For prominent writers in the golden age of cinema, appearances in films belonged to their basic professional skills. The silver screen offered them not only a chance of self-immortalisation in moving and sounding images, but also opened up a sphere for the embodiment of specific poetics. This study reveals a cinematic history of modern authorship based on the genres of newsreel and documentary as well as on cameos with which writers copied themselves into film adaptations of their literary works. The focus is mainly on Bertolt Brecht and Erich Kästner for Germany, on George Bernard Shaw and William Somerset Maugham for Great Britain, on Paul Claudel for France and on Gabriele D’Annunzio for Italy.