Joseph Moncure March
Writing
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Joseph Moncure March (July 27, 1899 New York City - February 14, 1977 Los Angeles, California) was an American poet and essayist, best known for his long narrative poems The Wild Party and The Set-Up. After serving in World War I and graduating from Amherst College (where he was a protégé of Robert Frost), March was managing editor of The New Yorker in 1925, and helped create the magazine's "Talk of the Town" front section. He left the magazine, and wrote the first of his two important long Jazz Age narrative poems, The Wild Party. Due to its risqué content, this violent story of a vaudeville dancer who throws a booze and sex-filled party could not find a publisher until 1928. Once published, however, the poem was a great success despite being banned in Boston. March followed with The Set-Up, a poem about a black boxer who had just been released from prison. In 1929, March moved to Hollywood to provide additional dialogue for the film Journey's End and, more famously, to turn the silent version of Howard Hughes' classic Hell's Angels into a talkie — a rewrite that brought the phrase "Excuse me while I put on something more comfortable" into the American lexicon. March stayed with Hughes' Caddo Pictures studio for several years, temporarily running the office, overseeing the release of Hell's Angels, and getting into legal trouble after an attempt to steal the script for rival Warner Bros.' flying picture The Dawn Patrol. March worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood until 1940, under contract to MGM and Paramount and later as a freelancer for Republic Pictures and other studios; he wrote at least 19 produced scripts in his Hollywood career. His most prominent late script is probably the left-leaning John Wayne curio Three Faces West, a knockoff of The Grapes of Wrath that ends with a faceoff between Okies and Nazis. With his third wife, Peggy Prior (a Pathé screenwriter) and her two children, March returned to the East Coast in 1940. During World War II, he worked at a shipbuilding plant in Groton, Connecticut, and wrote features (mostly acid assessments of the movie business) for the New York Times Magazine. In later years, he wrote documentaries for the State Department and industrial films for Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Monsanto Company, American Airlines, and others. Several films starring industrial films icon Thelma "Tad" Tadlock, including Design for Dreaming (1956) and A Touch of Magic (1961) were made from Mar his rhyming scripts. March died in 1977.
Known For
Pinkerton marries Cho-Cho San in Japan, whilst on shore leave. When he leaves, she keeps his Japanese home as he left it. He returns three years later, having married again in America, and tells Cho-Cho that their affair is over. She has had a child in his absence, who is sent to her family, before she kills herself.
Madame Butterfly
When the Great War breaks out, brothers Roy and Monte Rutledge, each attending Oxford University, enlist with the Royal Flying Corps.
Hell's Angels
Expecting the usual loss, a boxing manager takes bribes from a betting gangster without telling his fighter.
The Set-Up
A pretty but virtuous small-town bank clerk is the victim of a vicious rumor from an unsuccessful suitor that she spent the night with a notorious womanizer.
Hot Saturday
Viennese surgeon Dr. Braun and his daughter Leni come to a small town in North Dakota as refugees from Hitler. When the winds of the Dust Bowl threaten the town, John Phillips leads the townsfolk in moving to greener pastures in Oregon. He falls for Leni, but she is betrothed to the man who helped her and her father escape from the Third Reich. She must decide between the two men.
Three Faces West
An aging silent movie comic star throws a lavish party to try and save his failing career.
The Wild Party
While searching the South Pacific for a missing aviator, Bob Mitchell and Jimmy Wallace are caught in a typhoon and crack up on an island, escaping unharmed with the aid of Tura, a beautiful jungle girl who is the only inhabitant of the island and is believed a goddess by the natives of the adjoining islands. The three are about to leave the island on a make-shift raft when a gang of savage tribesman land, headed by Kuasa, a half-mad potentate who informs them that all whites are his mortal enemies because an Englishwoman once spurned his love and he got his revenge by stealing her daughter, who is Tura.
Her Jungle Love
A hula dancer at a carnival sets out to seduce the naive son of the show's manager.
Hoopla
This turn-of-the-century tragedy chronicles the sorrowful travails of a woman who endures a series of devastating losses.
Jennie Gerhardt
A story about a man from Wyoming who enlists in the Army and is sent to the front during World War I. There he saves the life of an American society girl working in the Ambulance Corps. Afterwards at a rest camp, they meet again, fall in love, and are secretly married.
A Man from Wyoming
An unfortunate marriage and a bogus Count are the ingredients for this musical.
Hideaway Girl
Woman Doctor is a 1939 American drama film
Woman Doctor
Mazie, a poor orphan girl, is mistreated by cruel farmer Slag and his wife for whom she works. Mazie, who is growing into a woman, does not like they way Slag has been looking at her lately.
Two Alone
In France, 1917, an alcoholic captain is afraid that his new replacement, his sweetheart's brother, will betray his downfall.
Journey's End
A disillusioned factory worker is charged with the attempted murder of her mother's lover.
Forgotten Girls
Let 'Em Have It is a 1935 gangster film. It was also known as The Legion of Valour and False Faces. An FBI agent tracks down a gang leader.
Let 'em Have It
An heiress with a penchant for speeding runs afoul of a traffic cop. Romance develops between the two, but it's soon complicated when he believes she is responsible for killing someone due to reckless driving.
And Sudden Death
Yet another fast-paced western featuring the "Three Mesqueteers," pulp writer William Colt McDonald's trio of sagebrush heroes, Lone Star Raiders finds Stony Brooke (Robert Livingston), Tucson Smith (Bob Steele) and Lullaby Joslin (Rufe Davis) defending elderly rancher "Granny" Phelps (Sarah Padden) from greedy neighbor Henry Martin (George Douglas).
Lone Star Raiders
Larry O'Roark is a boxer who's insanely posssesive and jealous of his fiancee, Jo. the sight of her and her employer, Mr. Lambert, at ringside during his big fight distracts Larry and he is knocked out. He then promises never to be jealous again and marries Jo. When she realizes that they're broke she asks Lambert for a job (she had quit on marrying Larry.) One thing leads to another and Larry, enraged with jealousy, end up killing Lambert. He then wanders off in a daze, and Jo takes the rap for the murder. Larry descends from his amnesiac fog just in time to interrupt the announcement of the jury's verdict in Jo's trial. then it's off to the chair for Larry. Or is it?
Jealousy
A troupe of traveling entertainers become stranded in Paraguay.