1954: The Country Girl

Screenplay by George Seaton
Adapted from the play The Country Girl by Clifford Odets

Frank Elgin, an aging, washed-up, alcoholic actor is offered the lead in a new play. The director, Bernie Dodd, who is also a fan, is determined to help Frank make a major comeback. Frank's long-suffering wife, Georgie, also desperately wants to help her husband, but Frank turns Bernie against her in order to avoid taking responsibility for his own problems, which leads to many unnecessary arguments.

This is a significantly more faithful adaptation than most previous winners of this award. Many of the lines in the movie are taken directly from the play, and most of the changes are still consistent with the original characters and story. One change that amused me is originally, Frank starred in a dramatic play, whereas in the adaptation it's a musical comedy. I assume this has to do with the casting of Bing Crosby in the film - was he ever in a movie in which he didn't sing?

There are a few aspects of the story that are mentioned briefly in the play that the movie greatly expands on. Perhaps the most notable example is the play mentions that Frank and Georgie had a daughter who died, but never explains exactly what happened or expands on the impact that had on their marriage. In the movie, however, they had a son, and the circumstances surrounding his death are shown in a flashback. Frank blames himself for what happened, and uses this to justify his excessive drinking and his shirking of all potential responsibility. This is slightly implied in the play, but the movie makes it a focal point of the story. For the most part it works well, although it becomes a little overly dramatic in spots. A couple similar changes also make the movie somewhat more dramatic than the play, and it's a little over-the-top, but not too much. Otherwise, apart from the additional settings that almost always appear when a story is adapted from stage to screen, the film is very similar to the play.

I never would have even considered Grace Kelly for the role of Georgie, but she gives a remarkably un-Grace-Kelly-ish performance that is just right for the character and deservedly won her an Oscar. Bing Crosby and William Holden are also perfect for their parts (once they added some songs for Bing). It's a flawlessly-cast, faithful adaptation with changes that further enhance the original characters; what more could one ask of an adaptation?

Next up: Best Picture Winner Marty, which was based on a made-for-TV movie, so this is the first time I'll be watching rather than reading the source material

1953: From Here to Eternity

Screenplay by Daniel Taradash
Adapted from the novel From Here to Eternity by James Jones

This is the story of soldiers stationed in Hawaii in 1941. It mostly, although not exclusively, focuses on two in particular: Private Prewitt and First Sergeant Warden. Prewitt, aka Prew, was in the bugle corps until a disagreement caused him to be transferred and demoted. He was also once an accomplished boxer, until he accidentally blinded his friend when they were sparring. His new commanding officer, Captain Holmes, wants Prew on his boxing team, and instructs his noncoms to make his life as difficult as possible until he agrees to join. Warden doesn't think much of Prew, but he also doesn't think much of the way Holmes runs his company, so he does what he can to help Prew out, when he's not too busy falling in love with Mrs. Holmes. And of course, we all know what happened in Hawaii at the end of 1941.

I feel like this was an unnecessarily long book. There were too many characters who were described in too much detail, given how unimportant they were to the story. Also, pretty much all of the characters had very long philosophical internal monologues that could easily have been cut, or at least shortened. I enjoyed the parts when we had glimpses into what each character in a conversation was really thinking, but I could have done without the paragraphs of minor characters pondering, and the pages of major characters pondering, without coming to any conclusions. The story was intriguing, but I didn't need all the philosophy.

That being said, I think that made it relatively straightforward to turn an 800-page novel into a 2-hour movie. Once they cut all the unnecessary philosophy and some of the less important minor characters (not to mention all of the explicit, vulgar, and violent content that was definitely not allowed in the Hollywood of the 1950s), it must not have seemed nearly as daunting. In many cases, minor characters from the novel were combined into one slightly juicier minor character in the film. For instance, Bloom, who ends up killing himself in the book, is not in the film, but some of the things he does are important enough to be taken over by "Fatso" Judson and Ike Galovitch. In other cases, minor characters remained but in a significantly reduced form. Maylon Stark is quite important in the book. He's a cook who joins the company soon after Prew, and Warden finagles him into the head cook position because he's much more competent than their previous head cook. Stark also becomes pretty good friends with Prew, and even introduces him to "Lorene" - a prostitute crucial enough to the plot that they couldn't eliminate her from the movie, although her scenes are so cleaned up that modern audiences might not understand that that's what she's supposed to be. Stark also fights with Warden because he used to date Captain Holmes's wife and she treated him terribly (the details and reasons are significantly different in the book and the movie, I think mostly because of production codes). In the film, his only scene is one in which he briefly warns Warden about her. Most of the rest of his role is either taken over by Prew's friend Maggio or eliminated entirely. It's kind of a shame because book Stark is an interesting character, but I can see why they reduced his role. The one minor character change that I'm really irritated about is the squad leader. In the book, he's a Native American named Corporal Choate; in the film, he's a white man named Corporal Buckley. I mean, I guess it's better that he was changed to a white man than portrayed by a white man in offensive makeup, but only slightly.

Most of the changes that did not involve reducing minor characters, philosophical monologues, or sexual content seem to have been made to show the Army itself in a much better light. In the book, Holmes is promoted and no one really cares what he did to Prew; in the movie, he's dishonorably discharged because of it. The book also has a whole section in which Prew is in the stockade, where all the prisoners are constantly beaten, nearly starved, and otherwise abused. Maggio escapes by pretending to be insane; a different man is beaten to death after complying when another prisoner begs him to break his arm. In the film, Prew never goes to the stockade at all. The film does include someone being beaten to death by "Fatso" Judson, but it's Maggio, and it's implied that this is because of a fight they had earlier, which was actually with Bloom in the book. The film implies that this is an exceptional situation, whereas the book makes it seem more like an everyday occurrence in the stockade.

While this clearly isn't the most faithful of adaptations, it's still a very good adaptation. Everything ties together very well despite many eliminations. When you watch the movie, it doesn't feel like you're missing pieces of the story. Often, I'm annoyed with changes between page and screen, but I think for the most part the right decisions were made in this case. If the book was adapted into a movie today, it would probably be a lot different, and rated NC-17. It was remade into a mini-series in 1979, with the tagline "The whole story. The story Hollywood couldn't tell in 1953!" I imagine that's a much more faithful adaptation of the book, both because of its 6-hour length and because it was made 26 years later. Given the time constraint and the period in which it was made, this film is probably about as faithful of an adaptation as it could have been, and personally given the choice I'd much rather rewatch it than reread the book.

Coming up next: The Country Girl, which I blogged about before because Grace Kelly won Best Actress, based on the play by Clifford Odets

1952: The Bad and the Beautiful

Screenplay by Charles Schnee
Adapted from the story "Tribute to a Badman", aka "Memorial to a Bad Man", by George Bradshaw

Three people in the entertainment field reflect on why they despise a certain big-time producer. In spite of themselves, they begin to realize that much of their success is due, at least in part, to the horrible things he did to them.

This is definitely one of the less faithful adaptations to win this award. The theme of corruption in the entertainment industry and the question of the ends justifying the means are consistent, but otherwise the short story and the film are completely different. All of the names were changed, of course. The original story deals with Broadway people who came to Hollywood but intend to return to Broadway; the film deals only with Hollywood. In the story, the producer they all hate has died. On his death bed, he gave a letter to a fourth person who doesn't hate him quite as much, pointing out how much he helped them by pushing them away, and asking them to create a new stage show in his honor. In the film, he is not dead, but is no longer successful, and wants to jump-start his career by producing a new film that the people who hate him all work on. This creates some added conflict in the movie because not only are they supposed to comply with his wishes, but they also have to work directly with him again; whereas the short story people only have to face his memory, not the actual man. The way the producer wronged each of them is completely different, and in many ways seems significantly worse in the film, though perhaps that's merely because we actually see it play out in the film. In the story, people are telling abbreviated versions of their stories several years after the fact, which doesn't quite have the same impact as seeing the whole thing unfold on screen.

So despite the fact that in some ways the film seems like a completely different story from the original, I actually feel like this was a pretty good adaptation. It clearly drew inspiration from the short story without feeling confined by it, and the changes worked. The original story is interesting, but it's essentially just four people sitting in a room and talking, which would make for a pretty boring movie, so obviously it needed to be changed and expanded to become an engaging feature film. I think the filmmakers succeeded.

This story was originally published in the February 1951 issue of The Ladies' Home Journal, which I was able to order a copy of online, and I have to say that reading it in its original form was worth it for the old advertisements alone. It was originally published under the title "Memorial to a Bad Man," but I've seen it called "Tribute to a Badman" in other places, though I'm not quite sure why. But this one was much more fun to read than the previous year's winner.

Next up: Best Picture Winner From Here to Eternity, based on the novel by James Jones

1951: A Place in the Sun

Screenplay by Harry Brown and Michael Wilson
Adapted from the novel An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser and the play An American Tragedy by Patrick Kearney

A young man with a poor background moves to a new town to work in his rich uncle's factory. Ignored by his relatives who refuse to associate with him socially, he becomes lonely, which leads to a romantic involvement with another lower-class factory worker. When the high society people, including one beautiful woman in particular, start to pay attention to him, he starts neglecting his first girlfriend, preparing to eventually break up with her. Unfortunately, things don't quite work out.

Full disclosure: I did not read the play, so I can only compare the novel and the film. I'm a little curious as to how the play compares, but I'm so sick of this story that I couldn't bring myself to read it. Maybe someday. I think this is my second least favorite book I've read for this project so far (the interminable Emile Zola biography is still the low point). It's not necessarily a bad book; I just didn't like it. Honestly, I think I liked the movie better, although it still isn't my favorite.

In addition to changing the title, the film also gives all the main characters different names. Clyde Griffiths becomes George Eastman, and his rich uncle goes from owning a shirt collar factory to a bathing suit factory. The poor factory girl changes from Roberta Alden to Alice Tripp, and the high society girl changes from Sondra Finchley to Angela Vickers. I've noticed several adaptations so far in which the names where changed, and I still don't really understand why filmmakers do that. It seems to occur more in adaptations that are less faithful overall, so maybe the names are changed to warn devotees of the original stories not to expect the films to follow them too closely? I don't know. Regardless, this film departs significantly from the novel, but as far as I could tell most of the changes served one or more of the following purposes: to reduce the length, to make the protagonist more sympathetic, and/or to give Elizabeth Taylor a bigger role.

The novel is 856 pages and the film is just over 2 hours, so obviously things had to be cut. The entire first section of the book, when Clyde is a youth in Kansas City, is completely eliminated from the film. George mentions some of his background, which is fairly consistent with Clyde's background except that George's father is dead, and there's no mention of the terrible accident that caused Clyde, if not George, to leave Kansas City in the first place. The movie also cuts a lot of the filler parts of the book, which makes sense, but also makes it seem like everything happens much faster than it did in the book. There are a few lines that indicate that time has passed, but it's hard to tell how much. Overall, the cutting for time works, but it does eliminate a lot of the foreshadowing that the novel employs, which is unfortunate because the foreshadowing was one of the few things I liked about the book.

I don't want to spoil too much in case anyone's planning on reading or watching this at some point (again, it's not bad, I just didn't enjoy it), but I will say that Clyde/George gets accused of a serious crime. The thing about it is he was planning on committing this crime, and then changes his mind at the last second, but then it happens by accident anyway. This is true in both versions, but he is much more sympathetic in the movie. Clyde spends a lot more time planning it out and covering his tracks afterwards, and then, at the advice of his lawyers, lies at the trial to say he never planned it in the first place. George, however, barely has time to plan much of anything, and tells the truth at the trial. Also, Clyde seemed to have more of a way out without committing this crime than George did. The reader is clearly supposed to sympathize with Clyde, and in a way I kind of did by the end, but mostly I was like, "It's your own fault, you jerk." I felt a little bit like that toward George as well, but definitely less so, which I think is part of the reason I liked the movie better.

Finally, there's the character of the high society girl. She's not actually in very much of the book, so when I heard that Elizabeth Taylor was playing her I was a bit confused, since I don't generally think of her playing such small roles. So I was not incredibly surprised that her character was significantly more important in the film. Angela and George's romance is much more developed and committed than Clyde and Sondra's, which again makes George more sympathetic than Clyde. Sondra pretty much disappears from the book after Clyde is arrested, whereas we see some of Angela's reactions to the trial. Not that Sondra isn't sympathetic, since it's clear that none of what happens is her fault, but one can't help liking Angela more.

I don't mean to imply that the film completely whitewashes the story. It still touches on many of the dark issues portrayed in the book, if significantly less explicitly (not surprising for 1951 Hollywood). But I'm kind of curious how I would have reacted to the film if I'd watched it without having read the book. I couldn't feel too bad for George because I hated Clyde so much, but maybe if I hadn't known how he acted in the book, I might have liked him in the film. Who knows? Mostly I'm just very glad to be through this so I can move forward with this project.

Fortunately, the next winner was based on a short story, so I'll have a brief respite before the next long novel. So stay tuned for The Bad and the Beautiful, based on the story "Tribute to a Badman" by George Bradshaw.

1950: All About Eve

Screenplay by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Adapted from the short story "The Wisdom of Eve" by Mary Orr

An aging Broadway star takes a seemingly naive and devoted young fan under her wing, but everything is not as it seems.

This Best Picture Winner set the record for most Oscar nominations with 14, which was tied in 1997 and again in 2016, but has still never been surpassed. It is one of the most highly acclaimed films in Hollywood history, yet the short story upon which it is based is all but unknown. Mary Orr wasn't even given screen credit for the original story. The only way I was able to read it was in an anthology called Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen by Stephanie Harrison, where it is stuck in a section entitled "Five All-But-Lost Stories." This seems strangely appropriate for a story about a young actress trying to push an established star out of the way. But I don't want to judge Mankiewicz too harshly for this because he really did a tremendous job of fleshing out and expanding a short story into a long but riveting feature film.

As is often the case, many of the characters' names were changed between page and screen. Margola Cranston became Margo Channing, her husband Clement Howell became her boyfriend Bill Simpson, and her maid Alice became her maid Sadie. Eve Harrington and Lloyd Richards kept their names. Addison DeWitt, who features prominently in the film (brought to life by a delightfully diabolical Oscar-winning performance from George Sanders), is not in the original story at all. Most of the witty dialogue the film is famous for was not in the original (no "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night" in the short story). But perhaps the most striking alteration is the change of perspective.

Both versions start with a successful Eve on her way to Hollywood and then go back in time, but where and how they go back is significantly different. The short story is told in first person, from a character who isn't named, though she's identified as Mrs. Lloyd Richards, so we know she's the equivalent of Karen in the movie. The short story's flashback begins with the narrator seeing Eve and having no idea who she is until Margola tells her most of the story. When Mrs. Richards jumps in, Eve has had her moment in the spotlight, but been pushed aside, and now is begging Margola to help her again. With good reason, Margola refuses, but Mrs. Richards convinces her husband the playwright to put Eve in his new show, and she becomes an even greater success and manages to break up the Richardses' marriage in the process. The movie's flashback, however, starts with Karen introducing Eve to Margo, so both Karen and the audience see Eve's scheming and manipulation as it's playing out, rather than being told about it after the fact. There is quite a bit of off-screen narration, and some of it is from Karen, but Addison and Margo also contribute. Eve does try to break up Karen and Lloyd's marriage in the movie, but does not succeed because of Addison. Karen does help Eve, but it's when she's on her way up, before Karen knows her true nature, not when she seems to be on her way down as in the original story. Eve's star is never shown to fade in the film, but it is promised to do so with the beautiful, profound, and highly disturbing Phoebe-in-the-infinite-mirrors scene, which I won't elaborate on because if you've seen the movie you know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't you need to. Anyway, my point is the original story is intriguing, but I think the film tells it better than the short story does.

Up next: A Place in the Sun, based on the novel An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, which is over 850 pages long, so you probably won't see me for a while. But I'm sure I'll be back someday.

1949: A Letter to Three Wives

Screenplay by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Adapted from the novel Letter to Five Wives by John Klempner

A group of friends gathers, expecting its not-very-secretly despised final member. Instead of her presence, they receive a letter indicating that she is running away with one of their husbands, not specifying which one. The remaining women spend the entire day reflecting on their marriages and wondering.

This is a difficult adaptation to evaluate because the book and the movie are so incredibly different, yet both are, if not good, certainly well done. I didn't particularly like the story, and resented many of its implications about women, but it was intriguing and very well-executed in both versions, despite their many differences. The five wives in the book are Deborah, Gerry, Lora May, Martha, and Rita. Gerry and Martha are eliminated from the movie entirely, and the other three are altered so much that they're barely recognizable. In both versions, Rita's a writer, Lora May married her boss, and Deborah doesn't understand what her husband ever saw in her, but most of the details of their lives are completely different. The husband thief's name changes from Addie Joss to Addie Ross, and though I don't want to spoil anything I feel I have to mention that she steals a different woman's husband in the movie than she does in the book. In both versions, Addie is constantly mentioned, but we don't really see her. However, parts of the movie are narrated by Addie, which I thought was a very interesting choice by the filmmakers, and one that worked surprisingly well.

Both the book and the movie switch back and forth between the present and past as the wives reflect, but even the way they do that is different. The book's flashbacks focus on one small incident at a time, so each wife has several flashback sections, with those of other wives in between. The movie gives each wife one big flashback section that tells her entire story. I don't think one way is better than the other: the way the book does it increases the suspense, but the movie's way is definitely less confusing; I kept getting the characters in the book mixed up at first. But by the end of the book I felt like I knew all the wives, whereas in the movie by the time the third wife's flashback was finished, I'd almost forgotten about the first. If they had tried to do one big flashback at a time with five, the movie would have been ridiculously long and no one would remember the first one by the end. The film's flashback format definitely works better for fewer characters.

In general, the changes are such that the reduction from five to three wives is almost completely seamless. If one didn't know that there were originally five, I doubt one would suspect that anybody was missing (sorry Gerry and Martha). There is one part of the film when Rita is talking to Lora May and says something like, "You're just as scared as the rest of us," which seemed a little strange because you don't usually say "the rest of us" when you're talking about yourself and one other person, but that was the only remnant of the two eliminated wives that I noticed. Maybe it was there intentionally to pay tribute to them. Or maybe I'm thinking way too hard about this. Not that that's something I'd ever do.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz also directed this film, and won the Best Director Oscar for it as well. The following year he also won both Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, becoming the first person to win a second adapted screenplay Oscar. This was, of course, for the Best Picture winning (and depending on whom you ask, possibly should have been Best Actress winning) All About Eve, based on the short story "The Wisdom of Eve" by Mary Orr.

1948: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Screenplay by John Huston
Adapted from the novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven

Two young, down-and-out Americans join up with an old, experienced prospector to mine for gold in Mexico and discover that it's a far more difficult and complicated job than they had anticipated.

I had seen this movie before, but literally the only thing I remembered about it was the famous line about "stinking badges". Unlike the movie Casablanca, which originated most of its iconic lines, the stinking badges part was, in fact, taken from the book, although the language in the rest of the sentence was toned down a bit in the movie. In fact, apart from a couple notable exceptions, my overall impression is that the movie was very consistent with the book, except that it eliminated most of the swearing. But this was 1948, so that shouldn't surprise anyone.

The book is quite good, but I think most of the changes the film made actually enhanced the story. There are several characters in the book who are described in great detail and then disappear after about a chapter, and the film combines some of them, which results in stronger characters and ties everything together nicely. A couple of Curtin's important moments are given to Dobbs in the film, which I initially thought was because Dobbs is played by Humphrey Bogart and they wanted to feature him more, but after watching further I realized a later character change wouldn't have made sense if they hadn't substituted Dobbs for Curtin earlier. The film eliminates several sections of the book, but none of them were essential to the story. And the parts of the story that didn't change were pretty much flawlessly transitioned to the screen: in particular, Walter Huston acts exactly as Howard is described in the book, and the way the other two become gradually more and more disillusioned and less and less sane is portrayed beautifully, and much more concisely, on screen. I'm tempted to say that the movie is actually better than the book, which was no mean feat, so I salute screenwriter John Huston, who also directed and had a cameo in the film.

The one change I objected to was regarding the man who unexpectedly joins the trio at their camp. For some reason, the film changed his name from Lacaud to Cody and added a rather unnecessary backstory. Also, spoiler alert, in the movie he gets killed by bandits, whereas in the book he lives.  I guess they did this so Curtin has something to do at the end (go to comfort Cody's widow), but it kind of felt like they just wanted to increase the violence, which certainly was not needed. But otherwise, it's an extraordinary adaptation, and one of the most well-deserved winners of this Oscar so far.

The next winner was A Letter to Three Wives, based on the novel Letter to Five Wives by John Klempner, so stay tuned to find out what happened to two of the wives.