Studs Lonigan | |
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Directed by | Irving Lerner |
Written by | Philip Yordan |
Produced by | Philip Yordan |
Starring | Christopher Knight Frank Gorshin Jack Nicholson Venetia Stevenson |
Cinematography | Haskell Wexler |
Edited by | Verna Fields |
Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
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Running time | 95 minutes |
Studs Lonigan is a novel trilogy by American author James T. Farrell: Young Lonigan (1932), The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934), and Judgment Day (1935). In 1998, the Modern Library ranked the Studs Lonigan trilogy 29th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
The trilogy was adapted into a minor 1960 film and a 1979 television miniseries, both of which were simply titled Studs Lonigan.
Farrell wrote these three novels at a time of national despair. During the Great Depression, many of America's most gifted writers and artists aspired to create a single, powerful work of art that would fully expose the evils of capitalism and lead to a political and economic overhaul of the American system.[ citation needed ]
Farrell chose to use his own personal knowledge of Irish-American life on the South Side of Chicago to create a portrait of an average American slowly destroyed by the "spiritual poverty" of his environment. Both Chicago and the Catholic Church of that era are described at length and faulted. Farrell describes Studs sympathetically as Studs slowly deteriorates, changing from a tough but fundamentally good-hearted, adventurous teenage boy to an embittered, physically shattered alcoholic.
Parts of Farrell's novels were made into a B movie in 1960, directed by Irving Lerner and starring Christopher Knight in the title role. Other cast members included Frank Gorshin, Venetia Stevenson, and Jack Nicholson (in one of his first movie roles). [1] The film was not widely reviewed. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker that "it’s an honorable low-budget effort by a group of people trying to break the Hollywood molds, and there are a few passages of daring editing that indicate what the film was aiming for. It’s an underfinanced American attempt at I Vitelloni . [2]
In 1979 Studs Lonigan was produced as a television miniseries starring Harry Hamlin, Colleen Dewhurst, Brad Dourif, Dan Shor, and Charles Durning. Production Designer Jan Scott won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Art Direction for a Limited Series or a Special. Reginald Rose wrote the adaptation of the trilogy. The miniseries preserves the novel's tragic ending but humanizes Studs Lonigan's family and friends to a very considerable degree.
The entire miniseries is housed at the University of Georgia's Peabody Collection. The University has made the series available online by using the keyword "Studs Lonigan" in the search box. [3]
According to William McCann:
James Clavell was an Australian-born British writer, screenwriter, director, and World War II veteran and prisoner of war. Clavell is best known as the author of his Asian Saga novels, a number of which have had television adaptations. Clavell also wrote such screenplays as those for The Fly (1958) and The Great Escape (1963). He directed the popular 1967 film To Sir, with Love for which he also wrote the script.
Judgment Day is another name for the Last Judgment in the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
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Young Lonigan is a 1932 novel by James T. Farrell. It is the first part of a trilogy about William "Studs" Lonigan, a young Irish-American growing up in Chicago.
The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan is a 1934 novel by James T. Farrell, and the second part of Farrell's trilogy based on the life of William "Studs" Lonigan. This novel covers about 12 years in Studs Lonigan's life, from 1917 through 1928. In this time, we witness the physical and spiritual deterioration of a boy whose life once held a great deal of promise.
Judgment Day is a 1935 novel by James T. Farrell. It is the third and longest installment of Farrell's trilogy based on the short, unhappy life of William "Studs" Lonigan.
"Raising Kane" is a 1971 book-length essay by American film critic Pauline Kael, in which she revived controversy over the authorship of the screenplay for the 1941 film Citizen Kane. Kael celebrated screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, first-credited co-author of the screenplay, and denigrated the contributions of Orson Welles, who co-wrote, produced and directed the film, and performed the lead role. The 50,000-word essay was written for The Citizen Kane Book (1971), as an extended introduction to the shooting script by Mankiewicz and Welles. It first appeared in February 1971 in two consecutive issues of The New Yorker magazine. In the ensuing controversy Welles was defended by colleagues, critics, biographers and scholars, but his reputation was damaged by its charges. The essay were later questioned after Welles's contributions to the screenplay were documented.
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