Time, fame, and money have always traveled lightly in Hollywood, and few lives illustrate that cruel arithmetic more poignantly than that of Pierre Collings, a gifted screenwriter who reached the industry’s highest summit only to disappear almost immediately into obscurity and poverty.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
Pierre Collings was born September 22, 1902, in Truro, Nova Scotia. The second of five children, he was born into a family that would spend much time on the move. His father, Otto Collings was a mining engineer, and both he and Pierre's mother Martha were American citizens. When they returned to live in the United States permanently, they had young Pierre naturalized. Collings would go on to become one of Hollywood's own, but it was not an easy nor direct road to fame.
Collings got into films at the age of seventeen when he took a job as a messenger boy at Pickford–Fairbanks Studios. Like many young men in those days, he worked his way up through the business, learning on the job. He eventually found work behind the camera. During the early 1920s Collings shot films at Brunton Studios, including Alimony (1924) and Untamed Youth (1924). From there, he advanced to assistant directing and, finally screenwriting, a voice that would prove both precise and humane.
By the mid-decade Collings had developed a reputation as a dependable and imaginative contributor during Hollywood's silent-era boom. He penned or co-wrote A Woman of the World (1925) and Good and Naughty (1926), both starring Pola Negri; The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926) starring Adolph Menjou and Florence Vidor; and The Show Off (1926), now considered one of Louise Brooks's best films.
He later supplied continuity on Animal Crackers (1930) for the Marx Brothers. His work varied from highbrow comedies to character dramas. Yet for all this success, Collings didn't leave much evidence of his private life behind. In December 1926 he married Natalie Harris at the Little Church Around the Corner in New York, a popular wedding site for stage couples. The relationship ended in divorce only four years later. Similarly, Collings was to direct Alex the Great in 1928. For unknown reasons, Dudley Murphy assumed directing duties. The incident would become one of many career stumbles that never fully rebounded.
Collings continued working regularly between 1924 and 1930, but advances in sound technology and stricter studio hierarchies impeded his progress somewhat. Between 1930 and 1937 he completed only two credited screenplays, including a single-dialogue contribution on the Leslie Howard/Kay Francis film British Agent (1934) for which he received no screen credit. Collings' personal problems also seem to have become more severe during this time. In August 1935 he was arrested for drunk driving.
A reprieve came late that same year when Collings signed with Warner Bros. and was paired with writer Sheridan Gibney to adapt a biography of the famed French scientist Louis Pasteur, for the screen. The result, The Story of Louis Pasteur, starred Paul Muni and proved to be one of the studio’s most distinguished productions of the decade. During the film’s production, Collings suffered a personal blow when his mother, Martha, died unexpectedly and was buried at Hollywood Cemetery, a loss that compounded the emotional weight of an already demanding assignment.
The Story of Louis Pasteur was met with great acclaim upon its release in 1936. At the subsequent awards ceremony, Collings and Gibney received nominations for two Academy Awards: Best Original Story and Best Screenplay. By then, however, Collings had reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was unable to attend the ceremony. When the film won both awards, Gibney accepted the Oscars on behalf of his absent collaborator. Collings, at just thirty-four, had achieved what countless screenwriters never would: two Academy Awards for a single film.
The victory was short-lived. Collings recovered enough to return to work, but his next venture, a planned Warner Bros. production called Houdini the Great, which was to have starred George Raft, fell through. He once again found himself outside Hollywood's inner circles. Jobs became scarce. His health faltered and his alcoholism deepened. It was later rumored that one of his two Oscars was pawned for food money, but evidence to support this has never surfaced. Collings was arrested in July 1937 for intoxication at the request of his landlady, a profoundly embarrassing incident that highlighted his fall from grace.
At the time of his death, Collings was collaborating with songwriter Carrie Jacobs-Bond on a screenplay inspired by her beloved song “I Love You Truly.” The project would remain unfinished. On December 20, 1937, Pierre Collings died of chronic alcoholism and pneumonia at the Virginia Sanitarium, 7069 Sunset Boulevard, in Hollywood. His funeral was held at Pierce Bros. Chapel, and he was interred at Hollywood Cemetery in Section 2W, Grave 795, near his mother’s resting place.
Hollywood barely noticed his passing. The Los Angeles Times published no obituary, listing only his name among the death notices. Yet three weeks later, columnist Lee Shippey offered a haunting postscript. “Little Pierre Collings, who wrote the script for Louis Pasteur, died the other day,” Shippey wrote, adding that friends believed his decline stemmed from despair after receiving almost no work following his greatest success.
Shippey concluded with a damning indictment of the industry’s priorities, suggesting that Hollywood gathers genius from around the world only to discourage it from doing its best.
The final mystery of Collings’ life emerged months later. In April 1938, a young, struggling actor named Charles Mackay was living at the Mark Twain Hotel on Wilcox Avenue, reduced to his last quarter and working on a rock pile to pay for lodging. Searching for a clean shirt in a closet reserved for abandoned belongings, Mackay discovered a threadbare blue sweater. Wrapped inside it was one of Pierre Collings’ Oscar statuettes.
Above, screenwriter Sheridan Gibney holds one of his Oscars for co-writing The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)
Collings died of complications from alcoholism and pneumonia at the Virginia Sanitarium, once located at the northeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and La Brea Avenue—a site now occupied by a Burger King and a strip mall.
Collings grave at Hollywood Forever, just a few graves over from his mother.
Terrified of being arrested for theft, Mackay aimlessly strolled down Hollywood Boulevard. He eventually ran into Arthur Caesar, an Academy Award–winning screenwriter for Manhattan Melodrama (1934). Caesar escorted Mackay and the Oscar back to the offices of the Academy where a secretary verified that Collings had died only months before. People thought that the statuette may have been used as collateral against unpaid rent. Mackay received twenty-five dollars and they kept the Oscar.
Later, an alternate story circulated—that the Oscar had been stolen and hidden in the Mark Twain Hotel by the thief who found it impossible to sell. That version of events was confirmed by Collings’ father. He stated that the Academy had been notified of his son’s death prior to the statue’s recovery and that the award had been stolen, not pawned. Collings, he insisted, had not left the Oscar behind at the hotel. While his son may have been short of work at the time of his death, the elder Collings maintained that Pierre still had loyal friends and future prospects and was not entirely without means.
Struggling actor, Charles Mackay, center, is shown holding Pierre Collings “stolen” Academy Award that he found at the Mark Twain Hotel. At left is Donald Gledhill, secretary of the Academy, and at right, screenwriter Arthur Caesar.
The episode nonetheless exposed a painful truth about Hollywood’s indifference. Even as rumors circulated about a fallen Oscar winner reduced to poverty, Mackay himself—who was “in straits” when he found the statuette—was quietly rewarded for his honesty. Through the intervention of screenwriter Arthur Caesar and Academy secretary Donald Gledhill, Mackay was offered employment, a gesture that underscored how easily fortune could shift in the film capital.
What ultimately became of Collings’ Oscars remains unresolved. The Academy has since stated that neither statuette is in its possession and that no official record of their disposition survives. Hopefully it was returned to his father. Two Oscars, silent artifacts of a brilliant career whose recognition arrived too late to save him.
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