Buchwald Lawsuit

The disputants in the flap between Art Buchwald and the makers of “Coming to America” may discover in the course of their hotly argued claims to authorship that there are others--or more likely the legal heirs of others--with equally valid credentials.

William Anthony McGuire (1927) wrote it for Ziegfeld star Marilyn Miller, for whom it proved an enormously successful vehicle. He called it “Rosalie,” and he did it again for Eleanor Powell at MGM in 1937. Of course, the genders of the romantic leads were reversed, but both versions ended--as did the Murphy film--with a lavish wedding scene in which the bride wore a veil the length of Dodger Stadium and boasted enough bridesmaids to fill it.

Sidney Buchman used essentially the same idea for Grace Moore in “The King Steps Out” (the king was Franchot Tone) in 1936, and Norman Krasna did the same for Fernand Gravet the next year in “The King and the Chorus Girl.” And if these credits aren’t enough, there were also Dorothy Donnelly, who wrote the book for “The Student Prince”(1924), and Frank Tuttle and Frederick Stephani (“All the King’s Men,” 1935) who adapted previous versions by Lawrence Clark and Max Giersberg, and Frederick Herendeen and Edward Horan. Now, the Buchman book was based on an even earlier work by Gustav Holm, so that eventually one could go back to the brothers Grimm (who probably go back about as far as anyone would care to go).

But it wouldn’t stop there. You see, there was this prince . . .

WILLIAM B. CARNAHAN

San Pedro