ABSTRACT
A well-known Hollywood folk tale would have us believe that film-makers once jotted down their concepts on the backs of menus while dining at the Brown Derby. If, as sometimes happened, a director’s ideas flowed too freely, his scrawls could cost him the price of a table cloth. The tale is probably true. It was easier then to create motion pictures; “silent” ideas could be doodled in fragmentary fashion and later fleshed out in action on the set.
