MovieChat Forums > Friendly Persuasion (1956) Discussion > Writing credits on TCM print shown 5/23/...

Writing credits on TCM print shown 5/23/15


As most know, Michael Wilson, the blacklisted screenwriter who wrote the script for Friendly Persuasion, didn't get screen credit when the film was originally released. Instead, there was no screenplay credit at all, simply a credit reading, "From the Book by Jessamyn West".

In the 1990s this injustice was rectified when Wilson's name was added to the credits, above West's credit. (Wilson's credit was not "restored" or "reinstated", in, respectively, Leonard Maltin's and Robert Osborne's words, since by definition you cannot restore or reinstate something that never existed in the first place.) All new prints made since then and used for the DVD have Wilson's name, as have all prints of the film shown on TV for the past 20 years or so, including on TCM.

Yet suddenly, when the channel ran the film this evening (May 23, 2015), they used the old version, unseen in two decades, without a credit for Wilson. After years of using the newer print, where the heck did this old one suddenly pop up from?

And in a gaffe that's hardly unusual for TCM, beforehand Osborne and his "The Essentials" co-host, Sally Field, made a point of talking about Wilson's being denied credit in 1956, with Osborne stating that his credit had since been "reinstated". Not for the first time, an on-air TCM host gave no indication of actually having seen the print of the movie they're about to show.

So, just a basic question: what happened to the print with the writing credit they made such a point of saying had been "reinstated" (the wrong word, but we get the point)? The same print they'd been using for many years, now abruptly replaced by one with the film's original credit. Not a major deal, perhaps, but still weird and inexplicable.

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