This post is about well-known films based on lesser-known literary novels, concentrating on the mid-20th century. I post it in defense of the writers (typically seen by Hollywood as pesky irritants), who created stories we treasure via their re-birth on the screen.
If you’re a bunch younger than me, you might not know the movies, but they’re all worth seeing. What’s not here: Gone With the Wind or To Kill a Mockingbird (bestselling novels), Valley of the Dolls (schlocky novel), The Andromeda Strain (thriller), Murder on the Orient Express (mystery), Anne of Green Gables (too old), Bridget Jones’s Diary (not old enough).
Long ago, a novelist friend told me what you wanted was to have your book optioned by the movies, but not made. For one thing, when an option’s renewed you get paid again; for another, they can’t ruin your story if they don’t film it. For every novelist thrilled by the adaptation, others cringe (or hide their heads) at what their pride and joy was tortured into. Kazuo Ishiguro’s masterful novel, The Remains of the Day (1989), became the masterful film of the same name (1993); ditto for Michael Ondaatje’s, The English Patient (1992), adapted and directed by Anthony Minghella (1996). Too often, though, commerce perverts the art.1 2
Some of the books here remain obscure. Others writers/titles you’ll know—but from work later in their writing lives.
The Books:
[Film titles, if different, appear in notes.]
The Holy Innocents, Gilbert Adair (1988)3
Diva, Delacorta (1979)4
The Basketball Diaries, Jim Carroll (1978)5
The Last Detail, Darryl Ponicsan (1970)6
Georgy Girl, Margaret Forster (1965)7
The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis (1963)8
Horseman, Pass By, Larry McMurtry (1961)9
The Go-Between, L. P. Hartley (1953)10
The Price of Salt, Claire Morgan (pen name of Patricia Highsmith) (1952)11
Laura, Vera Caspery (1943)12
Reflections in a Golden Eye, Carson McCullers (1941)13
Whistle Stop, Maritta Wolff (1941)14
The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West (1939)15
. . . perverts the art: Once in a while, a film retains virtually nothing from the source but the title, as in the Jack Nicholson vehicle, About Schmidt (2002) and Louis Begley’s novel (1996).
. . . perverts the art (cont.): But some novels present unique challenges. The original of Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was narrated by Chief Bromden, a silent, mop-wielding observer. But since, in film, everything’s seen from the outside, we watch Jack Nicholson’s unforgettable portrayal of Randall Patrick McMurphy directly, not via the Chief’s narration. The story is changed—and yet both work.
Some novels need streamlining, the original being too long or too diffuse or too literary to film as written. Subplots are dropped, multiple events are consolidated—as in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles (novel 1891, film 1998).
And some novels are so idiosyncratic they’re considered unfilmable. In a couple of cases, filmmakers turned to the meta-solution of making a movie about making a movie of the book: The French Lieutenant’s Woman (John Fowles, 1969; film [screenplay by Harold Pinter], 1981) . . . and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Laurence Sterne, 1759-1767); A Cock and Bull Story, Michael Winterbottom, 2005).
The Holy Innocents: Film title: The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci, (2003).
The year of the film’s release, the novel was re-issued with the same title as the film (a common marketing strategy—see Carol, below). Or so I thought. In fact, The Dreamers (novel) is actually a revision of The Holy Innocents—it’s shorter, less “racy and perverse,” as one reader put it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Innocents_(Adair_novel)
Diva: Filmed by French director, Jean-Jacques Beineix (1981). Sometime in the 80s, I was in charge of picking the titles for a film series at the art museum in Kalispell, MT—Diva has been lodged in my mind’s eye ever since. Stylish, thrillerish, noirish, a cult classic. At the heart of colliding subplots is a young delivery man’s fascination with a Black American opera singer, played by soprano Wilhelmenia Fernandez.
But who was the writer, this Delacorta?
His real name was Daniel Odier, but when I looked him up I thought for a second I’d gotten the wrong guy. The Wiki starts out:
Daniel Robert Odier (born 17 May 1945 in Geneva), is a Zen master, Chan master, writer, poet, screenwriter and essayist, specialist in Kashmir Shaivism. Praised by Anaïs Nin as "an outstanding writer and a dazzling poet," he is also a spiritual teacher of Eastern religious traditions, especially Tantra.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diva_(Odier_novel)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Odier
OK, then. As someone smart once said, We contain multitudes.
https://www.amazon.com/DIVA-Daniel-Delacorta-Odier/dp/B000FVKJVY
And beware: There are many books titled Diva. Praised as it may be, you do not want the one by Daisy Goodwin, about Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis . . .
Basketball: Read about Carroll here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Carroll
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/682745.The_Basketball_Diaries
The Last Detail: A classic 70s film (another early Jack Nicholson role).
Set during the Vietnam era, two veteran sailors are detailed to take an 18-year-old sailor to the Navy brig in New Hampshire (he’s guilty of petty theft). As things proceed, the two older guys feel sorry for the kid, and the five-day road trip becomes, as a blurb puts it,
”an indelible journey of initiation and discovery, filled with beer-soaked wisdom, big city lights, revelry, brawls, debauchery, love, and surprising moments of tenderness.”
This was Ponicsan’s first novel. His fourth, Cinderella Liberty (1973) also became a memorable film, starring James Caan. He wrote a dozen more novels, some under his own name, some as Anne Argula, as well as a number of screenplays.
Georgy Girl: Forster wrote some 25 novels, plus an award-winning biography of Daphne du Maurier. The film (same title, 1966) starred Lynn Redgrave. This was one of a batch of British films that helped shape my sensibility: The Horse’s Mouth (1958), A Taste of Honey (1961), The Knack . . . and How To Get It (1965), Alfie (1966), Blowup (1966), Morgan (1966), If . . . (1968), Petulia (1968).
The Man Who Fell to Earth: The film, directed by Nicholas Roeg, starring David Bowie, appeared in 1976. Also considered a cult classic.
Tevis’s first novel, The Hustler, appears in Birth Year Project 1959. Here’s the note from that post:
This was Tevis’s first novel, the story of pool hustler “Fast Eddie” Felson challenging the legendary Minnesota Fats, but the book was overshadowed by the 1961 film with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason. His second novel, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963) was science fiction, which Nicholas Roeg filmed in the mid-70s (David Bowie starred).
Tevis was a heavy drinker/smoker/gambler (he died at fifty-six of lung cancer). He managed to produce six novels and a collection of stories. I got the feeling that he was lucky to have gotten that much done. A few years ago, I read his novels Mockingbird (1980) and The Queen’s Gambit (1983)—obscure, almost-forgotten books, I thought. Then, suddenly, Netflix made a high-profile miniseries of the latter (with a riveting performance by Anya Taylor-Joy) and it was gratifying to see Tevis’s name in the public eye again.
McMurtry: The film: Hud (1963), Martin Ritt (director), Paul Newman and Patricia Neal. Called “a revisionist Western.”
McMurtry was a Texan, a prolific novelist, essayist, screenwriter and antiquarian bookseller. He’s most widely known for the TV series, Lonesome Dove (1989) based his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. I’ve always admired an early novel, Leaving Cheyenne (1963)—a three-sided love story (each lover narrates a third of the book), filmed as Lovin’ Molly (1974). Though (strangely) I’ve never read the novel, by far my favorite adaptation is Peter Bogdanovich’s black-and-white classic, The Last Picture Show (1971): Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn . . . This is a must-see.
Though McMurtry became famous in later life, Horseman, Pass By was his debut novel, and remains, I think, under-read.
Two other stray facts: His son is the singer/songwriter, James McMurtry:
https://www.jamesmcmurtry.com/
And, for the last ten years of his life (he died in 2021 at age 84) McMurtry was married to Norma Faye Kesey, widow of writer and Merry Prankster, Ken Kesey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_McMurtry
The Go-Between: Alan Bates and Julie Christie starred in the film (1971). A box office and critical hit (still scoring a 100% at Rotten Tomatoes). Screenplay by playwright Harold Pinter. Hartley was better known among British readers than many of the other writers here, but in our day the film is remembered but the novel less so.
The Price of Salt: Republished as Carol (bearing Highsmith’s name) to coincide with the release of the film in 2015. Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. As a long-time fan of the novel, I was happy to see it so well-adapted—great period look, great casting.
It’s always interesting to see why creators disguise themselves. Renaissance paintings attributed to “Anonymous” were often the work of women artists (see this piece in The Observer: https://observer.com/2017/01/the-forgotten-women-artists-of-the-renaissance-and-the-man-who-championed-them), including the immensely skilled Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656). Ditto for writers and composers, as underscored by Anonymous Four, a quartet who sing early-music compositions by women, dressing in identical gowns of different muted colors, not speaking (at all) during their performances. The Brontë sisters famously published their work under the gender-ambiguous pen names, Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell. Mary Ann Evans wrote under the name George Eliot. Amandine Lucie Aurore Dupin under George Sand.
Some writers simply don’t want to be known, the most famous recent instance being the wildly popular Italian novelist known as Elena Ferrante. The identities of many other writers with pen names are open secrets—David Cornwall/John le Carré, Eric Blair/George Orwell, etc. Others adopt pen names to distinguish between the genres they write in. John Banville/Benjamin Black . . . Iain Banks/Iain M. Banks . . . Agatha Christie/Mary Westmacott.
Once in a while, a made-up name (or Anonymous) acts as cover for a literary prank. In 1969, a gang of two dozen journalists conspired to produce Naked Came the Stranger, under the name Penelope Ashe. It was a deliberately awful send-up of the low-brow/vulgar/over-sexed novels by the likes of Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann that were clogging the bestseller lists. It sold like hotcakes.
Highsmith’s decision to disguise herself was, of course, based on the stigma of lesbian love still shadowing literature in 1952. E. M. Forster withheld publication of his same-sex novel, Maurice, under after his death; written originally in 1913, its ending rewritten multiple times over Forster’s lifespan, Maurice wasn’t published until 1971. [Fact I just learned: the name is pronounced Morris in Britain.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Price_of_Salt
Laura: Otto Preminger film noir (1944) starring Gene Tierney.
Caspary was a prolific writer of suspenseful novels, some pulpy, some not—she was also a social activist and communist. Her life’s worth reading about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Caspary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_(novel)
Reflections in a Golden Eye: McCullers became known in the lit world, among a cohort of Southern women writers, but she’s much better known for the novels The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) and The Member of the Wedding (1946).
Here’s a review of a new biography of McCullers from a recent New Yorker:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/carson-mccullers-a-life-mary-v-dearborn-book-review
[photo by Richard Avedon]
Whistle Stop: I’ve manage to collect maybe 150 Signet pulps from the 1950s—titles like Stone Cold Blonde, Let the Night Cry, Heaven Pays No Dividends, etc. But now and then, I find a good book by a writer I didn’t know—The Waiters, William Fisher (1953) [he’ll appear in a future post], The Fascinator, Theodora Keogh (1954), and Maritta Wolff’s, Night Shift (1942).
Wolff wrote Whistle Stop when she was a student at the University of Michigan (she was 23 when it was published). Here’s a bit of the Wiki about the 1946 film with George Raft and Ava Gardner:
“[The screenwriter, Philip Yordan] later said, ‘I used a small portion of the actual book and developed the story from there because . . . the book was too explicit sexually. [I felt] the producer made a mistake casting Raft . . . ‘He had been a big name around the world and he was on the skids and we could afford him, but he looked like hell and who wanted to see this old man with Ava Gardner? It should have been a young guy like Burt Lancaster.’"
[See above, “perverts the art.”]
Oh, almost forgot: If you don’t have a NYT subscription I don’t think you can open this but here’s the link anyway:
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/28/books/things-fall-apart-especially-in-california-in-the-70s.html
It has a good account of the provenance of Wolff’s seventh and final novel, Sudden Rain. The quickie version excerpted from Wiki:
Always a private person who shunned publicity, Wolff, in 1972, refused her publisher's request to go on a promotional tour for a recently finished novel, Sudden Rain, and as a result the novel was never published during her lifetime. At that point she evidently ceased writing fiction. After Wolff's death, the manuscript . . . kept safely in her refrigerator for the last thirty years of her life, was published (along with re-issues of Whistle Stop and Night Shift) to much acclaim.
The Day of the Locust: I ate up Nathanael West’s novels in college, especially the darkly comic Miss Lonelyhearts (1933). His other novels: The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931) and A Cool Million (1934), subtitled, The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin. And, indeed, part by part [though not as expeditiously as the Black Knight (see below)], Pitkin is dismantled in what Wiki calls “a brutal satire of Horatio Alger's novels and their eternal optimism.”
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=350807130385625
Probably too early, and I’m sure you’re already aware, but a movie about making a movie about a book is Adaptation starring Nicolas Cage. The character attempts to write a screenplay for Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief.
Nice work. I will go back and study the list. [I have read fast—even skimmed some bits.] You have found far more than I have ever thought to consider! When I showed Casablanca (original screenplay, as I recall) to my Film Studies classes, only one student ever claimed to have already seen it. I asked them to look for titles and clichés, which made it special fun. You are wise to urge people to see the old classics. There's a reason they are called classic.
Related: movies taken from short stories is a rich field. Since a screenplay runs to about 75 pages, short stories might take less of a beating (diminishing?) than novels in the transference to film. On the other hand, you would not believe how hard it was for me to find the short story that led to Rear Window... and maybe not really worth the trouble—ha! Not to mention Elaine May's New Leaf!