Tokyo as reported by a literary magazine:

Regardless of the festivities, the War Crimes Trials proceed as usual and the accused sit with earphones listening intently as the defense presents the China Phase.
Japan seems to be striving toward Democracy, their interest in government affairs has broadened, and the voting in the national elections showed their arousal.

Should you like to read how the city of Kyoto fared during the Second World War, click here.

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A Review of Memorial by Christopher Isherwood (Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

A review of Christopher Isherwood’s (1906 – 1986) semi-autobiographical novel, Memorial, which was placed in post-World War I Britain:

The plot of Memorialstyle=border:none can be discussed very briefly: it doesn’t have one. It doesn’t need one. It is entirely fascinating, not a dramatic sequence of events, but an increasingly intimate understanding of a state of affairs…The book proceeds, not forward in time, but inward by layers. Isherwood has a wonderful gift of getting inside people.

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A 1947 Review of THE BUTTERFLY by James M. Cain (Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

Appearing in the Beverly Hills literary rag, Rob Wagner’s Script was the 1947 review of The Butterfly by James M. Cain (1892 – 1977):

I have not read Cain’s older books to confirm this impression, but offhand I would say that ‘The Butterfly’ is second to ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’, among his longer things, as an exhibition of his peculiar talents…This work concerns itself with incest. Technically, no incest is committed, but a marriage is made and consummated between two people, one of whom supposes that she is the other’s daughter…


From Amazon: The Butterflystyle=border:none

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COMMAND DECISION Book Review (Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

Command Decision, the World War II novel by William Wister Haines (1908 – 1989), was written from the point of view of a general officer and the Allied effort to destroy the Nazi jet fighters before the Luftwaffe could muster the initiative and get the upper hand; the novel was based upon the author’s own wartime experiences serving with the American 8th Air Force in Europe during the Second World War. Haines enjoyed much critical and popular success when the book was released; a 1947 Broadway production ran for 409 performances and a film adaptation premiered in 1948 starring Clark Gable (who also served in the 8th Air Force).


Click here to read the 1947 book review of a William Saroyan war novel.

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Rita Hayworth (Rob Wagner’s Script, 1946, American Magazine, 1942)

A 1946 article from Script, a semi-chic Beverly Hills magazine (it went belly-up in 1949), explaining just how it came to pass that a sweet, little Brooklyn girl named Margarita Carmen Cansino became Rita Hayworth (1918 – 1987):

Then came reincarnation. Rita discarded her Spanish name, gave away her dancing costumes, did something to her hairline, stuck a y into her mother’s family name (Joseph Haworth, same family, toured with Edwin Booth) and so on to the big time and ‘Cover Girl’ and ‘Tonight and Every Night’.

So the girl with a Spanish father and an Anglo-Saxon mother becomes the typical American girl to thousands of American soldiers abroad, and that, too, is as it should be.


Click here to read articles about Marilyn Monroe.

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Los Angeles Nisei at Santa Anita Racetrack (Rob Wagner’s Script, 1942)

Attached is a eye-witness account of the Los Angeles Issie and Nisei populations after having been removed from their homes and detained at Santa Anita racetrack prior to their transfer and subsequent incarceration at Manzanar, California.

There are more than 6,000 Japanese housed in the stables which once accommodated 2,000 horses…Each stall has had a room built on in front with doors and windows and the floors have been covered with a layer of asphaltum which seems to have killed the odors.

This article, laced throughout with subtle undertones of condemnation, was written by a Hollywood screenwriter named Alfred Cohn (1880 – 1951) who is largely remembered today for having written the adaptation for the Al Jolson movie The Jazz Singer (1929).

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Ode to the Hollywood Agent (Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

The literati have all agreed: there is no doubt that if Shakespeare were alive today he would live in Beverly Hills, California. He would dwell in a 1930s split-level Persion-conversion, probably on Palm or Roxbury. As a well-compensated screenwriter he would churn-out the standard plots that were expected of him: fish-out-of-water dramadies, romcoms, and (under assorted pen names) a few reality shows; and like the poet whose work is attached, he would write about matters unique to Southern California -valet parking, Cobb Salads -and in this case the Hollywood agent.

This poem was written by Sydney King Russell (1898 – 1976), who, like Shakespeare, knew that if you’re going to write a poem about Hollywood agents, you’ll need to crack open the ol’ rhyming dictionary to see what rhymes with ten percent.

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Angela Lansbury Arrives in Hollywood (Rob Wagner’s Script, 1945)

Those sly dogs at SCRIPT MAGAZINE! They printed the smiling mug of the twenty-five year-old Angela Lansbury (b. 1925) on the cover of their rag, briefly praising her for being the youngest performer to have ever been nominated for an Academy Award (she soon won the 1944 Best Supporting Actress statue for Gaslight), and ran a profile of the lass on a page eight article that was misleadingly titled Our Cover Girl, only to devote 85% of the columns to an illustrious forebear.

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