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35 Adapting Melville for the Screen: The Moby Dick Screenplay [Condensed from Becoming Ray Bradbury, a work-in-progress] Jon R. Eller Bradbury has always been, at heart, a dramatic writer. He spent his high school years in and around all the Hollywood studios pestering stars for autographs, and privately he looked to the silver screen for the ultimate test of his writing talents. Between 1950 and 1952 television producers and film studios showed strong interest in his stories, but these were years when it was unclear how TV and cinema industry relationships would develop and Bradbury was unsure where to cast his fortunes. Predictably, Hollywood first showed an interest in Bradbury’s science fiction properties. Three short stints on the studio lots resulted in story credits for Universal-International’s It Came From Outer Space and Warner Brothers’ The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. But suddenly, in the final week of August 1953, Bradbury’s slight acquaintance with John Huston blossomed into an offer for Bradbury to join Huston in Ireland to write the script for Moby Dick, scheduled to begin production the following summer. It was, in fact, Bradbury’s original story version of “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” (read by Huston in The Golden Apples of the Sun as “The Fog Horn”) that convinced Huston he had found the writer for the film he had always wanted to make.1 Bradbury’s wife, two young daughters and a governess were able to travel on a screenwriter’s budget, which was far more money per week than he had yet earned from story and book sales. On 2 September Bradbury signed a seventeen-week contract for $650 a week plus travel and living expenses and enough money up front to cover the logistics of an immediate departure for Europe. They were scheduled to meet Huston in Paris on 26 September, but knew that most of the writing would be done in either London or Ireland. The Bradburys engaged Regina Ferguson, Susan’s preschool teacher, as a governessnanny for both Susan (almost 4) and Ramona (aged 2), and departed on the evening of the 12th. Bradbury’s abiding fear of flying remained unabated at this time in his life, and the whole trip was managed by rail and sea. He wrote the first page of his screenplay on 13 September 1953 enroute to New York by train, little knowing that it would be seven months to the day before he would ARTICLE The New Ray Bradbury Review 36 run the last draft of the final page through his portable typewriter. The United States docked at Le Havre on the 22nd and Bradbury, with family in tow, traveled to Paris for several days at the Hotel St. James to await Huston’s arrival. As Bradbury would recall two years later, both men wanted a script that would “reflect the philosophical, religious, and literary overtones of the original.” But both men also shared a respectful boldness toward the book, and Huston had made it clear from the start that Bradbury would have a free hand in developing the script.2 This freedom was quickly put to the test; by the time he arrived in Paris, Bradbury was convinced that Fedallah represented the principal yet perhaps most expendable obstacle to production. He asked permission then and there to “throw him overboard” and allow Ahab to absorb his function. Huston readily agreed, and this support would provide a key catalyst for Bradbury as he prepared to move beyond the opening scenes of the script.3 The Bradburys arrived in London on 2 October and settled into Brown’s Hotel for what turned out to be a brief stay. There was not much work to do at Huston’s Moulin Productions office in London, for Huston had decided that most of the pre-production work would center on Courtown, his rented Irish estate. In early October the Bradburys traveled by rail and ferry to Ireland for the principal pre-production work. There was some delay at Dun Laoghaire, their port of entry for Dublin, while customs officials examined Bradbury’s copy of Moby Dick to see if it was on the Catholic Church listing of banned books. Bradbury and his family, along with Regina Ferguson, settled into the Royal Hibernian Hotel in Dublin on the 6th, and he immediately entered the frenetic world of Huston’s unpredictable schedules and moods. The young writer loved Hollywood, but he was naïve in its ways...

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