C. Gardner Sullivan


Charles Gardner Sullivan was an American screenwriter and film producer. He was a prolific writer with more than 350 films among his credits. In 1924, the magazine Story World selected him on a list of the ten individuals who had contributed the most to the advancement of the motion picture industry from its inception forward. Four of Sullivan's films, The Italian, Civilization, Hell's Hinges, and All Quiet on the Western Front, have been listed in the National Film Registry.

Early years

Sullivan was born in Stillwater, Minnesota, and educated in the public schools of St. Paul, Minnesota. Interviewed in 1916, Sullivan said he was "not precisely what one would call a college man, although I had some training at the University of Minnesota.
In 1907, Sullivan went into the newspaper business, working on the staff of the St. Paul Daily News at a starting salary of six dollars per week. Shortly afterward, Sullivan was assigned to write a column that he later said "was supposed to be a humorous column." He moved to New York where he joined the staff of the New York Evening Journal. While working in New York, a colleague showed him an advertisement by a motion picture company in the Saturday Evening Post inviting new authors to contribute stories. Gardner recalled it was that advertisement that got him started with "photoplay writing".
Sullivan's first script was returned to him, and he did not make another submission for some time. The first story he sold was Her Polished Family, which was purchased by Edison Studios for $25.
He later submitted a western story to the New York Motion Picture Corporation run by Thomas H. Ince and received a check for $50. In the following months, Ince's company purchased sixty of Sullivan's stories.

Hollywood screenwriter

In 1914, Ince offered Sullivan a full-time job in Hollywood as a member of his movie studio's "scenario staff". By that time, Sullivan had married and was uncertain about moving to California. However, he accepted and for the next decade became the "dean" of Hollywood's screenwriters.
Sullivan began his career in Hollywood writing stories for Ince's two-reel films. He then progressed to full-length feature films, and his stories contributed much to the fame of stars including Dorothy Dalton, Enid Bennett, Louise Glaum and Constance Bennett.
His early films were mostly in the western genre, but also included historical dramas such as The Witch of Salem and The Battle of Gettysburg, and comedies such as "The Adventures of Shorty" two-reelers from 1914 through 1917.
Sullivan's 1915 feature The Italian was one of the biggest box office hits of the year. And his screenplays for William S. Hart, including The Scourge of the Desert, The Aryan, Hell's Hinges, The Return of Draw Egan, Branding Broadway and Wagon Tracks helped make Hart one of the biggest stars of the 1910s.
Showing an ability to handle diverse topics, Sullivan also wrote screenplays involving domestic melodrama. These included The Golden Claw and a series of screenplays for silent film femme fatale, Louise Glaum, such as The Wolf Woman, Sahara and the provocatively titled Sex.
With the outbreak of World War I, Sullivan also turned his attention to the war. In Shell 43, he told the story of English spy working behind German lines who saves the life of a German officer and is killed in a German trench by an Allied shell.
Perhaps Sullivan's most famous screenplay was Civilization, a big budget anti-war movie in which Jesus appeared on a World War I battlefield. In the film, a Germanic submarine commander refuses to follow orders to fire torpedoes at a ship carrying innocent passengers, saying he is "obeying orders -- from a Higher Power." The submarine is destroyed, and the commander's soul descends into hell, where he encounters Jesus. Jesus announces that the commander can find redemption by having Jesus occupy his body and return to the living world as a voice for peace. The commander is sentenced to death for refusing to follow orders, and at his execution, the spirit of Jesus emerges from his dead body and gives the king of the warring nation a tour of the battlefields. Jesus asks, "See here thy handiwork? Under thy reign, thy domain hath become a raging hell!" In the film's most famous scene, Jesus departs through the bloodied battlefields. The film was a popular success when it was released in 1916. In fact, the 1916 Democratic National Committee credited the film with helping to re-elect President Woodrow Wilson. However, after the entry of the United States into the war, the film was pulled from distribution.
Sullivan returned to the subject of World War I as the supervising story chief for the 1930 film adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front.
Sullivan prided himself on tackling a diverse range of subject matters, telling an interviewer the following:
I have made all kinds and manner of pictures, none of them the work of a specialist in a certain grooved form. ... The public is fickle. The man who makes pictures for the public must be able to turn from comedy to melodrama, from psychological realism to sophisticated farce, from the big-scale popular spectacle to the cameo of emotions, sentimental drama.

By 1919, Sullivan was the best known screenwriter in Hollywood. The Los Angeles Times wrote of him:
Several years ago, when the newly-formed Triangle organization contributed a new art and finish to the motion picture, there came into great prominence C. Gardner Sullivan, a writer of fine capabilities; a careful, technical craftsman. No author having a contempt for the intellect of his audience -- and many writers of photodramas continue to hold their audiences in contempt -- could have made the success of screen authorship that C. Gardner Sullivan has.

In January 1920, Sullivan left New York for a world tour. He was given a roving commission by Ince allowing him to "leave the studio with a free mind and just browse around wherever fancy dictates; if the spirit should move him he may write a script now and then, 'just for practice,' or he may just store up a fund of mental notes for future use."
In February 1924, the Los Angeles Times reported that the number of feature films produced from the original stories or adaptations of Mr. Sullivan totaled 311 in eight years. The Times noted: "This record undoubtedly is unrivaled among screen authors. Mr. Sullivan's work is all the more remarkable because of the recognition which it has achieved for unvarying quality and variety." At that time, Sullivan described the rule he applied in the selection of a story for the screen:
Is it human, is it true to life, is it sincere? If you can conscientiously satisfy yourself on these things, you won't have to worry as to whether the public will like the story or not. If you are genuinely moved by it, you may be sure that the public will respond in like manner.... Give the public a story that touches the heart and is true to life, and, to paraphrase Emerson, 'the world will make a beaten path to the theater box office.'

In his book about the history of American screenwriting, Marc Norman wrote that the Ince studio, where Sullivan was the lead writer, was the first to use the screenplay as the blueprint for the entire production, marking a departure from earlier productions in which the "screenplay" was simply "a one-page précis of the film's narrative." Indeed, Sullivan's scripts detailed locations, the number of actors, costumes, and even the blocking of the shoot. Norman pointed to the following excerpt from the Hell's Hinges script as an example of the directorial detail contained in Sullivan's work:
Scene L: Close-Up on Bar in Western Saloon
A group of good western types of the earlier period are drinking at the bar and talking idly -- much good fellowship prevails and every man feels at ease with his neighbor -- one of them glances off the picture and the smile fades from his face to be replaced by the strained look of worry -- the others notice the change and follow his gaze -- their face reflect his own emotions -- be sure to get over a good contrast between the easy good nature that had prevailed and the unnatural, strained silence that follows -- as they look, cut.

Once Sullivan's scripts were completed, Thomas Ince would stamp them "Produce exactly as written," leaving little to the discretion of the directors and cameramen. By setting every detail of the scene in words, Sullivan was able to "control the outcome of the film he saw in his mind's eye."

Producer and screenwriter

In September 1924, Sullivan entered the production end of the business forming a new production company called C. Gardner Sullivan Productions. The company produced Cheap Kisses, a 1924 comedy drama, and If Marriage Fails, both based on screenplays written by Sullivan.
In the late 1920s, Sullivan signed on with Cecil B. DeMille as a producer. While working with DeMille, Sullivan made such films as The Yankee Clipper. In 1927, he was referred to as "the man who knows box office":
C. Gardner Sullivan, creator of 365 box-office hits, maker of 'The Yankee Clipper,'... as well as of 'White Gold,'... producer for the De Mille studios, whose reputation is that of 'the man who knows box office,' is the man who chose to film a story as truth rather than as 'mush for the morons'...

With the arrival of censorship in the motion picture industry, Sullivan was an outspoken critic of the practice. In 1931, Sullivan argued publicly that censorship was impeding the presentation of satire in motion pictures. He noted that "some of the finest examples of screen writing are being rejected because their keen satire would be resented by some strata of society."
Sullivan remained active as a screenwriter in the 1930s with works including DeMille's 1938 adventure film The Buccaneer. His final film credit was the story of Jackass Mail, a 1942 western directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring Wallace Beery.

Personal life and death

Sullivan married actress Ann May on February 14, 1925 in Santa Ana. They had four children together; daughter Sheilah Dree, and sons Charles Gardner, Michael Patrick, and Timothy Reese. He was an avid golfer and crossword puzzle enthusiast.
In September 1965, Sullivan died of a heart attack at age 80 at his home in West Hollywood, California.

Role in film history

In 1924, the magazine Story World selected a list of the ten individuals who had contributed the most to the advancement of the motion picture industry from the time of its inception. The list included Gardner, director D.W. Griffith, actors Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, Carl Laemmle, Charles Francis Jenkins, producer Thomas H. Ince, and art director Wilfred Buckland.
Four of Sullivan's films, The Italian, Civilization, Hell's Hinges and All Quiet on the Western Front, have been listed in the National Film Registry.

Filmography

  1. Her Polished Family - the first story sold by Sullivan to Edison
  2. When Lee Surrenders
  3. The Altar of Death
  4. The Army Surgeon
  5. The Invaders
  6. The Dead Pay
  7. A Shadow of the Past
  8. Days of '49
  9. The Witch of Salem
  10. Will o' the Wisp
  11. The Reaping
  12. The Seal of Silence
  13. The Boomerange
  14. The Battle of Gettysburg
  15. The Telltale Hatband
  16. The Paymaster's Son
  17. The Bargain
  18. The Wrath of the Gods
  19. One of the Discarded
  20. Two-Gun Hicks
  21. In the Sage Brush Country
  22. The Hour of Reckoning
  23. Shorty and the Fortune Teller
  24. Shorty and Sherlock Holmes
  25. Mother of the Shadows
  26. Destiny's Night
  27. Not of the Flock
  28. Markia, aka The Fall of Carthage
  29. The City of Darkness
  30. Breed o' the North
  31. Willie
  32. The Worth of a Life
  33. The World of His People
  34. Satan McAllister's Heir
  35. The Last of the Line
  36. The Roughneck
  37. The Ruse
  38. Pinto Ben
  39. Mr. 'Silent' Haskins
  40. The Cross of Fire
  41. In the Land of the Otter
  42. The Grudge
  43. The Darkening Trail
  44. On the Night Stage
  45. Winning Back
  46. On the High Seas
  47. The Shoal Light
  48. The Tools of Providence
  49. The Floating Death
  50. The Reward
  51. Hostage of the North
  52. The Man from Nowhere, aka The Silent Stranger
  53. The Cup of Life
  54. The Painted Soul
  55. The Iron Strain
  56. The Man Who Went Out
  57. Matrimony
  58. In the Switch Tower
  59. The Girl Who Might Have Been
  60. The Man from Oregon
  61. The Toast of Death
  62. The Mating
  63. Between Men
  64. The Winged Idol
  65. The Golden Claw
  66. The Forbidden Adventure
  67. The Edge of the Abyss
  68. The Scourge of the Desert
  69. The Italian - ranked #15 at the box office in 1915
  70. The Valley of Hate
  71. The Coward
  72. The Aryan
  73. Peggy
  74. The Beckoning Flame
  75. The Conqueror
  76. Honor's Altar
  77. The Last Act
  78. The Moral Fabric
  79. The Stepping Stone
  80. Civilization's Child
  81. The No-Good Guy
  82. The Dividend
  83. The Beggar of Cawnpore
  84. Not My Sister
  85. The Market of Vain Desire
  86. The Bugle Call
  87. The Eye of the Night
  88. The Payment
  89. Home
  90. A Corner in Colleens
  91. The Dawn Maker
  92. Plain Jane
  93. The Criminal
  94. The Corner
  95. Shell 43
  96. Hell's Hinges
  97. The Green Swamp
  98. Civilization
  99. The Wolf Woman
  100. The Return of Draw Egan
  101. The Thoroughbred
  102. Three of Many
  103. The Iced Bullet
  104. The Pinch Hitter
  105. Happiness
  106. The Zeppelin's Last Raid
  107. The Hater of Men
  108. The Girl, Glory
  109. The Crab
  110. Those Who Pay
  111. Without Honor
  112. Keys of the Righteous
  113. Love Me
  114. The Cast-Off
  115. Selfish Yates
  116. Shark Monroe
  117. Vive la France!
  118. The Border Wireless
  119. When Do We Eat?
  120. Branding Broadway
  121. Naughty, Naughty
  122. The Vamp
  123. The Poppy Girl's Husband
  124. Stepping Out
  125. The Market of Souls
  126. John Petticoats
  127. Wagon Tracks
  128. Happy Though Married
  129. The Haunted Bedroom
  130. Other Men's Wives
  131. Sahara
  132. The Virtuous Thief
  133. Stepping Out
  134. Dangerous Hours
  135. The Lady of Red Butte
  136. The Woman in the Suitcase
  137. Love Madness
  138. Sex
  139. The False Road
  140. Hairpins
  141. Good Women
  142. Mother O' Mine
  143. Greater Than Love
  144. Hail the Woman
  145. White Hands
  146. Human Wreckage
  147. Soul of the Beast
  148. Dulcy
  149. The Dangerous Maid
  150. Long Live the King
  151. Strangers of the Night
  152. The Goldfish
  153. The Marriage Cheat
  154. Wandering Husbands
  155. The House of Youth
  156. The Only Woman
  157. Idle Tongues
  158. The Mirage
  159. Dynamite Smith
  160. Cheap Kisses
  161. The Monster
  162. Playing with Souls
  163. The Pinch Hitter
  164. Wild Justice
  165. Tumbleweeds
  166. If Marriage Fails
  167. Three Faces East
  168. Bachelor Brides
  169. Sparrows
  170. Gigolo
  171. Her Man o' War
  172. The Clinging Vine
  173. Corporal Kate
  174. The Bugle Call
  175. Turkish Delight
  176. Vanity
  177. The Yankee Clipper
  178. White Gold
  179. Tempest
  180. The Woman Disputed
  181. Sadie Thompson
  182. Alibi
  183. The Locked Door
  184. All Quiet on the Western Front
  185. What Men Want
  186. Hell's Heroes
  187. The Cuban Love Song
  188. Huddle
  189. Strange Interlude
  190. Skyscraper Souls
  191. Men Must Fight
  192. Father Brown, Detective
  193. Car 99
  194. The Awakening of Jim Burke
  195. Three Live Ghosts
  196. The Robin Hood of El Dorado
  197. The Buccaneer
  198. Union Pacific
  199. North West Mounted Police
  200. Jackass Mail
  201. ''The Buccaneer''