John Steinbeck and His Films (Michael Burrows, 2008)
John Steinbeck and His Films (Michael Burrows, 2008)
MICHAEL BURROWS
I
N THE LATE 1930S, Steinbeck became disillusioned with the novel as a
creative force, turning his thoughts to film as a means of communication.
Influenced by Pare Lorentz (particularly by The Fight for Life, on which he
had worked), Steinbeck planned to emulate the documentary film-maker: in
this regard 1941’s The Forgotten Village is evidence of some success.
However, apart from films others made of his works, Steinbeck stands
alone in having made several excursions into the realm of producing original
screenplays. This was no dilettantism, for he believed in the influential power
of both cinema and television. In Steinbeck and Film, Millichap observes
that in The Pearl, “as in his best fiction of the 1930s Steinbeck fuses his
universal allegory with filmic realism. Perhaps planning ahead for a screen-
play, Steinbeck’s prose in the novel often takes a cinematic point of view”
(Millichap 97). In 1939, Steinbeck wrote to his former college roommate,
Carlton Sheffield: “Hollywood is breaking up; there’ll be a new set-up before
long and decent pictures can be made—and I want to learn the technique.”
Ultimately, Steinbeck confided in Gore Vidal: “Television spelled the end of
the novel.” A chronological survey of all of the pieces shows the extent of
Steinbeck’s involvement in film—little known and often misunderstood, but
far from being an inconsiderable activity.
Both 1939’s Of Mice and Men and the following year’s The Grapes of
Wrath were adapted for the screen so expertly that they have become film
classics, just as the texts have remained literary monuments. Yet for the eager
writer to have two such signal successes as inaugural cinematic conversions
was to prove a mixed blessing, for none of the successive films was equal
in excellence to these original productions. It is coincidental that Director
Lewis Milestone propelled both All Quiet on the Western Front and Of Mice
and Men to iconic status. His involvement with the latter arose fortuitously.
A disagreement over the trend of Milestone’s work on Road Show caused
producer Hal Roach to dismiss him as its director. Milestone, however, sued
successfully and invested the settlement award in a filming of Of Mice and Men,
with himself as director, totally unburdened by the dictates of his producer.
A prologue followed by artistic credits is commonplace today, and this
artistic and effective innovation was probably introduced in this 1939 film. It
C 2008 The Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies/ Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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was released in sepia color which enhanced the image, capturing the rather
bleak ambience of the story. The principal players were then comparatively
unknown—Burgess Meredith (who was to become a lifelong friend of Stein-
beck) as George with Lon Chaney, Jr., as Lennie. In support were Charles
Bickford as Slim and Betty Field as Curley’s wife. The film profited both from
Aaron Copland’s arresting musical score and a ranch setting which Steinbeck
selected to ensure fidelity. Of this film, Steinbeck observed, “It is a beautiful
job. . . . here Milestone has done a curious, lyrical thing. It hangs together and
is underplayed” (Steinbeck: A Life in Letters 195). Nominated for an Academy
Award, the film still failed commercially. In desperation, United Artists tried
to market it as a “sexploitation” piece, featuring Betty Field in seductive pose.
The 1992 remake with Gary Sinise (who also directed) and John Malkovich
as Lennie is a most worthy contender, faithfully wrought and profiting from
color photography. Variety recorded performances as being “sterling.” Later, a
1981 TV version with former child actor Robert Blake (who portrays George)
and Randy Quaid as Lennie replicates the 1939 original, following Milestone’s
script and dedicated to his memory; he had died a year earlier.
“What attracted you to The Grapes of Wrath?” Peter Bogdanovich asked
director John Ford, who replied: “I just liked it, that’s all . . . being about
simple people—and the story was similar to the famine in Ireland, when they
threw the people off the land and left them wandering on the roads to starve”
(Bogdanovich 76). With such motivation it is not surprising that Steinbeck
found the 1940 film to have “a hard, truthful ring. No punches were pulled—
in fact, with descriptive matter removed, it is a harsher thing than the book,
by far” (Steinbeck: A Life in Letters 195). The powerful, highly moving odyssey
of the migration of a dispossessed family of tenant farmers from the arid lands
of Oklahoma to their rejection by a hostile California had exercised the mind
and heart of Darryl F Zanuck, head of Twentieth Century Fox. He initiated the
acquisition of Steinbeck’s monumental work, but Steinbeck placed his $75,000
film fee in escrow, wary of Zanuck’s intentions. However, no question of
repudiating the contract arose; Zanuck had detailed a personal representative
to visit the migrants to investigate the appalling conditions. When he reported,
“It’s worse than in the book,” Zanuck not only pledged Fox’s support but also
moderated his own politics. He was also responsible for the editing of the
final film. Under John Ford’s direction. Henry Fonda as Tom, Jane Darwell in
the role of Ma Joad, and John Carradine as Casy the Preacher, the film was
to attract Academy Awards for director and supporting actress. And critics
greeted the film rapturously, with Howard Barnes of the New York Herald
Tribune writing: “A genuinely great motion picture which makes one proud
to have even a small share of the affairs of the cinema.” Critic Basil Wright
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Marlon Brando in a studio still from Elia Kazan’s production of Viva Zapata!
spoke for many with his verdict: “A sincere and searing indictment of man ’s
indifference to his fellows.”
In Dubious Battle has not been filmed, although James Cagney had
expressed interest in playing Max, and Pare Lorentz was also keen to be
involved. The next work to be filmed is the little known The Forgotten Village
(1941), notable in that it witnessed the author’s first excursion into writing
directly for the screen. In his preface to the “Book of the Film” Steinbeck
stated that “his working method was to write a very elastic story and then
let the movie crew go into the village, make friends, talk and listen.” After
arrangements for Spencer Tracy to act as narrator failed to materialize, Burgess
Meredith took over the role. What makes the film unique is that the people
involved re-enacted what had actually happened to them. The wise-woman
who affirmed her belief in the bitter airs was a real curandera, a traditional
folk healer or shaman; the teacher who ascribed young Paco’s sickness to the
pueblo well water was the one actually concerned. The film was produced
and directed by Herbert Kline, who had previously made 1939’s Lights Out in
Europe. The New York Board of Censors had decided that the film was indecent
and promoted socialism. Although Steinbeck had issued an indignant rebuttal,
it was only the intervention of Eleanor Roosevelt that resulted in the ban’s
being lifted. America’s entry into World War II and delays attendant upon the
censorship problems, however, militated against this little film. Although it
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The cast of The Moon Is Down (1943), including (center, from left with man in trenchcoat
and moustache, who is E.J. Ballantine): E.J. Ballantine as the traitor George Corell, Cedric
Hardwicke as Col. Lanser, Henry Travers as Mayor Orden, Lee J. Cobb as Dr. Albert Winter,
and Dorris Bowdon as Molly Morden.
on The Moon Is Down), the film was made during a very significant period of
World War II and was received enthusiastically—the New York Times feeling
it to be “a charming film” and with James Agee settling for “endearing.” In
1954, Video Theatre adapted this film to a half-hour format. It again featured
J. Carrol Naish, with Anne Bancroft in the role taken by Dorothy Lamour in
the earlier feature film.
A much more significant work, The Pearl, filmed in 1947, was the
first Mexican film to achieve an international distribution. Director Emilio
Fernandez’s earlier work (Maria Candelaria) had won the 1943 Grand Prize
at Cannes; The Pearl was awarded the International Prize at San Sebastian.
Steinbeck, Fernandez and Jack Wagner combined their efforts to produce a
screenplay. Highly regarded by critics, the film failed commercially. The editor
of England’s Film Review praised the production for having “superb pictorial
composition, lovely photography and sensitive direction.” He felt it was truly
“a poem in celluloid.” Much later, in 2001, a film of The Pearl was made in
America in color, under director Alfredo Zacarias, with actor Richard Harris.
In 1948, Steinbeck’s friend Ed Ricketts was killed by a train when he
attempted to cross railroad tracks in his car. Also, in that year, Steinbeck’s
second marriage collapsed. Struggling to rescue a professional reputation that
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Elia Kazan also directed East of Eden, with the last quarter of this saga
being filmed in 1955. Utilizing angular shots and doing all possible to produce
a cogent piece, Kazan was nonetheless limited by James Dean’s mannered
acting as Cal. Irritation on the set helped to give a validity to the scenes between
Raymond Massey (as the father) and the rebellious, sullen son. Nominated
for an Academy Award, James Dean lost the Oscar to that intuitive essay in
loneliness immortalized by Ernest Borgnine in Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty. Jo
Van Fleet, a newcomer to the screen, won as Best Supporting Actress for her
perceptive playing as the mother. Pauline Kael found the film, “amazingly
high-strung, feverishly poetic . . . violent moments and charged scenes without
much coherence.”
When Steinbeck announced that it was “probably the best motion pic-
ture I have ever seen,” one concludes that either he was being perverse—
even provocative—or that his values had changed. In truth, he was hurt and
bitter; he had felt humiliated in his second marriage, and he still resented the
almost wholesale rejection of his inventive Burning Bright. That novelette—
Steinbeck’s third—was intended as a religious parable; originally, it had been
tentatively called “Everyman.” It not only failed as a book, but Peter Lisca
quotes the conclusion of play’s producer that “it was dead the first night” (Lisca
154). Similarly, the 1981 eight-hour, multi-million dollar TV production of
East of Eden lacks depth, yet it contains magnificent scenery. Jane Seymour
and both Timothy and Sam Bottoms gave adequate performances in an over-
long, over-wrought serial.
The 1957 screenplay of The Wayward Bus, credited to Ivan Moffat,
was based on Steinbeck’s novel with the same title. Imbued with religious
symbolism, it provides a nondescript view of an assortment of passengers and
their reactions to changes and disclosures. Hombre tackled this theme much
better, as did Ship of Fools. Unfortunately, Frenchman Director Victor Vicas
ignored Steinbeck’s fairly straightforward narrative by injecting symbolic close-
ups and arty angles. Steinbeck, Kazan and Eugene Solow (screenwriter of Of
Mice and Men) had all attempted to refine the script, but it was to no avail:
reception of the film was negative.
In 1961, Barnaby Conrad, writer and producer, combined with Direc-
tor Louis Bispo to film Flight. Unfortunately, the length of this feature film
deterred distributors, and to achieve a release, Mr. Conrad cut the piece to
a twenty-minute version. Steinbeck had suggested his own appearance to
support the filmmakers, commenting: “The most exact translation of story
to film I have ever seen. There is no softening, no sweetening, no attempt
to sentimentalize” (Benson 887).
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Dan Dailey as Ernest Horton and Jayne Mansfield as Camille Oakes in a Twentieth-Century
Fox studio movie still from The Wayward Bus (1957).
Cannery Row did not appear as a film until 1982. Isolated attempts to
film the novel shortly after its 1945 publication proved abortive, but were
revived when the successive work, Sweet Thursday, emerged in 1954. Rodgers
& Hammerstein produced a stage musical, entitled Pipe Dream, based on
both novels, and the contract also attracted related film rights. However, the
enterprise closed fairly quickly; nor were any film offers forthcoming.
In 1976, a screenwriter, David S Ward, interested a producer in the
project, and the combined screenplay, simply entitled Cannery Row, emerged
under MGM’s banner with Nick Nolte as Doc. Narration was by John Huston,
and David Ward undertook both screenwriting and direction. Photography
was by famed Sven Nykvist. Halliwell was brutal in his dismissal of this film.
He wrote: “Badly out of its time, this sentimental realism . . . emerged as a
bloodless, stultifying entertainment” (Halliwell 141).
In response to my inquiry in 1969, Steinbeck’s Literary Agent stated that
The Winter of Our Discontent “has not been filmed and I’m not sure it ever will
be.” But fourteen years later it was. Prepared for TV in 1983, the feature starred
Donald Sutherland, but although it impressed, it rarely inspired. However, the
Los Angeles Times found Mr. Sutherland’s performance to be “luminous.”
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Filmography
1939 Of Mice and Men
1940 The Grapes of Wrath
1941 The Forgotten Village
1942 Tortilla Flat
1943 The Moon Is Down
Lifeboat
1945 A Medal for Benny
1947 The Pearl
1949 The Red Pony
1952 Viva Zapata!
1955 East of Eden
1957 The Wayward Bus
1961 Flight
1967 America and Americans (16mm)
1968 Travels with Charley (16mm)
1973 The Red Pony
1981 Of Mice and Men
1981 East of Eden
1982 Cannery Row (incorporating Sweet Thursday)
1983 The Winter of Our Discontent
1989 The Chrysanthemums (16mm)
1989 Raid (16mm)
1989 Molly Morgan (16mm)
1992 Of Mice and Men
2001 The Pearl
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