In his memoir, “As Time Goes By,” Howard Koch, the writer of, among other movies, “Sergeant York” and “Casablanca” as well as the radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds,” tells the story of fellow screenwriter Jerry Wald. Seems he met the brothers Julius and Philip G. Epstein when they were young college grads trying to make it in Hollywood. They had wit and style. Koch writes:

Jerry stowed them away in a modest Hollywood apartment where he brought them movie ideas, mostly garnered from newspapers or other periodicals, which they constructed into screenplays. He paid them each $25 a week, barely enough to live on at the time, while Jerry's salary at Warners skyrocketed to the $1,000-a-week range, mostly on the strength of their borrowed efforts. Jerry didn't tell the Epsteins that their stories were being produced, nor did he invite them onto the lot. [He kept] them slaving away on his behalf.

One day, the Epsteins went to the theater, saw one of their scripts on the screen, got wise. Jig was up. And Jerry?

Was he fired? Was he even reprimanded? On the contrary, he was promoted to the status of producer, in fact eventually one of the leading producers of the industry.

Because it's just about hard work, as FOX News tells us.