You tell a producer about a script you’ve got. They absolutely love the idea, and want to see it immediately. You send it to them–and weeks go by with no response. Then months. Do they love it? Hate it? Not have time to look at it? You have no way of knowing.
It’s an experience every screenwriter has had. But very few writers end up getting an apology like the following:

I have your letter of July 22 and after due investigation hasten my apologies for the discourteous treatment you received at the hands of two of our presumably responsible persons. Words cannot express how deeply I feel the great wrong committed against you… The two parties who committed this deplorable breech of courtesy have been dealt with in a manner commensurate with their acts.

So why did one particular screenwriter get such a groveling apology?
Maybe it was because that screenwriter was Franklin D. Roosevelt. (At this point, I should emphasize that I am not making any of this up, and that many of the facts that follow are taken from an article in the Writers’ Guild of America magazine.)
In 1921, while undergoing physical therapy after being struck with polio, FDR decided to write a movie. He chose John Paul Jones as his subject, and put together a 29-page treatment. In our modern age–where writing a screenplay is seen as an inalienable right–that wouldn’t seem particularly odd. But in 1921, when films were only beginning to shake their reputation as mindless entertainment for illiterates, such a move by a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and recent Vice-Presidential candidate was highly unusual. It’s evidence of FDR’s ahead-of-his-time understanding of the power of mass media–an understanding that would later result in his radio fireside chats.
In May of 1923, FDR sent his treatment to Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, a part of Paramount Pictures. And then he waited. And waited. History does not record what Paramount thought of the work, but the fact that, a year later, FDR was still waiting is evidence enough; then, as now, nobody in Hollywood dared say an outright “no” to somebody who might prove powerful or useful. FDR wasn’t president yet, of course, but he was a recent Vice-Presidential candidate, a former assistant secretary of the Navy, and a member of a highly important and influential family. Why say “no” to someone like that when you could say nothing?
In July of 1924, Roosevelt had had enough. He sent off a polite letter to the studio, asking to have returned “the manuscript on John Paul Johns which I sent to you over a year ago?” Almost immediately, he received the groveling letter quoted above, signed by one Eugene J. Zukor.
Still, Roosevelt must have sensed that his screenwriting career wasn’t going to happen, and he went off to pursue other jobs–such as, for example, the presidency of the United States. And in an interesting series of events, the aforementioned Eugene J. Zukor ended up serving in the Office of Navy Intelligence under President Roosevelt. Written By magazine records the following events, which took place in 1934, some 11 years since FDR had sent the script to Paramount:

While attending a presidential press conference in the Oval Office, Zukor was summoned.
“You know why I asked you up here, don’t you?” asked the president.
“Of course–it’s John Paul Jones,” Zukor replied.
The president asked where the treatment stood now.
“It’s in limbo,” Zukor said. “Paramount hasn’t rejected it, but they haven’t decided anything on it yet.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s right: the President of the United States himself cannot get a straight answer from a studio executive. I don’t know if I find that comforting or disturbing.
So–just how bad does a treatment have to be for a studio to turn down the opportunity to emblazon “Written By The President of the United States” across its movie posters? Fortunately, you can find FDR’s treatment for John Paul Jones online and judge for yourself. My verdict: Paramount made the right call.
Admittedly, FDR has a good eye for exciting incidents, and at times, he presents John Paul Jones’s story as if it were a Douglas Fairbanks, Sr, vehicle:

John Paul is the only officer on board, the others with part of the crew having gone ashore. Paul is on the quarter-deck when a drunken sailor comes aft, demands his discharge and on being refused, threatens Paul. The sailor runs forward, seizes a bludgeon and with several other sailors returns, saying they will throw Paul overboard. Paul tries to talk them into reason, but is forced to draw his sword when the sailors rush at him. He defends himself but in so doing is forced to run the ringleader through the body, killing him.
The others retreat, but Paul realizes his serious situation for he has no witnesses, and the sailors will all accuse him of deliberate murder.

There are also moments that offer hints into FDR’s psyche: “The boy John Paul sees colonial life for the first time. He talks with the local planters and merchants and the spirit of freedom and democracy make a strong appeal to his romantic nature. ” Part of FDR’s greatness, I would argue, is that he never saw democracy as a stifling duty; he saw it as a grand romantic adventure.
Ultimately, the treatment suffers from two main problems. One of them is endemic to biopics: it offers not so much a satisfying story as a series of anecdotes. We begin on the banks of the river Dee in Scotland, where little John Paul Jones is taunted for being illegitimate. One week later, he sets off to sea. Six months later, he arrives in the Colonies. Eight years later, he quits his job on a slave ship. (At about this point, I began to imagine FDR getting notes from his friend Winston Churchill: “Franklin, we’ve been following John Paul Jones for a decade, yet this is not the end of Act II. This is not even the beginning of Act II. It is, perhaps, Act II of Act I.”)
Worse, FDR– despite his considerable skill with words–displays no facility for thinking in pictures. As long as John Paul Jones is running his sword through mutinous sailors, everything’s fine, but when the time comes to depict the man’s inner life, the treatment is fundamentally useless. Consider passages like “His reputed half-brother, William Paul, is living in Fredericksburg and the boy seeks light on his parentage without result. He begins to believe that his father is the Earl of Selkirk.” Or ” He has become a brilliant navigator and seaman, and shows the cultivation and refinement resulting from the constant study and travel. He enters into a contract with a planter for a share in an estate.” How, exactly, do you show those things in a silent movie?
Contrast that with this excerpt from the script for Nosferatu: “Ellen turns round, catches sight of her husband and seems a little ashamed that she hasn’t yet made breakfast. Now Hutter moves closer to her, looks into the sauce-pan, holds it upside down indicating that it is empty, and looks at her reproachfully.” This is not the most sophisticated storytelling, but the screenwriter has found a way to visually demonstrate emotions.
Fortunately for us, FDR was unable to do so. No doubt the world could have used a really good John Paul Jones movies–but it probably had a slightly greater use for a president who could steer the US through the Great Depression and World War II.