WILLIAM FAULKNER AND HOLLYWOOD

April 1932 Faulkner signed a six week contract with MGM.

Produced Today We Live (1933)

Based on Faulkner’s short story “Turn About”

Unproduced Night Bird Manservant The College Window Absolution Flying in the Mail War Birds

FAULKNER AND MGM

Met Howard Hawks and became a contract writer.

Collaborated with Howard Hawks on the movie The Road to Glory (1936).

Later Faulkner worked on other movies for Fox Slave Ship (1937) Gunga Din (1939)

FAULKNER AND 20TH CENTURY FOX

After a slump in novel sales, Faulkner returned to Hollywood.

They made him sign a seven year contract which they claimed was “only a formality.”

Worked on a Hemingway adaptation titled To Have and To Have Not (1944). First movie to feature Humphrey

Bogart and Lauren Bacall together on screen.

Began writing a screenplay adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s detective novel The Big Sleep (1946). Would also feature Bogart and

Bacall

FAULKNER AND WARNER BROTHERS

Today We Live (1933)

The Story of Temple Drake (1933)

The Long Hot Summer (1958)

The Sound and the Fury (1959)

Sanctuary (1961)

Intruder in the Dust (1949)

The Tarnished Angels (1957)

The Reivers (1961)

Tomorrow (1972)

TOTAL FILM ADAPTATIONS OF FAULKNER

1st film adaptation

Based on short story “Turn About”

Only film that he co-wrote

Romanticized film version

TODAY WE LIVE (1933)

The Story of Temple Drake The Long Hot Summer

HOLLYWOOD SENSATIONALISM

The Tarnished Angels

Intruder in the Dust

TomorrowThe Reivers

BEST FILM ADAPTATIONS

1957: The Tarnished Angels

1955: Land Of the Pharaohs

1948: Adventures of Don Juan

1947: Deep Valley1945 -1946: The Big

Sleep1945 God is My co-

Pilot, Mildred Pierce, The Southerner

1944: To Have and To Have Not

1943: Northern Pursuit, Air Force, Background To Danger

1939: Drums Along the Mohawk, Gunga Din

SCREENPLAYS ON OTHER WORKS

Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner

Only film in history to have two Nobel prize winning authors working on the same picture

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall fell in love while on the set

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944)

Sanctuary Published as a Modern Library Edition in March 1932

Faulkner began work in May at Metro-Goldwyn Meyer on his own short story “Turn About” with Howard Hawks

Paramount bought the rights for $6000.Broke every code except for three- flag

desecration, human branding, and sex between the black and white races

Hayes office called Sanctuary “the vilest thing imaginable”

HAYES CODE AND THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE

Malcolm Cowley seemingly claims that Faulkner invented “The legend of the South”

Allen Tate claims not legend mythIndirectly “woman’s movie”, the genre of Film Noir, Southern GothicThe way we view the South in literature

and film

MISCELLANEOUS THINGS FAULKNER IS CREDITED WITH

Barton Fink is loosely based on William Faulkner life and character

In the movie Raising Arizona, the escaped convicts are the Snopes Brothers

In O Brother Where Art Thou? Vernon T Waldrip is the name of a character referred to in The Wild Palms

Referenced in The Big Lebvwski

FAULKNER IN FILMS

Hopefully coming soon….As I Lay Dying directed by James Franco

FAULKNER TODAY