Word: sherriff
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Based on R. C. Sherriff's Home at Seven, a hit play of the 1950 London season, Anatole de Grunwald's screenplay inherits some theatrical virtues. Its scenes are clearly built, its parts consistently written. The story itself moves at about the speed of Fate with a hotfoot. The speed, along with some lively shifts of camera angle, almost prevents a moviegoer from realizing that the camera, poor dog, is not really bounding free through the narrative growth, but poodling along on a choke leash of stagy words...
Three months ago British Playwright R. C. Sherriff (Journey's End) turned down a $28,000 offer to write a movie scenario for Hollywood. Reason: after paying Socialist Britain's income tax, Sherriff reckoned that he would have only $1,400 of his earnings left (TIME, March 27). Last week another British writer announced his intention to strike against the exorbitant tax rates. From his latest book Legacy, Novelist Nevil Shute (Pastoral, Chequer Board) expects to make about ?18,000 ($50,400), but after paying British taxes he will be able to keep only about...
Hollywood. Sherriff sat down, did some quick calculating, figured that Socialist Britain's income tax would take all but ?500. Said he: "It didn't seem worth while putting in four or five months of very hard work for a sum I could make as a jobbing gardener-or collecting refuse in cans, for that matter...
...weeks ago Sherriff approached the Treasury, offered to write the Hollywood script for a nominal ?100, provided that the remaining ?9,900 went to the Society of Antiquaries for the excavation of some Roman ruins in Norfolk. Said Sherriff: "It is neither comforting nor does it make one proud to reflect that one is providing so many free sets of false teeth ... to the people of Britain ... I would gladly work for next to nothing if it would produce something for the nation I could feel I had a hand...
Last week Sherriff's proposal was answered. Treasury officials were sympathetic but firm: there was no legislation to cover such an arrangement. That decided Sherriff: the $28,000 would go unearned, the Roman ruins Would go unexcavated, and Sherriff himself would continue to work only four months of the year and to work his farm the other eight. Said Sherriff: "I think I'll find looking after the chickens more profitable and more interesting...