William Faulkner's First Hollywood Assignment: A De Gaulle Screenplay and 1,200 Pages
Warner Brothers hired William Faulkner in July 1942 at $300 per week, and his first assignment was a Charles de Gaulle story. The project cycled through titles—Journey to Dawn, Journey to Hope, Free France, and finally The De Gaulle Story—and through outline, treatment, revised treatment, full-length screenplay, and revised screenplay over five months. Faulkner produced 1,200 pages of manuscript.
In one exchange, de Gaulle asks whether “that” raises the dead in France; a soldier answers that it will do better and raise the living.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The man who won the Nobel Prize in literature once took $300 a week from Warner Brothers and ground out 1,200 pages of screenplay drafts.
Hamblin's description makes it less a lark than a necessity: Faulkner was in dire financial need and unable to secure a desired military appointment.