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.