Old movies and old books

Lately I've been noticing the "based on a novel by..." or "based on a play by..." in the credits for the movies I watch on TCM (when I get a chance) and then I get all itchy to read the originals.

Right now, I have Brewster's Millions on my Kindle waiting for me, and I'd like to read the original Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, though it doesn't seem to be available at my library (going to have to ILL that one) and I've seen Alice Adams twice now and just have to get my hands on Tarkington's book before long.

Do y'all have any particular favorites or recommendations (or even anti-recommendations!) of books made into movies back in the day?

I find it fairly interesting the way some of these books were apparently hot sellers and made into movies, both of which are now mostly forgotten.

Oh, you'll like Brewster's Millions. The book is better than the movie. I tried to read Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but it's better taken in small doses. (It was originally written serialized for monthly magazine publication.) An amusing theme, but tiresome over the long haul. It doesn't really go anywhere.

Have you seen The Enchanted April? It does a fairly good job, but the book is all about inner transformations, and the charming turn of phrase is lost. Some of the action isn't understandable if you haven't read the book.

Oh, I'm looking forward to reading Brewster's Millions by the pool this weekend - I saw the Haye's Code version of the movie and was intrigued by the changes Wikipedia told me about. That's a lot of why I put the Anita Loos on my list, too. I'm curious to see how she manages the story in the 20s vs. the movie from the 50s.

I don't think I've seen The Enchanted April, but it's purple on my browser so I must have looked into it at some point. I'll have to check it out more closely!

I liked James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific. It's more insightful and less cheerful than the musical. Daphne DuMaurier had several bestsellers in the forties that were made into films. Frenchman's Creek is fun and very TCM. If you like adventure stories, King Solomon's Mines is much better than the film.

My anti-recommendation: never, ever has there been done a satisfactory or halfway decent production of The Count of Monte Christo. If you love that book, avoid the films like the plague. I mean: old, fat, faded, blond Depardieu as young, small and black-haired, black-eyed Edmond Dantès? It beggars belief. The old versions, back to the silents, always omit subplots or minor characters, and the casting errors are legion.

4> Oooh, I'm going to have to put Frenchman's Creek on my list! I loved Rebecca when I read it in middle school (so much so that I may have forgotten to return the book to the school library...), but never thought to look for more of du Maurier's work.

>5 MissWatson: On the other hand, Leslie Howard as The Scarlet Pimpernel is just great.

>7 aviddiva: Oh yes, that is so true. And I have to confess that I quite enjoyed Douglas Fairbanks jr in The Corsican Brothers despite the fact that it bears little resemblance to the book.

Excellent topic @keristars!

My favorite movie growing up was the TV mini-series, with Hayley Mills, based on Elspeth Huxley's The Flame Trees of Thika. I still love the film, and I think it's much better than the book.

I haven't yet read James Hilton's Lost Horizon, but I like the film. I love his book, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and would like to see the filmed version with Robert Donat.

I'm a screwball comedy and films noir lover myself. I can recommend the filmed version of Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock (Ray Milland!); the novel isn't that great. I'm a fan of Fearing's poetry, though--which I think captures the noir mystique better anyway, particularly "Dirge" and "Love 20¢ the First Quarter-Mile."

Many of the novels on which great films noir were based just seem like pulp relics now. Library of America has American Noir: 11 Classic Crime Novels for those interested, but some of the novels are of value simply for their connection to the film movement. And I've not read The Glass Key, but it ranks as one of my favorite noir films. One more for the TBR stack!

One of my favorite films is The Thin Man, and while I like the book, I do think the film much improves things.

I would love to hear some recommendations for screwball comedies that were based on books (not plays) if anyone knows of some.

And one final thought: I Know Where I'm Going! is an original screenplay, but it's so steeped in Hebridean island lore and locations that it seems like a novel come to life on the screen when I watch it--if that makes sense. It's not a book, but it's a movie that feels like one.

>4 BonnieJune54: I tried to read Jamaica Inn because I like the film--which I know was thoroughly panned and is very campy. But I found duMaurier's writing style commercial and very much of its period. Any recommendations for another one to try?

>5 MissWatson: I have The Black Count on my shelf right now and am looking forward to it. Dumas is one of my favorite authors. I don't think I've ever liked an adaptation of any of his works--although the Leonardo DiCaprio-led version of The Man in the Iron Mask was campy fun in parts.

Not DuMaurier, but how about Mrs. Miniver?

>9 LibraryPerilous: I know what you mean about I Know Where I'm Going, lovely film.

Has anyone here any love for Hobson's Choice (based on a play)? It has Charles Laughton hamming. It has David Lean directing. Beautiful minor comedy in b/w set in northern england in a cobbler's shop, totally stolen by Brenda De Banzie. I'd never heard of it but picked it up for Laughton last year and was delighted. It's a perfect wet sunday afternoon with tea and choc biscuits film.

Now, Voyager!, the movie starring Bette Davis, is an excellent rendition of the book by Olive Higgins Prouty. It's another of those "old-fashioned" stories where there is a true struggle to do what is right.

I had no idea Now, Voyager! came from a book. Heavens. Is the book as engrossing?

I know Mildred Pierce was a book - by Cain I think, but never tried it on paper. Nor, to be honest, the Winslett version.

Huh! Mildred Pierce is recommended to me based on Now, Voyager!

Yes, the book is well worth a read.

Thank you. Another candidate for the TBR pile :)

I just learned that Now, Voyager! and Stella Dallas are by the same author. Thank you LT.

15> That reminds me: Vera Caspary's Laura was reissued a few years ago by CUNY under their Feminist Press imprint's Femmes Fatales line.

I highly recommend Dorothy Hughes's The Blackbirder from that series.

Has anyone read any of Helen MacInness's books? Above Suspicion is a favorite film, but I found the novel slow-going.

For you noir lovers, TCM is running a noir writers film fest this June. Eddie Muller has written synopses of the authors they are covering. Here's a link to main page.:

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/614562|0/Friday-Night-Spotlight-in-June-No...

I have read most of Helen MacInnes's books. She was born in 1908 and sometimes it shows in her female characters. They can get rather deferential to the men. Decision at Delphi moved along at a nice pace and the Greek politics were interesting.
>19 LibraryPerilous: Thanks for the link. I have only read Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

>20 BonnieJune54: Thanks, I'll give Decision at Delphi a try.

I would recommend James M. Cain if you like Hammett and Chandler. He wrote well. I've not read Mildred Pierce, but I've dipped into some of his other novels.

>12 nessreader: The Lean film sounds lovely. I'll keep an eye out for it.

I would like to read The Postman Always Rings Twice. Both the book and the film are well thought of. The first line is good. "They threw me off the hay truck about noon." It is interesting how they managed to film books that were so code unfriendly.

I read Postman always rings twice in April and liked it very much.

A modern noir novel set in 30's LA is Ask the Dust by John Fante, also a decent film.

>22 BonnieJune54: Largely because Hays and his cronies weren't very good at getting innuendo, I suspect. ;) Although quite a few films were hacked up due to the Hays Code--or had their plots changed dramatically from the original source. Noir fared much worse than screwball comedies--it's easier to cheat the censors when you are being funny.

In some cases, such as It Happened One Night (the Walls of Jericho!) or The Awful Truth (oh, that cat!), the code probably even forced directors to make stronger films (or at least to be more ingenious.) Ernst Lubitsch certainly took on the challenge with a wink and a nod. But I still have no idea how he got To Be or Not to Be (‘Oh yes, I saw him in Hamlet once. What he did to Shakespeare we are doing now to Poland.’) past the censors--maybe by the sheer force of Jack Benny's popularity?

Here are a some interesting links I found:

http://hayscodeandfilmnoir.blogspot.com/
http://thegoodthebadtheinsulting.blogspot.com/2012/03/big-sleep-censorship-and-r...

Apparently, the book version of Crossfire, a novel titled The Brick Foxhole by Richard Brooks, dealt with homophobia, not anti-Semitism, and this was changed for the film because of the Hays Code. I haven't watched Crossfire for years, but I'm now intrigued to read the novel.

(18) I love the film Laura, and recently found the book. It's on the TBR mountain...

I just listened to E. M. Forster's A Room With A View. I saw the movie decades ago, and have ordered it and the print book from the library. The only thing I remember from the movie is the bathing scene. Now I know how it ties in with the whole story. Looking forward to watching it again, as well as revisiting some of Forster's quotations.

Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan is great in both the film (Jennifer Jones/Joseph Cotten) and print versions. Romantic noir...

Five Branded Women, novel by Ugo Pirro; a group of women are outcast from an italian village during WW2 for consorting with the nazis, unusual war story told from the female perspective. A great film.

My impressions of the two A Room with a View films:

I watched the 2007 Masterpiece Theatre version first. I thought it was awkwardly cut. Cecil and George would have been better cast oppositely, as I found Cecil quite dashing, and not at all off-putting. Laurence Fox seems to have too much vitality to be the repressed Cecil; and those scenes which supposedly show him as disagreeable seemed to be missing, or not well defined. Once I read the film notes, I understood the casting a bit better. The Emersons were played by an actual father and son duo. Timothy Spall (the older Mr. Emerson) is best known as Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter films. Sophie Thompson as Charlotte was perfect casting. I knew her from Emma, where she plays the ditzy Miss Bates.
The videography was beautiful. Florence was portrayed lovingly, particularly the grand statuary and the countryside. The kiss missed it's mark. I wanted to see what George saw of Lucy's entrance to his private fiower field, and what inspired his reaction. Instead, it was quite awkward to begin, though it did gain points for the lengthy response.
I was impressed that they found Windy Corners in Surrey, and it was perfectly as described.
There was a Rome scene added that was superfluous.
The worst part is the ten years after addition to the story. How dare anyone add such an awful bitter ending to a story that was meant to stop at the honeymoon.

The 1986 version has more to admire. The filming was more leisurely. It too found the glorious Tuscan fields, but the same Florence statuary was filmed in an entirely other fashion, portraying violence instead of grandeur. This Cecil was spot-on, and we all understood both Lucy's attraction and ultimate repulsion. This is the bathing scene I remember, and it was so fun.
The kiss scene was again shot from the wrong point of view, was again more awkward than necessary, and was too short. Showing George's run back to town was lovely, though.
Judi Dench as Eleanor Lavish was not quite as successful as Sinéad Cusack was in the 2007 film, perhaps because she comes across as much smarter than heedless Ms Lavish. Maggie Smith as cousin Charlotte didn't work for me. Though she managed the repressed spinster part, she was less successful portraying that certain shallow conventionality that motivates Charlotte. This Frank was a better portrayal, he actually got some film time and was true to the novel. This version does more justice to the novel, IMHO.

I liked both Mr. Bebes, but I far and away preferred Elaine Cassidy (2007) to Helena Bonham-Carter (1986) as Lucy. She had distinctive looks and carried the repressed passion more successfully.

>9 LibraryPerilous: I think it was the 2002 version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, starring Martin Clunes, that I've seen. If that's the one, it has a remarkably old feel to it.

Can't remember where I saw the reference, but I borrowed the Hallmark movie, Stranded, which was supposedly a re-make of The Swiss Family Robinson. It is frankly, an abomination; and boring, to boot. The original story is good enough to have been filmed intact many times. This editor decided there wasn't enough adventure, tension, sex appeal. Contrary to the book, there are three sons and a daughter, (original four sons) the youngest gets scooped up by pirates and sees the world (rather than having ostrich races on the island), the pirates arrive after seven years looking for gold and an escaped female kidnap victim. We see all kinds of modern family tensions which would have been unthinkable in the book. The first ridiculous child action is the daughter rejecting coconut milk, spitting it out and yelling at her father. This, just after surviving the wreck of the ship and spent time in the sea. Even my modern children wouldn't have acted so poorly.

Not to mention, they were being transported to New South Wales penal colony, and first mate Blount had the hots for Mrs. Robinson. And they blow up the ship in order to try to gain the attention of a passing ship, rather than scavenging all the materials. And their first meal is one of their few chickens, roasted, using up their capital, as the Mrs. R flippantly states to her dissenting husband.

I think abomination sounds about right. The family in the novel is quite pious and well-behaved.

The Scapegoat by Du Maurier, both the film and the book, are not to be missed.

Please Don't Eat the Daisies by Jean Kerr and the film starring David Nivin was very pleasant. Need I say, The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man?

One of my favorites, To Kill a Mockingbird, I can't tell you whether the book or the movie is my favorite.

True Grit and The Oxbow Incident, although I can't really recommend the second one. :P The Virginian by Owen Wister (well, mostly the book, but the 1929 film has Gary Cooper).

I really enjoy the Nero Wolfe TV series that A&E put out, and of course I love those mysteries.

>12 nessreader:

Here's where I heard about Hobson's Choice! Loved the movie, and thanks for the recommendation.

Resurrecting this thread. . .

Daughter just finished reading I Capture the Castle and I'm almost done.

There is a movie made from the book and I have it on order from the library. It is rated R, so I looked up why that was on IMDB.

You'll recall that Topaz was something of a nudist. . . there is a nude upper body shot of the actress, apparently. There was a ton of discussion about this on IMDB, in relation to the capricious nature of the rating system.

Has anyone watched this movie?

>36 SilverKitty: I saw it when it first came out, and thought they did a good job. The characters are never going to be quite as you imagine them, but in this case they weren't far off. I was afraid they'd give it a romantic happy ending, but I was happy with what they did in the end. I don't think I noticed the R rating ... how ridiculous!

Our societal concept of what is acceptable immodesty has certainly shifted. I watched a TV series recently that had full nudity and sex.

Several years ago, I recommended The Milagro Beanfield War to a very smart teenager, and also recommended the movie. Her mother wanted to know why I was suggesting an R rated movie to her daughter. Huh?! Yes, the journalist and the political agitator spent a night together. We know this because they talked one morning at his cabin. The film came out in 1988.

>37 Sakerfalcon: Thanks Sakerfalcon. I'm glad they don't change the ending - or at least don't give it a romantic happy ending - I did wonder about that, but I think that's part of the reason the book is a good one.

>38 2wonderY: My teenager is mid-teenage. I have also thought about watching Dances with Wolves with her, but then realized that it's R-rated. I think it's something she should see before she leaves home, although the small screen cannot do justice to the scenery.

>39 SilverKitty: I think the R rating in Dances With Wolves is due to the violence. I can't watch it again, due to some things that happen near the end, but it is worth at least one watch.

>28 aviddiva:: Love, love, love Robert Nathan and thought Portrait of Jennie was especially poignant, both in novel & film adaptation as well.