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James Rufus Agee (November 27, 1909 – May 16, 1955) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, screenwriter, journalist, poet, and film critic. In the 1940s he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family (1957), won the author a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. Image File history File links Broom_icon. ...
is the 331st day of the year (332nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ...
is the 136th day of the year (137th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1955 Gregorian calendar). ...
A novel is an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction, usually in story form; the writer of a novel is a novelist. ...
Screenwriters, scenarists, or script writers, are authors who write the screenplays from which movies and television programs are made. ...
For other uses, see Journalist (disambiguation). ...
The poor poet A poet is a person who writes poetry. ...
This article is about motion pictures. ...
This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
The 1940s decade ran from 1940 to 1949. ...
A Death in the Family is an autobiographical novel by author James Agee, set in Knoxville, Tennessee. ...
See also: 1956 in literature, other events of 1957, 1958 in literature, list of years in literature. ...
The Pulitzer Prize is an American award regarded as the highest national honor in print journalism, literary achievements, and musical composition. ...
Biography Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee at Highland Avenue and 15th Street (renamed James Agee Street in 1999) to Hugh James Agee and Laura Whitman Tyler, and had distant French and English ancestry on his father's side. When Agee was six, his father died in an automobile accident, and from the age of seven he and his younger sister, Emma, were educated in boarding schools. Nickname: Location within the U.S. State of Tennessee. ...
The most influential of these was located near his mother's summer cottage two miles from Sewanee, Tennessee. Saint Andrews School for Mountain Boys was run by Episcopal monks affiliated with the Order of the Holy Cross), and it was there that Agee's lifelong friendship with an Episcopal priest, Father James Harold Flye, began in 1919. As Agee's close friend and spiritual confidant, Flye was the recipient of many of Agee's most revealing letters. Saint Andrews-Sewanee School is a preparatory school located in Sewanee, Tennessee, which is also the home of the University of the South. ...
Agee went to Knoxville High School for the 1924-1925 school year, then travelled with Father Flye to Europe in the summer, when Agee was sixteen. On their return, Agee moved to boarding school in New Hampshire, entering the class of 1928 at Phillips Exeter Academy. There he was president of The Lantern Club and editor of the Monthly where his first short stories, plays, poetry and articles were published. Despite barely passing many of his high school courses, Agee was admitted to Harvard University's class of 1932. He was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Advocate and delivered the class ode at his commencement. Phillips Exeter Academy (most commonly called Exeter, also Phillips Exeter or PEA) is a co-educational independent boarding school for grades 9–12, located on 619 acres[1] in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA, fifty miles north of Boston. ...
Harvard redirects here. ...
After graduation, he wrote for Fortune and Time magazines. (He is better known, however, for his later film criticism in The Nation. He married Via Saunders on January 28, 1933; they divorced in 1938 and that same year he married Alma Mailman. In 1934, he published his only volume of poetry, Permit Me Voyage, with a foreword by Archibald MacLeish. Fortune magazine is Americas second longest-running business magazine after Forbes magazine. ...
“TIME†redirects here. ...
The Nation logo The Nation is a weekly left-liberal periodical devoted to politics and culture. ...
Year 1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display full 1934 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Archibald MacLeish Archibald MacLeish (May 7, 1892 – April 20, 1982) was an American poet, writer and the Librarian of Congress. ...
In the summer of 1936, Agee spent eight weeks on assignment for Fortune with photographer Walker Evans living among sharecroppers in Alabama. While Fortune didn't publish his article (he left the magazine in 1939), Agee turned the material into a book entitled, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). It sold only 600 copies before being remaindered. That same year, Alma moved to Mexico with their year-old son, Joel, to live with Communist writer Bodo Uhse. Agee began living with Mia Fritsch in Greenwich Village, whom he married in 1946. They had two daughters, Teresa and Andrea, and a son, John, who was eight months old when Agee died. 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ...
Walker Evans Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer made famous by his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. ...
This article is about the U.S. State. ...
Floyd Burroughs on the cover of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a book with text by American writer James Agee and photographs by American photographer Walker Evans first published in 1941 in the United States. ...
A remaindered book is one whose publisher has allowed it to go out of print, and is liquidating their remaining unsold copies by selling them at greatly reduced prices. ...
The Washington Square Arch Greenwich Village (IPA pronunciation: ), also called simply the Village, is a largely residential area on the west side of downtown (southern) Manhattan in New York City named after Greenwich, London. ...
In 1942, Agee became the film critic for Time, while also writing occasional book reviews, and subsequently becoming the film critic for The Nation. In 1948, however, he quit both magazines to become a freelance writer. As a freelance in the 1950's, he continued to write magazine articles while working on movie scripts (often with photographer Helen Levitt). Helen Levitt (born 31 August 1913) is an American documentary photographer. ...
He was an ardent champion of Charlie Chaplin's then extremely unpopular film Monsieur Verdoux (1947), which has since become a film classic. He was also a great admirer of Laurence Olivier's Henry V and Hamlet, especially Henry V, for which he actually published three separate reviews, all of which have been printed in the collection Agee on Film. Charles Chaplin redirects here. ...
Monsieur Verdoux is a film by Charles Chaplin that debuted in 1947. ...
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM, (IPA: ; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA and four-time Emmy winning English actor, director, and producer. ...
Henry V is a 1944 film adaptation of William Shakespeares play Henry V. The on-screen title is The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France (the title of the 1600 quarto edition of the play). ...
Hamlet is a 1948 film adaptation of the William Shakespeare play Hamlet. ...
In 1951 in Santa Barbara, Agee suffered the first two in a series of heart attacks, which ultimately claimed his life four years later at the age of 45. He died on May 16, 1955 (while in a taxi cab en route to a doctor's appointment) -- coincidentally two days before the anniversary of his father's death.[1] He was buried on a farm he owned at Hillsdale, NY. Year 1951 (MCMLI) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Nickname: Location in Santa Barbara County and the state of California Coordinates: , County Government - Mayor Marty Blum Area - City 111. ...
Heart attack redirects here. ...
Hollywood | | This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007) | His career as a movie scriptwriter was curtailed by alcoholism, and his contribution to The Night of the Hunter (1955) remains unclear. What is certain, however, is that Agee is one of the credited screenwriters on two of the great films of the 1950s (the other being The African Queen (1955)). Image File history File links Emblem-important. ...
The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 film noir based on the novel by Davis Grubb. ...
The year 1955 in film involved some significant events. ...
The African Queen is a 1951 film made by Horizon Pictures and Romulus Films, and distributed by United Artists. ...
See also: 1950 in film 1951 1952 in film 1950s in film 1940s in film years in film film Events Sweden - May Britt is scouted by Italian film-makers Carlo Ponti and Mario Soldati Top grossing films North America David and Bathsheba Show Boat tie The Great Caruso and An...
Reports that James Agee wrote an incoherent screenplay have been proved false by the 2004 discovery of his first draft. That document, although 293 pages in length and manifestly overwritten (as is common with first drafts), is scene for scene the film Charles Laughton directed. Likewise false are the reports that Agee was fired. Laughton, however much he gnashed his teeth at having such a behemoth of a text in his hands with only five weeks to go before the start of principal photography, calmly renewed Agee's contract and directed him to cut it in half. He did.
In Laughton's stage work (Life of Galileo, Cain Mutiny Court Martial, etc), the great actor demonstrated he was a script editor of genius - he could induce the most stubborn and prideful writer to cut, and so he did in Agee's case. Later, apparently at Robert Mitchum's request, Agee visited the set to settle a dispute between the star and Laughton. Letters & documents located in the archive of Agee's agent Paul Kohner bear this out - they were brought to light by Laughton's biographer Simon Callow, whose BFI book about The Night of the Hunter diligently sets this part of the record straight. Simon Philip Hugh Callow, CBE (born June 15, 1949 in London, England) is a highly-regarded British actor of stage, film and television, and a biographer of Orson Welles and Charles Laughton. ...
The Agee first draft may eventually be published, but it has been read by scholars - most notably Prof. Jeffrey Couchman of Columbia University, who published his findings in an essay, "Credit Where Credit Is Due." To assert Agee's moral right to his screen credit in no way disputes Laughton's greatness as a director - clearly, he was as expert with writers as he was with actors - but Agee has been belittled and even slandered over the years, when his contribution to The Night of the Hunter was of primary and enduring importance.
Legacy During his lifetime, Agee enjoyed only modest public recognition, but since his death his literary reputation has grown enormously. In 1957 Agee's novel, A Death in the Family (which was based on the events surrounding his father's death), was published posthumously and in 1958 won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Agee's reviews and screenplays have been collected in Agee on Film. However, these volumes have proven controversial, as several people have claimed that the script for The Night of the Hunter contained in the second volume was actually written by the film's director, Charles Laughton. Also, one of the Time reviews included in the first volume (of the film Roxie Hart) was not written by Agee (according to a bound volume of the book in the library of Time magazine, corroborated by the style of the review itself, which is at variance with Agee's usual style).
In addition, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, ignored on its original publication in 1941, has been placed among the greatest literary works of the 20th Century by the New York School of Journalism and the New York Public Library. Samuel Barber has set sections of "Descriptions of Elysium" from Permit Me Voyage, including the song "Sure On This Shining Night"; in addition, he set to music prose from the traditionally-included "Knoxville" section of "A Death in the Family" in his work for soprano entitled "Knoxville: Summer of 1915". Samuel Barber, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1944 Samuel Osborne Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer of classical music ranging from orchestral, to opera, choral, and piano music. ...
List of works The Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the first collection of a promising American poet. ...
Floyd Burroughs on the cover of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a book with text by American writer James Agee and photographs by American photographer Walker Evans first published in 1941 in the United States. ...
The African Queen is a 1951 film made by Horizon Pictures and Romulus Films, and distributed by United Artists. ...
The cover of the 1974 paperback edition of one of Foresters non-fiction titles: Hunting The Bismarck Cecil Scott Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith (August 27, 1899 – April 2, 1966), an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of adventure with military themes. ...
Face to Face is a 1952 film adapted from the stories The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad and The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky by Stephen Crane. ...
For the U.S. Continental Congress delegate, see Stephen Crane (delegate). ...
The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 film noir based on the novel by Davis Grubb. ...
Davis Grubb (July 23, 1919 - July 24, 1980) was an American novelist and short story writer. ...
A Death in the Family is an autobiographical novel by author James Agee, set in Knoxville, Tennessee. ...
Published as - Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, A Death in the Family, Shorter Fiction (Michael Sragow, ed.) (Library of America, 2005) ISBN 978-1-93108281-5. Stories include "death in the Desert," "They That Sow in Sorrow Shall Reap" and "A Mother's Tale."
- Film Writing and Selected Journalism: Uncollected Film Writing, The Night of the Hunter, Journalism and Book Reviews (Michael Sragow, ed.) (Library of America, 2005) ISBN 978-1-93108282-2.
- Brooklyn Is: Southeast of the Island: Travel Notes (Jonathan Lethem, preface) (Fordham University Press, 2005) ISBN 978-0-82322492-0.
Volumes in the Library of America series The Library of America (LoA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. ...
Volumes in the Library of America series The Library of America (LoA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. ...
The Fordham University Press is a publishing house, a division of Fordham University, that publishes primarily in the humanities and the social sciences. ...
References - ^ James Agee (1909-1955) Chronology of his Life and Work
- James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, etc., The Library of America, 159, with notes by Michael Sragow, 2005.
- Alma Neuman, Always Straight Ahead: A Memoir, Louisiana State University Press, 176 pages, 1993. ISBN 0-8071-1792-7.
- Kenneth Seib, "James Agee: Promise and Fulfillment", Critical Essays in Modern Literature, University of Pittsburgh Press, 175 pages, 1968.
- Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, ed. Ian Aitken. London: Routledge, 2005
Volumes in the Library of America series The Library of America (LoA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. ...
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