CTVA 310. HISTORY OF AMERICAN CINEMA
John Schultheiss: Department of Cinema and Television Arts
john.e.schultheiss@csun.edu
http://www.csun.edu/mike-curb-arts-media-communication/cinema-television-arts/John Schultheiss
RESEARCH PAPER: Budd Schulberg, The Disenchanted
DIRECTIONS. Each of the following questions or topics––comprised of names, ideas, concepts, literary and historical
allusions, cultural phenomena encountered in Budd Schulberg’s novel The Disenchanted––are to be researched,
summarized, and described in sufficient detail in this paper so as to make them comprehensible and congruent with their
context in the novel. That is, each item needs to be explicated in such a fashion so as to communicate to the reader [me]
that the researcher [you] comprehends the way these elements are employed––their thematic purpose, their historical or
cultural relevance, their function in conveying character insights, etc.––in the novel. Research material for some of
Schulberg’s [or his third-person narrator, Shep Stearns’s] references is provided here, by way of illustrating how
appropriate responses might be constructed [note the proposed material below that could be used to address the focuses
on “A Writer’s Roots” and T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” as examples].
The paper will be typed and double-spaced––no e-mail submissions. Cite all research sources employed and
identify material being quoted by quotation marks. Whenever possible, integrate and quote pertinent passages from The
Disenchanted (citing page numbers) to reinforce the validity and cogency of your presentations.
This research material should be studied as part of your preparation for the examination on The Disenchanted, as
these novelistic elements and allusions will be considered justifiable bases for the formulation of the examination
questions.
The research paper is due 17 April 2014. The examination on The Disenchanted will be the following week.
1. As Anthony Burgess writes, The Disenchanted “is about Hollywood in the thirties, but it is also about a
great decayed novelist, Manley Halliday, who is a thinly disguised Scott Fitzgerald.”
Schulberg [Milgrim] makes an early allusion to Fitzgerald [p. 16 of the novel], linking Halliday to
that literary context: “Wasn’t Fitzgerald writing movies when he had Gatsby staring across the Sound to the
green light at the end of Daisy’s dock? And look at Halliday––God knows he wrote like an angel––you
could never get on film the marvelous style, but the characters, the scenes . . . “
Note another Fitzgerald cross-reference, when Stearns “remembered the jacket of The Night’s High
Noon, when Halliday was the wonder boy of the Twenties, the triple-threat Merriwell [q.v. (which means
search or look up)] of American letters, less real than the most romantic of his heroes, the only writer who
could win the approval of [H.L.] Mencken [q.v.] and [Gertrude] Stein [q.v.] and make fifty thousand a year
doing it and look like Wally Reid.” [q.v.] [p. 20] (Another possible Fitzgerald analogy also continues in an
extended passage on p. 21.)
Problematic: Based on research from external sources and evidence from the novel, document the
justification for the assertion that “Manley Halliday is a thinly disguised Scott Fitzgerald.” Be sure to
engage the Jere (Wilder) Halliday/Zelda Fitzgerald [q.v.]––and the Ann Loeb/Sheilah Graham [q.v.]––
connections.
In more specific terms, within the context of this 1920s/1930s social and cultural dichotomy [see
allied topic 2 below], describe how the real-life arc of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s biography/career is the model for
the Manley Halliday profile: “Manley Halliday [had] his first success in the first year of the Twenties and
crack[ed] up in the last. [p. 55] “ [Note, however, the artistic re-birth (reflecting the Fitzgerald parallel) of his
unfinished novel (pp. 366-368). Explain.]
2. Again, Anthony Burgess: “The distinction of the novel lies in its very full portrait, complete with
brilliantly authentic flashbacks to the years of glamour and success, of a writer who was once the voice of
the irresponsible twenties and still lives in them. Shep, his assistant, is torn between admiration for
Halliday’s work and a committed radical political stance which contradicts everything Halliday stood for.”
[Burgess, 99 Novels: The Best in English since 1939 (Summit Books, 1984)]
Shep’s analysis of the 1920s/1930s generations:
[1920s] “The young intellectuals staggered away from WWI as they would from a terrible accident.
All they wanted to do was forget the whole dirty business. And if Wilson and his Fourteen Points was
Democracy, you could have that too. Just leave me alone, you all seemed to be saying. Let me have my fun
and let me have my thoughts but don’t give me any petitions to sign and from now on keep your goddam
causes to yourself. . . .
=> Note The Jazz Age (screened 3 April) as a documentary film overview of the 1920s.
[1930s] “The depression was our World War. Only we reacted to it almost exactly the opposite from
the way you did. Our machine had been in a smash-up too. But we wanted to remain on the scene of the
accident and see if we could fix it. We thought we could save it. Instead of a lost generation, I guess you might
call us a found generation. We found out what was wrong. We were pretty damn sure we’d have something
new out of all this mess that would be better than anything you had before.” [pp. 50-51]
=> Note Life in the Thirties (screened 3 April) as a documentary film overview of the 1930s.
Shep says, “God, it is striking how completely opposite your problem was. Yours was such a
world of material success. But the world we found was a world of material failure.” [p. 52] In this
philosophical context, an interesting passage occurs on p. 323, where Shep is quoted as seeing Halliday “as
the classic decline of the middle-class artist.” And Halliday responds that he sees Shep “as the clashic [sic.]
decline of the young Marxist [q.v.] critic, so we’re even.” (These segments may very well encapsulate the
ideological dichotomy at work in the novel.) Explain these philosophical differences.
Problematic: Based on research from external sources and evidence from the novel [note particularly
pp. 50-56], summarize a socio-cultural portrait of the 1920s versus the 1930s. In this overview, know and
briefly describe the following references: T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, An American Tragedy,
Arrowsmith, Manhattan Transfer, The Great Gatsby [of the 1920s]––versus Clifford Odets [of the 1930s, p. 52]; with
particular focus on the master symbol of Charles Lindbergh [q.v.] reflecting the dichotomy of the eras––
initially “our Lindy, the blue-eyed boy, the Lone Eagle, Horatio Alger [q.v.] in an airship conquering space”
[1920s]––versus Lindbergh “the appeaser” [1930s, p. 53]. Explain.
3. The Disenchanted (through the character of Manley Halliday) turns to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922)
[q.v.] as something of a motif: “They were back to Eliot again. Halliday’s mind, reeling from topic to topic,
had fixed on the point of departure between the writer who succeeds only in catching the moment and the
artist who relates the particular moment to the universal ‘like Eliot.’” [p. 108]
The Damaged Psyche of Humanity. Like many modernist writers, T. S. Eliot wanted his poetry to express the
fragile psychological state of humanity in the twentieth century. The passing of Victorian ideals and the trauma
of World War I challenged cultural notions of masculine identity, causing artists to question the romantic
literary ideal of a visionary-poet capable of changing the world through verse. Modernist writers wanted to
capture their transformed world, which they perceived as fractured, alienated, and denigrated. Europe lost an
entire generation of young men to the horrors of the so-called Great War, causing a general crisis of masculinity
as survivors struggled to find their place in a radically altered society. As for England, the aftershocks of World
War I directly contributed to the dissolution of the British Empire. Eliot saw society as paralyzed and
wounded, and he imagined that culture was crumbling and dissolving. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
(1 9 1 7 ) demonstrates this sense of indecisive paralysis as the titular speaker wonders whether he should eat a
piece of fruit, make a radical change, or if he has the fortitude to keep living. Humanity’s collectively damaged
psyche prevented people from communicating with one another, an idea that Eliot explored in many works,
including “A Game of Chess” (the second part of The Waste Land) and “The Hollow Men.”
[The Poetry Foundation; www.poetryfoundation.org]
“With his eyes closed, remembering in a sort of trance, [Halliday] did not stop until he had
remembered it all, right down to the mysterious coda
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
“Then Halliday said, ‘Jere and I used to be able to start anywhere and recite lines to each other.’ . . .
“’Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih,’ he repeated childishly.” [p. 109]
Another application is somewhat parenthetical: “The roar of the propellers sent thunder bowling
along into the morning. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Give. Sympathize. Control.” [p. 113]; another
somewhat more emphatic: “a program of rehabilitation.” [p. 245] But in the climactic pages of the novel, The
Waste Land will function symbolically in Manley Halliday’s death scene. [pp. 386-388]
Eliot invokes the Ganges, India’s sacred river (“Ganga” in the poem), and thunder, once sterile, now
speaks: “Datta,” “dayadhvam,” and “damyata." The words the thunder offers belong to the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad, and describe the three dictums God delivers to his disciples: “to give,” “to control,” and “to
sympathize.” This profoundly spiritual moment of communication between men and God, of a dialogue
between the earth and the Heavens, seems to promise a new beginning. The final stanzas of The Waste Land
once again link Western and Eastern traditions, transporting the reader to the Ganges and the Himalayas, and
then returning to the Thames and London Bridge. Eliot’s tactic throughout his poem has been that of
eclecticism, of mixing and matching and of diversity, and here this strain reaches a culmination. The relevant
Upanishad passage, which Eliot quotes, describes God delivering three groups of followers––men, demons, and
the gods––the sound “Da.” The challenge is to pull some meaning out of this apparently meaningless syllable.
For men, “Da” becomes “Datta,” meaning to give; this order is meant to curb man’s greed. For demons,
“dayadhvam” is the dictum: these cruel and sadistic beings must show compassion and empathy for others.
Finally, the gods must learn control––“damyata”––for they are wild and rebellious. Together, these three
orders add up to a consistent moral perspective, composure, generosity, and empathy lying at the core.
Civilization is crumbling––“London bridge is falling down falling down falling down”––yet the
poem ends with a benediction: “Shantih shantih shantih."––Peace peace peace––and when preceded by “Om” is
known as The Peace Mantra. It also appears in The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and more generally is used to both
begin and end formal prayer in the Hindu religion. Eliot’s note in the first American printing of the poem
offers his translation of Shantih: “the peace which passeth understanding.” “Shantih shantih shantih” is an
acknowledgment of the possibility of salvation; it may be interpreted as a blessing of sorts, putting to rest the
sins, faults, trials and tribulations that have preceded it. Redemption remains a possibility. Interpretations of
The Waste Land which perceive it as unrelentingly pessimistic do little justice to the hopefulness, however
faltering, of these last lines. Rain has come, and with it a call from the heavens. The poem ends on a note of
grace, allying Eastern and Western religious traditions to posit a more universal worldview. Eliot calls what he
has assembled “fragments,” and indeed they are; but together they add up to a vision that is not only European
but global, a vision of the world as wasteland, awaiting the arrival of the Grail that will cure it of its ills. The
end of the poem seems to suggest that the Grail is still within reach––offering some hope for an alternative to
our own dead world.
[Project Gutenberg. www.gutenberg.org; SparkNotes: Eliot’s Poetry. www.sparknotes.com]
Problematic: Based on evidence from the novel, provide an interpretation of how particular
aspects of The Waste Land function in the storytelling process of The Disenchanted––how Eliot’s modernist
poem might offer insights into the story’s characters and possibly make the book’s themes more
comprehensible.
4. Success and failure have been the obsessions of Budd Schulberg, and the themes of all his work. “Success
in all its seasons is something I really lived with,” says the novelist and screenwriter and boxing columnist.
“I didn’t have to create it. It was really imposed on me. I saw it happen over and over again.” The four
seasons are the spring of early success, the full summer flowering of success, the waning of popularity in
autumn, and the hard, cold winter of forgetting. [See Schulberg, The Four Seasons of Success (Stein and Day, 1983).]
In The Disenchanted, Manley Halliday says, “Temptation. That’s writers in America. . . .
Nothing fails like success. Write one bestseller here, one hit play, Big Success. Do one thing, get
rich ‘n famous. Writers get caught up in American system. Ballyhoo. Cocktail parties. Bestseller
list. Worship of Success.” [p. 180]
“Writer starts as rebel. Hits out at his own roots. Spoon River. Sauk Center. Pottsville
country club––whatever it is. Book’s a success––writer’s like a race horse––moves up in class. Gets
money––goes away––New York––Europe––starts writing things he doesn’t know––shoulda stayed
home. Stayed put. Shoulda stood in bed.” [p. 183]
“Maybe lucky thing about [William] Faulkner. Never went over big. Just a few thousand
to read ‘im an know what he is. Bill stays put. Writes people he knows, and his old man knew,
and his old man. Sense o’ past. Sense o’ place. Sense o’ roots . . .” [p. 184]
Here is further elaboration on Halliday’s references to “writers’ roots”:
Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively
describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near
Masters's home town. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate characters, all providing twohundred forty-four accounts of their lives and losses. Many of the characters that make appearances in Spoon
River Anthology were based on real people that Masters knew or heard of in the two towns in which he grew up,
Petersburg and Lewistown, Illinois. Local legends assert that Masters's fictional portrayal of local residents,
often in unflattering light, created a lot of embarrassment and aggravation in his hometowns. This is offered as
an explanation for why he chose not to settle down in Lewistown or Petersburg.
Sauk Centre is a city in Stearns County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 4,317 at the 2010 census.
It is the birthplace of Sinclair Lewis, a novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Sauk Centre
served as the inspiration for Gopher Prairie, the fictional setting of Lewis's 1920 novel Main Street.
Born in 1886, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Henry Sinclair Lewis became the first American novelist to
win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The son of a country doctor, from a family of three boys, he grew up
introverted and intelligent in this town with a population of 2,800, most of which was Swedish and Norwegian.
At the age of 17 he broke free of the mid-west, entering Yale, and from there he worked unsuccessfully in
publishing for several years. In his spare time he wrote, and after producing five novels, all of which went
unnoticed, he became a household name with Main Street in late 1920. After this publication, he had several
consecutive successes: Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Mantrap (1926), Elmer Gantry (1927), The Man Who Knew
Coolidge (1928), and Dodsworth (1929) were all well received. In 1926 Lewis was to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for his novel Arrowsmith, but refused. Four years later, however, he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Besides being the first American author to win the Nobel Prize in literature, Sinclair Lewis had a
writing style that was considered revolutionary. In 1920, the publication year of Main Street, the United States
was still feeling the effects of World War I. Glorified both internationally and within the country, Americans
were seen as ideal citizens from a superior land. Lewis took a daring stand, and his work brought about the
deconstruction of the myth regarding small-town America.
This is the opening passage of Main Street; it emphasizes the universality of its characters
and settings:
This is America–– a town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves. The town is, in
our tale, called “Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.” But its Main Street is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere. The
story would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois, and not very differently would it be told
Up York State or in the Carolina hills. Main Street is the climax of civilization. That this Ford car might stand in front of
the Bon Ton Store, Hannibal invaded Rome and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters. What Ole Jenson the grocer says to
Ezra Stowbody the banker is the new law for London, Prague, and the unprofitable isles of the sea; whatsoever Ezra does
not know and sanction, that thing is heresy, worthless for knowing and wicked to consider. Such is our comfortable
tradition and sure faith. Would he not betray himself an alien cynic who should otherwise portray Main Street, or distress
the citizens by speculating whether there might not be other faiths?
John Henry O'Hara (January 31, 1905 – April 11, 1970) was an American writer. He earned a reputation first
for short stories and became a best-selling novelist by the age of thirty with Appointment in Samarra and
BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara was a keen
observer of social status and class differences, and wrote frequently about the socially ambitious. He garnered
much critical acclaim for his short stories, more than 200 of which, beginning in 1928, appeared in The New
Yorker. Many of them (and some later novels) were set in Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, a barely fictionalized
version of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, which is a small city in the coal region of the United States. O'Hara
transformed his hometown and its surrounding anthracite coal region into one of literature's great fictional
landscapes. Setting five novels and more than 50 stories in what he called his "Pennsylvania Protectorate,"
O'Hara recorded with great honesty the lives of Gibbsville's inhabitants––from Polish coal miners and Irish
Catholic shopkeepers to the Protestant country club set.
Yoknapatawpha County is a fictional county created by the American author William Faulkner, based upon
and inspired by Lafayette County, Mississippi, and its county seat of Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner would
often refer to Yoknapatawpha County as "my apocryphal county.” From Sartoris onwards, Faulkner would set
all but three of his novels in the county. The name "Yoknapatawpha" is derived from authentic Native
American names found on old maps of Jefferson County. In 1936, Faulkner drew a map of his fictional county,
showing where various scenes from his novels and short stories take place, and he first included the map in
Absalom, Absalom!, published that same year. The creation of this mythological county is one of modern
literature's greatest feats.
[All entries from Wikipedia]
Problematic: Based on evidence in the novel, (1) discuss Manley Halliday’s writing career from the
perspective of whether or not he conforms to the pattern described above regarding “writers in America”
and the “failure of success” phenomenon; (2) discuss to what extent Manley Halliday’s writing career
adheres to or departs from “his roots”––that is, describe the degree to which his own career and professional
choices conform to or avoid the writer pattern which he indicts on pp. 183-184.
5. Schulberg makes copious allusions to many literary and Hollywood personages––in order to assemble
the context and add texture to the cultural periods he is attempting to re-create. Thus, to appreciate the
nuances of the universe that Schulberg is shaping, a knowledge of the following real-life artists and writers
is fundamental.
Problematic: Define or provide a brief profile of each of the following elements/persons––as they
are portrayed within their context in the novel
The Eastern Writer in Hollywood Syndrome
Robert Benchley [29]
Samuel Hoffenstein [29-30]
Dorothy Parker [30]
Edwin Justus Mayer [30, 179. Q.v., Schulberg’s The Four Seasons of Success (Stein and Day, 1983), pp. 4-5]
Stanley Rose’s Book Shop [274. Q.v., Schulberg’s The Four Seasons of Success (pp. 4-5)]
The Garden of Allah [29. Q.v., Schulberg’s The Four Seasons of Success (pp. 4-5); also––Sheilah Graham, The Garden of
Allah (Crown, 1970): “In the 32-year span of its life, the Garden would witness robbery, murder, drunkenness, despair,
divorce, marriage, orgies, pranks, fights, suicides, frustration and hope. Yet intellectuals and celebrities from all over the
world were to find it a convenient haven and a fascinating home.”]

“The realization that he [Halliday/Fitzgerald] and Bob [Benchley] and Dotty Parker and others of the old gang
had all been brought into the Hollywood fold suddenly oppressed him. There had been so many luncheons
and cocktails and all-night sessions when Hollywood had been only a term of derision, when they vied with
each other in witty denunciations of this Capital of the Philistines. No one with any self-respect, he
remembered saying, would ever go to Hollywood, except possibly to pursue Billie Dove.
And fifteen years later here they were, all lured to the Garden of Allah, all on weekly pay rolls, or
worse yet, trying to get on. Were they men of inadequate wills who had acquired the authors’ cancer––
expensive tastes? Or could they, like Manley himself, persuade themselves that this was merely a stop-over on
the way back to positive work?” [p. 30]
Hollywood Personalities
Wallace Reid [21]
Neil Hamilton [21]
Douglas Fairbanks [21]
Harold Lloyd [21]
Ramon Navarro [21]
Rudolph Valentino [21]
John Gilbert [21. Q.v., The Four Seasons of Success (8-9)]
Billie Dove [30]
Cecil B. De Mille [229]
“Dolores Del Rio, yes. Lupe Velez, no.” [254. Explain.]
George Bancroft [256-257. Q.v., Schulberg’s The Four Seasons of Success (pp. 7-9)]