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Spiegel turned Wilson's letter over to Irwin Margulies, and an unpleasant correspondence between Wilson and Margulies ensued, Spiegel's attorney contending that Wilson was not due screen credit because the February 1961 agreement he had signed released the producers from "any and all claims, demands or obligations arising out of the original contract." Wilson then took his claim for equal credit to the British Screen Writers' Guild, which had jurisdiction in the matter. In a lengthy letter to James Johnson, General Secretary of the Guild, Wilson chronicled fourteen "inventions" he had created for the screenplay, fictions which were "not to be found in any source material," and which Bolt had appropriated:
1) Lawrence's first meeting with All, in which the stranger, later to become his closest friend, kills Lawrence's guide. This is sheer invention-mine.
2) Lawrence meets a British officer (Brighton) in the desert who tells him to keep his mouth shut about Arab affairs. When they arrive at Prince Feisal's camp, a Turkish plane is attacking the Bedouins. My fictions, these.
3) At his first conference with Feisal, Lawrence takes issue with the official British viewpoint. This did not happen in life.
4) After learning of Feisal's intention to retreat to the coast, Lawrence persuades Ali to join him in a Bedouln raid on Aqaba. This is not at all the way it happened in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I altered the events to suit dramatic purposes.
5) While crossing the desert, one of the raiders is lost and forsaken, and Lawrence turns back to rescue him. A few days later, Lawrence executes the man he has saved. Both these events are recorded in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, but at different times, different places, different persons. I conjoined them in order to dramatize (my invention) the conflict between Ali and Lawrence-predestination vs.free will, etc.
6) Lawrence persuades Auda to Joni the raid by swearing that the Turks hoard gold in Aqaba; and when no gold is found, gives uda a personal IOU for 5,000 guineas. This is invention.
7) Lawrence crosses the Sinai with only Farraj and Daud as companions, and Daud dies in quicksand. This is plain fiction. Check my screenplay.
8) Lawrence takes Farraj into the Officers Bar in Cairo, and is insulted there. (Only the idea is mine, not the scene that follows.)
9) The American journalist Lowell Thomas is nowhere mentioned in Seven Pillars. In my screenplay there is such a character, and his is a special role in the story. The name and the dialog have been changed in the shooting script, but the journalist's function remains the same.
10) When the revolt is at a low ebb, Lawrence persuades Ali to come with him to the Turkish
garrison town of Deraa. Lawrence is arrested, All is not. (Here I altered the facts to keep alive
the Ali-Lawrence relationship.)
11) Lawrence's decision to return to Jerusalem and throw in his hand is a direct consequence of his experience with the Turkish bey. This motivation is my invention, for it did not happen that way in life.
12) Key scene between Lawrence and Allenby has been thoroughly rewritten, but my idea (an invention) remains the point of the scene-that Allenby in effect challenges Lawrence and his Arabs to race the British to Damascus.
13) When Lawrence returns to the desert, there is a subtle change in his relationship to Ali. The destinies of the two men have crossed: Ali, once the feudal tribesman, 1 . s becoming the nationalist zealot; Lawrence, once the civilized Englishman, is becoming the primitive Messiah. Thus, in the massacre of the Turkish regiment, it is Lawrence who is swept away by the blood bath and Ali who tries to stop the slaughter. All this is my own contribution to the story line.
14) Superficially, this scene [in the Damascus town hall at the end of the film] bears little resemblance to mine, but the basic personal solutions are mine: Auda returns to the desert, Ali remains in Damascus to "learn politics"; while Lawrence can neither stay nor go back to the desert.10
The day after sending his letter requesting the Screen Writers' Guild arbitration of his claim, Wilson wrote to Robert Bolt.
I am your predecessor on the film Lawrence of Arabia. As the first writer to be engaged on the project, I was also, for fifteen months, the only one until you took over the job. Unhappily, we have never met; yet when I threw in my hand my sole gratification was the knowledge that the writer to follow me was the author of A Man for All Seasons.
Yes, I threw in my hand. I felt I had gone about as far as I could go, that if I lived to be a hundred I could not fully satisfy David Lean. Frankly, I no longer cared about satisfying him, for in the main I had satisfied myself. Not that my work was the definitive "Lawrence, " but like most writers who have a go at this subject, I developed a certain pride in my interpretation; and I suppose I began to behave more like a playwright than a hired screenwriter and director's right-hand man.
At any rate, something had to give. And so I resigned. And thus slipped into the limbo of non-persons the producers of this film chose to forget...
A few weeks ago, quite by accident, I learned that a solo screenplay credit on Lawrence of Arabia had been assigned to you... I called Mr. Spiegel to register my protest ... setting forth the reasons why I felt I deserved joint credit with you on the picture...
Anyone who takes the trouble to read my stuff chronologically from the time I wrote my first notes on Lawrence in 1959 until I wrote my third draft screenplay in 1961will see where and how the basic ideas and overall conception of this picture germinated. If you were told, on taking over the assignment, that you were "starting from scratch," you were misinformed; if you were told to believe there was little to go on except for some technicolor blueprint in David Lean's mind, you were deceived. The blueprint was mine.
Wilson then went on to explain why he felt he had been given the run-around by Spiegel and his lawyers:
For the past eleven years I have been one of the blacklisted American writers. I have just begun to emerge from that shadowy realm, not through any abandonment of principle on my part, but because at long last I have found an American producer who has the courage to gi . ve credit to a writer he engaged, and the witch-hunters be damned.
The men in control of Lawrence of Arabia lack that courage. If I were "clean," my name would already be alongside yours as co-author of this Picture.
I implore you to believe this is not a paranoid assertion. I am not a man for all seasons; but while martyrdom ill suits me, there are aspects of the blacklist that do fill me with mirth. If I could tell you (and if you're interested someday I shall) the enormous pressures the top brass of this production put on me to 11 clear myself," you would see that this is the heart of the matter.
In view of the producer's violation of current procedure and his refractory position, I am impelled to turn the matter over to the British Television and Screen Writers' Guild for examination and probable arbitration.11
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