Though Academy Award-winning writer Budd Schulberg '36 has worked on countless screenplays and novels, he is reminded of one certain piece around this time every year: "Winter Carnival" -- a film he wrote based on his experiences at Dartmouth's annual event.
But for Schulberg, this reminiscence is not simple college nostalgia. He admits that the background for the movie is probably more interesting than the movie itself.
What Schulberg remembers most fondly is the time, a few years after graduation, he returned to Hanover with another writer to revise the screenplay for "Winter Carnival."
Schulberg originally wrote the screenplay after urging by legendary movie producer Walter Wanger '15. But after reading the initial copy, Wanger felt the script needed a little spicing up -- so he decided to add a co-writer to assist Schulberg with the revision.
That co-writer was none other than F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of the classic American novel, "The Great Gatsby."
Carnival with an icon
"Wanger told me they were putting another writer on it, then he said Fitzgerald, and I thought he was putting me on. Wanger says, 'He's in the next room reading your script,'" Schulberg explained.
Together, Schulberg and Fitzgerald traveled to Hanover. It was on this trip that the truly memorable story begins. En route to Dartmouth, Fitzgerald went on a drinking binge and fell apart.
By the time they arrived in Hanover, "Scott was really unraveling," Schulberg said. But that was not their only trouble. They were notified that the Hanover Inn did not have a room for them. They were forced to spend the night on a bare, iron-spring bed in the attic.
After recuperating from the long trip, Schulberg and Fitzgerald set out to write their scenes on their second night in Hanover. The movie crew began filming backdrops for the production, using such locations as the old Dartmouth Outing Club House and Occum Pond, which would later be used in a Hollywood studio as backgrounds against which the actors were filmed.
Later that night, the duo made their way to a coffee shop in town, attempting to sober up from a wild night of traditional Winter Carnival partying and to plan scenes for the screenplay. They then stumbled upon Wanger, "resplendent in white tie," who flattered their work and promised to put them on a train back to New York at the end of the weekend to finish up the screenplay.
However, the pair never finished the screenplay together. Schulberg and Fitzgerald had been drinking considerable amounts of alcohol throughout the weekend.
"Scott was 18 or 20 years older than me, so I had youth on my side when it came to sobering up," Schulberg recalled. "Scott was having a rough time."
As a result of this excessive drinking, Fitzgerald, in a very bad state, had to be admitted to the Dartmouth Hospital. Subsequently, Fitzgerald was fired from the production in what has been described as a humiliating scene. Reportedly, Fitzgerald spent some time in a New York sanitarium recovering from the experience.
But, as always, the show must go on, and it did. Schulberg ended up finishing the script with Maurice Rapf '35, a screenwriter at the time and, today, a Dartmouth film professor.
Fitzgerald's impact
Fitzgerald's breakdown in Hanover has given the movie a dubious immortality, although Fitzgerald was not given credit for the story's screenplay.
Still, his influence on the film is evident. "You can see the two different story lines in the script. Fitzgerald was trying to tell a typical Fitzgerald story of lost love between two mature people. I was trying to tell a different story altogether," Schulberg said.
Schulberg had served as the Editor of The Dartmouth and, out of Dartmouth only three years at the time, and "was still thinking as a radical, reform-minded editor," when he was writing "Winter Carnival."
He recounted one story when he almost was expelled over what he printed in The Dartmouth. In nearby Vermont, marble quarry laborers and the company they worked for were clashing over job issues, and Schulberg took the side of the workers.
He said he wrote an editorial piece for the newspaper that was "very effective." Many alumni strongly disagreed with Schulberg's views and urged the President to expel him from the College.
The College President Ernest Hopkins called Schulberg into his office and asked him what he would say to himself if he were in the President's position.
"I told him, 'I guess I would say that I find everything you write abominable but it is supposed to be a liberal paper and I can't stop you from writing what you want,'" Schulberg said.
Hopkins, albeit reluctantly, agreed and Schulberg was allowed to stay.
Influenced by his liberal college years, in Schulberg's opinion, the final version of "Winter Carnival" was less a linear movie than an anthology of tales attempting to satisfy Fitzgerald and his visions of messages the movie should present to its audience.
The film was based on two themes, Schulberg said. The first involves a twenty-something woman played by Ann Sheridan who, on the way to Montreal, has a whim to see an old love of hers -- a Dartmouth professor, played by Richard Carlson. The second theme comprises the lives of three undergraduates in "a typical triangle carnival date," according to Schulberg.
"They used to fall out of their seats laughing at it. It was a forgettable movie," Schulberg said of later Dartmouth students' reception of the film.
After the Carnival
After being fired from "Winter Carnival," Fitzgerald eventually returned to Hollywood, and Schulberg still saw him often. Just two weeks before Fitzgerald died, Schulberg asked him to inscribe his copy of Fitzgerald's novel, "Tender is the Night." At the time, Fitzgerald was working on his unfinished novel, "The Last Tycoon."
"I found him personally awfully appealing. I liked him enormously," Schulberg said of Fitzgerald. "There was something pathetic about him then, but I admired his work. At the time 'The Great Gatsby' was out of print, almost forgotten. After 'Winter Carnival,' we stayed in touch."
Schulberg first found out about Fitzgerald's death in a curious way. While visiting the College campus in December of 1940, Schulberg encountered former "maverick" Dartmouth comparative literature professor Herb West, who said to him, "Isn't it too bad about Scott?'"
"He was so young, yet I thought of him as an old man, but he really was young. I looked up to him," Schulberg said.
Before Dartmouth
Budd Schulberg grew up around the movies. His father, former head of Paramount Studios B. P. Schulberg, was involved in the production of over 90 films from the 1920s to the 1940s, including 1927 Best Picture Oscar winner, "Wings."
Budd Schulberg worked for The Hollywood Reporter and wrote a few scripts while in high school. He had generally assumed he would remain in Hollywood after graduating.
But two good friends of the elder Schulberg -- Wanger and writer/producer Gene Markey -- changed his mind. They encouraged him to consider going away to college, specifically, to Dartmouth.
At Dartmouth, he majored in sociology and minored in English, focusing on creative writing. Although he did not have any clear career path in mind, he said, "I knew I would do some form of writing, but I wasn't sure I wanted to stay in movie-writing all my life."
"I found that writing at Dartmouth is an ideal time in your life. You can do it without having to earn a living at it, not worrying," Schulberg said.
The real world
After graduating from the College, Schulberg returned to the movie business and worked as a junior writer under legendary producer David O. Selznick. He made contributions, though uncredited, to "A Star is Born" and "Nothing Sacred."
Though he was working the same studio that was producing "Gone with the Wind" and other classics, Schulberg was not happy working for Selznick, so he left. "I asked [Selznick] if he would let me out of my contract. He was hurt."
Selznick had assisted the elder Schulberg for years and then took over his position when he retired. "[Selznick] saw it as kind of dynasty," Schulberg said.
But, fortunately, "I finally got him to let me go. I was like an indentured servant there," Schulberg said. "I told him I wanted to be more of a fiction writer."
Schulberg free-lanced while returning his focus to fiction writing, publishing numerous pieces over the following years in the Saturday Evening Post and Esquire magazine, among other publications.
In his senior year at the College, he had written a story titled "Passport to Nowhere," which was recognized in a contest by Story Magazine, a publication that often gave writers their "big break," Schulberg said.
But it wasn't until 1941, after writing "Winter Carnival," that Schulberg's first novel, "What Makes Sammy Run," was published. From 1939 to 1941, he worked on the book primarily in nearby Norwich, where he lived at the time. Some writing was even done in Baker Library, he said.
The novel chronicled the life of fictional Sammy Glick, a man who will stop at nothing to get ahead in Hollywood. The story was very controversial at the time.
"It was considered the first anti-Hollywood movie, which angered some people," Schulberg said.
Famed Samuel Goldwyn, notorious for his short temper, considered the book "an act of treason" against the movie business. He immediately fired Schulberg from a project he was working on for Goldwyn's. Schulberg remembers Goldwyn saying, "How could you do that?" in dismay.
But "What Makes Sammy Run" was well received in New York, garnering a positive review from the New York Times. "It sort of saved me," Schulberg said of the New York reception.
With the onset of World War II, Schulberg went off to work for OSS Navy intelligence. He was assigned to filter through and edit Nazi concentration camp film to be used as evidence in the 1946 War Crimes Trial in Nuremberg, Germany.
After the war, Schulberg left the service in spring of 1946 and settled in Pennsylvania where he wrote "The Harder They Fall," a novel published in 1947 and later made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart.
He published another novel, "The Disenchanted," in 1950. Of this period of his life, Schulberg said, "I just went on writing, I thought that's all I would do for the rest of my life."
But things changed when Hollywood producer Elia Kazan suggested he write a movie for him. The return to screenwriting produced Schulberg's most famous work. "On the Waterfront" starred Marlon Brando and won Schulberg an Academy Award for Best Story and Screenplay in 1955.
Less than a year later, he published a book version of the film which won him the Christopher Award for the best novel with a Christian theme. "I said at the time I might be the first Jewish boy to win that award," Schulberg joked.
Looking back
Later in life Schulberg continued to write books as well as screenplays for film and television. His latest novel, entitled "Sparring with Hemingway and Other Legends of the Fight Game," was published in 1995. It includes personal recounts of Schulberg's encounters with Ernest Hemingway. Most do not speak fondly of the renowned novelist.
"I didn't like [Hemingway]. He thought that because he wrote a book on boxing that no one else could; it was his domain. He may have been a great writer, but he was really a pain in the ass," Schulberg said.
"Ernie was so very competitive, not at all like Scott," he said.
It is apparent that, despite working with a multitude of famous people over the years, Schulberg still dearly cherishes his memories of the late F. Scott Fitzgerald perhaps most of all.
"I still I get a twinge every time I come into the [Hanover] Inn," Schulberg said. "Every time I come, I think about that weekend. It was our lost weekend."
