"We didn't need dialogue," Norma Desmond tells a young screenwriter in "Sunset Boulevard," recalling her silent-film-era glory days. "We had faces!" Screenwriters famously suffer all sorts of indignities"dumb studio notes, credit squabbles"but now and then they get to win Oscars. Norma's heyday was just fading when the first Academy Awards were held, in 1929; the three writing categories that year were Best Original …
SOURCE: The New Yorker at 12:00AM on February 14, 2017