New York Times, June 1, 1930
 

HUMORIST TO DO FILMS

P. G. Wodehouse Goes to California to Have His First Try at Motion Picture Work

 

P. G. Wodehouse, who doesn’t sign his stories Pelham Grenville Wodehouse because he thinks these names are more suitable for a diplomat than a humorist, recently passed through New York on his way to the West Coast, where he will have his first try at motion picture work. Mr. Wodehouse was accompanied to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio by his daughter, Leonora, who has scenario writing ambitions herself.

As round-faced and amiable in appearance as one of his own jovial fictional characters, Mr. Wodehouse did not allow his first siege of neuritis to affect his equanimity. Whether or not the neuritis had any connection with his renunciation of literature for the movies was not discussed. In any case, the fact that the writer was suffering twings of pain did not prevent him from smiling with cheery good humor.

“Motion-picture work is absolutely new to me,” he said. “My first job will be to prepare an original screen comedy for Jack Buchanan, the stage star. I should like to continue to do original stories rather than adapt my earlier books or stories to the screen. Just now my thoughts are so colored by this neuritis complex that I am sure I should have my hero walking about with his arm in a sling. But perhaps I will feel differently when I am ready to begin work.”

Mr. Wodehouse is a special admirer of George Arliss. Marion Davies is the author’s favorite in the realm of light comedy, and while praising Miss Davies’s work in “Not So Dumb,” he expressed the hope that he might be able to do a story later on for this star.

Unlike those humorists whose spontaneous wit served to conceal a deep-rooted melancholy, Mr. Wodehouse is a thorough-going exponent of the philosophy expressed by his light-hearted comedy creations. He does not care for morbid books or plays and believes that the most valuable function of the dramatist and short-story writer is to entertain by artifice rather than by sombre realism and introspective study: to take people out of themselves, without worrying about missions, motives and object lessons.

“If I like California as well as I expect to,” remarked the author, “I might stay a year—perhaps longer. I suppose that I shall be persuaded to get a house and car, and when one has those things there is an added inducement to remaining longer.”

The English humorist’s reputation in musical comedy circles dates back to his association with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, in the creation of such old-time favorite entertainments as “Oh, Boy!” “Oh, Lady, Lady!” and “Oh, My Dear!” Mr. Wodehouse’s association with the stage also comprises the recent adaptation for English-speaking audiences of Molnar’s “The Play’s the Thing,” “Her Cardboard Lover” and “Candle Light.” He worked on the book of Ziegfeld’s “Rosalie” and wrote the lyrics for “The Three Musketeers.”

 

 

Printer’s error corrected above:
Newspaper had “Granville”.
Not corrected:
The original title was punctuated Oh, Lady! Lady!!
The music of Oh, My Dear! was by Louis A. Hirsch, not Jerome Kern.

In the event, the “original screen comedy for Jack Buchanan” was never realized; Wodehouse was put to work on dialogue for an existing scenario eventually released as Those Three French Girls, and though Jack Buchanan’s name was announced initially, the male lead role went to Reginald Denny instead.