Hollywood Tales

Photo by Tom kitto on Unsplash

Screenwriter Wendall Mayes on how he was hired to write a script with the legendary Billy Wilder.

My first screenplay was with Billy Wilder, who brought me from New York to Hollywood for The Spirit of St. Louis in 1955. The great problem with the film was we had a man sitting in an airplane by himself, and the problem was how to sustain the interest in the story. I think it was a picture that was made thirty years too late, and I…