1981: On Golden Pond

Screenplay by Ernest Thompson
Adapted from the play On Golden Pond by Ernest Thompson

Norman and Ethel Thayer plan to spend another quiet, uneventful season at their summer home on Golden Pond, until their estranged daughter, Chelsea, turns up with a new boyfriend and asks them to watch his 13-year-old son for a month. Grumpy, prickly 80-year-old Norman forms a surprising bond with the young boy, who helps him regain an appreciation for what he has in life.

Act One of the play is almost exactly the same as the movie. A few lines here and there were slightly changed, eliminated, or added, and there were a couple more scene changes, but overall, from the beginning until Chelsea and Bill leave for Europe, the adaptation is quite consistent. I did note that probably the most famous line in the movie, when Ethel calls Norman her "knight in shining armor," wasn't actually in the play, but the lines leading up to it were. However, Act Two was changed significantly for the screen. Given that the playwright wrote the screenplay, I was rather surprised by just how different the two versions ended up. Granted, several of the lines from the second half of the play do make their way into the film, and the general message is the same, but the film made some major additions that I think greatly enhanced the story.

The character of the boy, Billy, is much better developed in the movie. He doesn't really do that much in the play after he's left with the Thayers, but in the film he pouts for a while and makes it clear that he doesn't want to be there. Eventually, however, Norman starts growing on him just as he starts growing on Norman. The movie adds a whole storyline about a giant trout that Norman has been trying to catch for years. Billy gets really into helping Norman look for this fish, and it contributes significantly to the development of their relationship. It's such a big part of the film that, since I had seen it before, I could hardly believe that nothing about this was even mentioned in the play. I guess it helped that they could actually film on the water, whereas in the play they could only talk about fishing after the fact, so the movie lent itself to more happening on their fishing trips. Still, this addition, and others that similarly contributed to the Billy/Norman relationship, definitely improved the story.

I'm not saying that the play was bad, but the movie was unquestionably better. It kind of reminded me of 1955's winner, Marty, in that the adaptation felt like a later draft of the original script. In this screenplay, Ernest Thompson strengthened the main weakness of his play: namely, Billy was underdeveloped as a character and underutilized in the story. And the result was definitely Oscar-worthy.

Coming up next: Missing, based on a book by Thomas Hauser that was originally called The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice, but the title was later changed to Missing.