"Upton Sinclair," cover of TIME magazine, 1934. Larger.
Hopefullness abounds among those men and women who dream of Hollywood success. When hopefulness isn't quite enough, however, leave it to the contest come-on to generate a little action.
In his novella The Golden Scenario, Upton Sinclair lampooned such schemes through the character of Danny Dane, a Hollywood hopeful fired up by this adverstisement, the lunch-time topic in his Missouri boarding house.
Do you want fame and fortune? These may be yours if you have the idea we need. We are looking for the great motion-picture story of next year. Have you got it? Maybe you have--you never know till you try. THE GOLDEN SCENARIO, we are calling it. Send us your ideas, and a committee of competent judges will read your script. If we find the BIG IDEA we are looking for, we will pay you one thousand dollars cash, AND IN ADDITION one half of whatever the studio pays us for the scenario. . . . It costs you nothing to enter this contest. Write your outline as best you can, and mail it to National Screen Writers Agency, Drawer 4f, Box 1167, Hollywood, California.
Though it costs nothing to enter, Danny Dane learns that technical rewrites and copyright services will cost him dear. Upton Sinclair's The Golden Scenario was written in the 1930's but didn't appear in print until 1994.
"A True Story of the Future," Upton Sinclair for Governor literature, 1934. Larger.
Elections for the office of California governor often attract some unusual candidates. One of the most interesting was muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair, who ran unsuccessfully on the democratic ticket in 1934.
The social concerns of Sinclair's political campaign were also present in his fiction, such as the sprawling 1927 novel Oil!, based partly on the Teapot Dome bribery scandal and the southern California oil boom of the 1920's, a boom that transformed local landscapes and generated wild speculation.
Scattered here and there over the hill were derricks, and the drilling crews were racing to be the first to tap the precious treasure. By day you saw white puffs from the steam engines, and by night you saw lights gleaming on the derricks, and day and night you heard the sound of heavy machinery turning, turningmdash;"ump-um—ump-um—ump-um—ump-um." The newspapers reported the results, and a hundred thousand speculators and would-be speculators read the reports, and got into their cars and rode out to the field where the syndicates had their tents, or thronged the board-rooms in town, where prices were chalked up on blackboards, and "units" were sold to people who would not know an oil-derrick from a "chute the chutes."
Sinclair was one of the most prolific writers of his generation. Though Oil!, is one of his most satisfying novels, The Jungle, his 1906 book on the meatpacking industry, is still the most familiar of Sinclair's more than 100 books.
"'Silver Tip' - oil well gusher," photographer unknown, 1909. Larger.
These days we're all used to seeing oil fields in the Golden State, but in the early 1900s Californians were just beginning to build them.
Exploring the depths of human ambition and greed, Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! shows that the very roads leading to the oil fields were paved with exploitation.
. . . money had done it. Men of money had said the word, and surveyors and engineers had come, and diggers by the thousand, swarming Mexicans and Indians, bronze of skin, armed with picks and shovels; and great steam shovels with long hanging lobster-claws of steel; derricks with wide swinging arms, scrapers and grading machines, steel drills and blasting men with dynamite, rock crushers, and concrete mixers that ate sacks of cement by the thousand, and drank water from a flour-stained hose, and had round steel bellies that turned all day with a grinding noise. All these had come, and for a year or two they had toiled, and yard by yard had unrolled the magic ribbon.
The early history of California's oil industry is portrayed vividly and unglamorously in SinclairÃs Oil! a story of the hollowness of the American dream.
It's been recently calculated that the average new passenger vehicle in the United States has about 184 horsepower. But what in the world does that really mean?
"The American Assembly Line is Compared to a 'Modern Dance,'" photograph for The Literary Digest, 1928. Larger.
Upton Sinclair knew all about our fascination with the automobile. In Oil!, a muckraking novel based partly on the Tea Pot Dome scandal, Sinclair shows us the powerful hold that the automobile has on the imagination of a young boy speeding through California with his dad.
Any boy will tell you that this is glorious. Whoopee! you bet! Sailing along up there close to the clouds, with an engine full of power, magically harnessed, subject to the faintest pressure from the ball of your foot. The power of ninety horses--think of that! Suppose you had had ninety horses out there in front of you, forty-five pairs in a long line, galloping around the side of a mountain, wouldn't that make your pulses jump? And this magic ribbon of concrete laid out for you, winding here and there, feeling its way upward with hardly a variation of grade, taking off the shoulders of a mountain, cutting straight through the apex of another, diving into the black belly of a third; twisting, turning, tilting inward on the outside curves, so that you were always balanced, always safe--and with a white painted line marking the centre, so that you always knew exactly where you had a right to be--what magic had done all this?
Upton Sinclair's Oil! appeared in 1927 and despite being banned in Boston, was a best seller.
In California the high cost of health care keeps a lot of us up at night. But it's easy to forget that the problem has been with us for decades.
Muckraking writer Upton Sinclair ran as a Democrat for Governor of California in 1934. His plan to "End Poverty In California"—or EPIC—included a scheme for socialized medicine.
Under the word "doctor" we include all practitioners of the healing art, dentists, nurses, hospital employees, druggists, etc. Such persons are having a hard time at present. Many doctors get their pay, if any, in the form of loads of wood and sacks of potatoes. The EPIC plan will not interfere with private practice, but doctors will be urgently needed in the State system, and will have reasonable salaries, security of tenure, pensions in old age, and will be able to help anyone who is ill, and not have the painful experience of having to dun the poor for money. . . .
The effects of poverty on human health are known to every intelligent health worker. What it means is that the great mass of scientific knowledge is unused. We know about fresh air and sunshine but we keep people in slums. We know a lot about vitamins but our children grow up stunted by malnutrition. Insanity is on the increase among us, due to the strain of blind competition. Research is being starved. Drugs are adulterated for private profit. The answer to all this is socialized medicine, with true scientists in charge of public health, free for the first time to put their knowledge into effect. . . .
Upton Sinclair was defeated in his gubernatorial campaign, but his grass roots appeal earned him a hefty forty percent of the vote.
"Vintage Burma Shave Road Signs," photographed by Theo Spark, 2009. Larger.
Love 'em or hate 'em, the roadside signs that dot California highways are just about impossible to ignore. Especially when they feature some of the most egregious word play ever punned.
Upton Sinclair was a canny observer of California life, so he had ample material for a vivid description of the 1920's roadside literature visible from a speeding auto.
"Prepare to meet thy God." Then would come a traffic sign: "Railroad crossing. Stop. Look. Listen." The railroad company wanted you to meet your God through some other agency . . . because there would be damage suits for taking religious faith too seriously. "Jesus waits," a boulder would proclaim; and then would come, "Chicken Dinner, $1." There were always funny signs about things to eat—apparently all the world loved a meal, and became jolly at the thought. "Hot Dog Kennels," was an eating-place, and "Ptomaine Tommy," and "The Clam-Baker," and the "Lobster-Pot." There were endless puns on the word inn—"Dew Drop Inn" and "Happen Inn," "Welcome Inn" and "Hurry Inn." When you went into these places you would find the spirit of jollity rampaging on the walls: "In God We Trust, All Others Cash." "Don't complain about our coffee; some day you may be old and weak yourself." "We have an arrangement with our bank; the bank does not sell soup, and we do not cash checks."
Upton Sinclair's Oil! vividly captured the spirit of southern California's oil boom of the 1920s. It appeared in 1926.
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