Maurer

[Garson O'Toole]

The longer excerpt below more accurately represents the position of
Mr. Ward the author of the screenplay of The Sting:

FILM; Hollywood Law: Whose Idea Is It, Anyway?
By JOY HOROWITZ;
Published: March 15, 1992
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/15/movies/film-hollywood-law-whose-idea-is-it-anyway.html

The practice of settling these cases can be especially bothersome to
writers who feel they've been unjustly accused and never get to clear
their names. David Ward, for example, who won an Oscar for best
original screenplay for "The Sting" in 1973, was sued by David W.
Maurer for plagiarizing "The Big Con," his 1941 nonfiction book about
swindlers. The Los Angeles Times reported that Universal and Mr. Ward,
who admitted using Mr. Maurer's book as research, settled the case for
$600,000.

"This whole thing has been a real source of pain to me," Mr. Ward
says. "If accused, people assume you were guilty. There's no trial. No
evidence presented against you. Universal made the decision to settle
for purely business reasons."


On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 9:02 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Maurer
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> An article in the New York Times cites an article in the  Los Angeles
> Times that gives a $600,000 figure for the settlement.
>
> FILM; Hollywood Law: Whose Idea Is It, Anyway?
> By JOY HOROWITZ;
> Published: March 15, 1992
> New York Times
> http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/15/movies/film-hollywood-law-whose-idea-is-it-anyway.html
>
> begin excerpt
> David Ward, for example, who won an Oscar for best original screenplay
> for "The Sting" in 1973, was sued by David W. Maurer for plagiarizing
> "The Big Con," his 1941 nonfiction book about swindlers. The Los
> Angeles Times reported that Universal and Mr. Ward, who admitted using
> Mr. Maurer's book as research, settled the case for $600,000.
> end excerpt
>
> One of Maurer's obituaries mentions the lawsuit but does not state an
> amount for the out of court settlement.
>
> David W. Maurer Is Dead at 75; An Expert on Underworld Slang
> June 14, 1981
> UPI article at the New York Times website
> http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/14/obituaries/david-w-maurer-is-dead-at-75-an-expert-on-underworld-slang.html
>
> being excerpt
> Dr. Maurer was the author of ''Whiz Mob,'' which dealt with the argot
> and behavior of pickpockets, and ''The Big Con,'' a book published in
> 1940 about confidence men. In 1974 he filed a $10 million lawsuit
> charging that the motion picture ''The Sting'' and the book of the
> same name had been copied from ''The Big Con.'' The lawsuit was
> settled out of court in 1976.
> end excerpt
>
> Garson
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 8:28 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Maurer
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Back in 1999, Mike Salovesh, whose posts were at one time a welcome part of ADS-L, wrote "I believe that many of the
>> underworld words from page 30, col. 2 came from Maurer's work with Federal prisoners at Lexington, Ky.  That's where Maurer collected the language of confidence men, and the fantastic stories that went with it, that appears in his "The Big Con".  (Yes, "The Big Con" is the book Hollywood plagiarized for the plot and the details of "The Sting".)
>>
>> I recall further correspondence from Salovesh in which he said that he believed that Maurer did collect some money for the use of his material.  I don't find this bit in the ADS-L archives; I had some private correspondence with Mike, and perhaps I saw it there, but my own email archives only go back to 2001.
>>
>> If I recall, Mike had known Maurer.
>>
>> GAT
>>
>> George A. Thompson
>> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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