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58 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E not long before she began receiving recognition as a writer in her own right. In 1903, Kate — writing as Kate Alaska Hooper — published a work of verse in the magazine Sunset. The poem, "The Field of the Cloth of Gold," included a paean to the land of her youth: "To blue California skies o'er head / Singing, nay, shouting the glad, free song / Of a land unscarred and young and bold / Here lies the real field of the cloth of gold." I n 1 9 0 5, K a t e m a r r i e d e n g i n e e r Charles W. Corbaley, with whom she had four daughters. The couple decided to move to Los Angeles, which would have a fateful impact on Kate's career. Her storytelling instincts found an outlet in the burgeoning picture business. After years of accumulating bylines, Corbaley hit pay dirt after she entered her scenario "Real Folks" in a contest sponsored by Photoplay magazine and the Triangle Film Corporation: Not only did Corbaley walk away as the winner ($1,000 in prize money, or about $25,000 in today's value) in a field of 7,000 applicants, but "Real Folks" was produced by Triangle. In the Photoplay story announcing h e r w i n , C o r b a l e y ta l k e d a b o u t h e r approach to writing: "The day has come when people want plays of character and not plays in which exciting plots are hung on wooden automatons." The produced film of "Real Folks," writers: "Motion picture producers neither seek nor demand literary ability." Instead, Mayer preferred to listen to Corbaley transform the words on the page into pictures visible in his mind's eye. The pictures flickered before him in glorious black-and-white: There was Gable making a dramatic entrance; there was Garbo reclining gracefully in a gown. "S h e w a s h i s s t o r y t e l l e r," S c o t t Eyman, author of the biography "Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer," said in an interview with CineMontage. "He enjoyed the way she would break a story down and tell it to him verbally. She could tell a story the way Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would tell a story on screen." PIONEER AND POET In 1878, when Kate Alaska Hinckley was born to industrialist William Hinck- ley and his wife Mary, movies didn't yet exist — it would be another quarter-cen- tury before the exhibition of Edwin S. Porter's early silent short "The Great Train Robbery." Her unusual middle name reflects the circumstances of her birth: According to The San Bernardino County Sun, later her hometown paper, she entered the world on the steamer Alaska as it wound its way from Mexico to California. H e r a n c e s to r s w e re s a i d to h av e included pioneers, and an independent streak ran in her immediate family. While Kate was still a toddler, her parents' marriage came to an end; shortly there- after, her mother wed banker William Hooper, whose name she adopted. "She was regarded as his own daughter among friends and residents," The Sun reported. Raised in San Bernardino and nearby Colton, Kate was a student of English Literature — and was made a member of the honor society Phi Beta Kappa — at Stanford University, from which she graduated in 1900. She first found employment as a high-school English teacher in San Bernardino, but it was starring Francis McDonald, Albert Lee, and J. Barney Sherry, may be lost to the mists of time, but Corbaley got a career out of the deal. In 1919, The San Ber- nardino County Sun blared the following headline: "Mrs. Kate Corbaley Has New Success as Writer." That year saw the re- lease of two films on which she received story credit, "Gates of Brass" and "The False Code." The paper noted: "Her many friends and admirers will be immensely interested and pleased in her latest ad- vance in the writing game." FROM WRITER TO READER Corbaley could lay claim to the status of hometown heroine, but as her career as a scenarist progressed through the teens and early '20s, she also gained her share of "friends and admirers" in high places. According to Gene Fowler's column on Corbaley, producer Hunt Stromberg deserves credit for Corbaley's switch from writer to reader. Already on the fac- ulty and advisory council of the Palmer Photoplay Corporation, Corbaley teamed up with Stromberg as a "play reader and literary agent," Fowler wrote. In 1926, af- ter Stromberg began his tenure at MGM, Corbaley followed him to the studio. She never left. Like today's story analysts, Corbaley c h u r n e d o u t o v e r v i e w s o f p o s s i b l e projects, including, for example, an ad- aptation of Wilson Collison's play "Red Dust." In a synopsis she dictated in De- cember of 1927, Corbaley deftly describes the work's characters, plot, and setting, pausing to praise strong or recognizable elements, such as the "love conflict" at the heart of the property. Her instincts were, as ever, sound: Five years elapsed before a version of "Red Dust" reached the screen, but the resulting film is now considered a classic. Boasting the exotic setting of French Indochina, the spicy pre-code production stars Clark Gable as a rubber-plantation boss ensnared in a love triangle alongside Jean Harlow 'He enjoyed the way she would break a story down and tell it to him verbally. She could tell a story the way MGM would tell a story on screen.'