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The Night of the Hunter is a 1953 thriller novel by American author Davis Grubb. The book was a national bestseller and a finalist for the 1955 National Book Award.
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The Night of the Hunter is a 1953 thriller novel by American author Davis Grubb. The book was a national bestseller and a finalist for the 1955 National Book Award.
Murderous ex-convict Harry Powell misrepresents himself as a prison chaplain upon his release from prison. Acting on a story told to him by his now-dead cellmate, Preacher Powell cons the cellmate's widow, Willa Harper, into marrying him in hopes that her children will tell him where their father hid the money from his last robbery. After killing their mother, he embarks on a hunt for the children, who have sensed his evil and are running from him.
Grubb explores the presentation of the American South during the Great Depression. He uses tropes of the Southern Gothic genre to explore issues such as social corruption and instability.
The plot was based on the true story of Harry Powers, who was hanged in 1932 for the murders of two widows and three children in Quiet Dell, West Virginia. [1]
In 1955, the book was adapted by Charles Laughton and James Agee as the film The Night of the Hunter. The film version has earned ranks in numerous movie lists [2] [3] and was added to the National Film Registry in 1992. Despite its critical success, The Night of the Hunter remained the only film ever directed by Laughton. [4] The book was remade as a 1991 television movie starring Richard Chamberlain in the role of Preacher Harry Powell, a role made famous by Robert Mitchum in the 1955 version.
Lyricist-librettist Stephen Cole and composer Claibe Richardson started working on a musical adaptation sometime in the late 1990s, releasing a concept album in 1998 through the Fynsworth Alley label. [5] Cole wrote preliminary forms of the book and lyrics, which earned him the 2000 Kleban Award for Most Promising Librettist, while Richardson composed a score. After going through a workshop revision phase, the show was premiered at the Willow's Theatre in Concord, California, on September 24, 2004. It was directed and produced by John Bowab, and starred Brian Noonan (from the original workshop cast) as Harry Powell and Lynne Wintersteller as Willa. The show received mixed reviews, [6] [7] but received four awards from the Bay Area Critics Circle. [8] The show moved on to the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2006, the last performance being on October 1. [9] The cast included Brian Noonan, Carly Rose Sonenclar, Dee Hoty as Willa, Beth Fowler as Rachel Cooper, and others, some of whom were in the original workshops.
City Lit Theater of Chicago, Illinois presented the world premiere of a stage adaptation of "The Night of the Hunter" by Shawna Tucker which opened October 29, 2023 as part of the theater's forty-third season with Producer and Artistic Director Terry McCabe. [10] [11] The adaptation was directed by Brian Pastor, the incoming artistic director at City Lit and starred Bryan Breau as Preacher, Jacqui Touchet as John, Kendal Romero as Willa, Mary Margaret McCormack as Pearl, and Shawna Tucker [12] as Miz Cooper. Also in the cast: Alex Albrecht, Simmery Branch, Richard Cotovsky, Sean Harkelrode, and Sheila Willis.
Ruggles of Red Gap is a 1935 American comedy film directed by Leo McCarey and starring Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, and ZaSu Pitts and featuring Roland Young and Leila Hyams. It was based on the best-selling 1915 novel by Harry Leon Wilson, adapted by Humphrey Pearson, with a screenplay by Walter DeLeon and Harlan Thompson.
Charles Laughton was a British-American actor. He was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death.
The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American film noir thriller directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. The screenplay by James Agee was based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Davis Grubb. The plot involves a serial killer (Mitchum) who poses as a preacher and pursues two children in an attempt to get his hands on $10,000 of stolen cash hidden by their late father.
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American actor. He is known for his antihero roles and film noir appearances. He received nominations for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1984 and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1992. Mitchum is rated number 23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male stars of classic American cinema.
Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for her direction and costume design. Her 2002 film Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for Taymor's composition "Burn It Blue." She also directed the 2007 jukebox musical film Across the Universe, based on the music of the Beatles.
James Rufus Agee was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, writing for Time, he was one of the most influential film critics in the United States. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family (1957), won the author a posthumous 1958 Pulitzer Prize. Agee is also known as a co-writer of the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and as the screenwriter of the film classics The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter.
Howard Elliott Ashman was an American playwright, lyricist and stage director. He is most widely known for his work on feature films for Walt Disney Animation Studios, for which Ashman wrote the lyrics and Alan Menken composed the music. Ashman has been credited as being a main driving force behind the Disney Renaissance. His work included songs for Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Tim Rice took over to write the rest of the songs for the latter film after Ashman's death in 1991.
Davis Alexander Grubb was an American novelist and short story writer, best known for his 1953 novel The Night of the Hunter, which was adapted as a film in 1955 by Charles Laughton.
Night of the Hunter may refer to:
Harry Powell is a fictional character in Davis Grubb's 1953 novel The Night of the Hunter, known as "Preacher". He was portrayed by Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton's 1955 film adaptation, and by Richard Chamberlain in the 1991 TV movie. Preacher was voted 29th on the American Film Institute's top 50 villains of all time list.
A. Lehman Engel was an American composer and conductor of Broadway musicals, television and film.
Emmett Earl Lynn was an American actor of the stage and screen.
William McClellan Chapin was an American child actor, known for a considerable number of screen and TV performances from 1943 to 1959 and best remembered for both his roles as the "diaper manager" Christie Cooper in the 1953 family feature The Kid from Left Field and little John Harper in Charles Laughton's 1955 film noir movie The Night of the Hunter.
Sally Jane Bruce is an American former child performer, best known for playing little Pearl Harper in Charles Laughton's 1955 film noir The Night of the Hunter.
Joe DiPietro is an American playwright, lyricist and author. He is best known for the Tony Award-winning musical Memphis, for which he won the Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score as well as for writing the book and lyrics for the long-running off-Broadway show I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.
Payment Deferred is a 1932 American pre-Code crime drama film directed by Lothar Mendes and starring Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan and Dorothy Peterson. Laughton portrays a man so desperate for money, he resorts to murder. It was based on the 1931 play of the same name by Jeffrey Dell, which was in turn based on the 1926 novel of the same name by C. S. Forester. Laughton also played the lead role in the play, which opened on Broadway on September 30, 1931 and ran for 70 performances.
Brian Yorkey is an American playwright and lyricist. His works often explore dark and controversial subject matter such as mental illness, grief, the underbelly of suburbia, and ethics in both psychiatry and public education.
Harry F. Powers was a Dutch-born American serial killer who was hanged in Moundsville, West Virginia.
Night of the Hunter is a 1991 American television film directed by David Greene starring Richard Chamberlain as a self-styled preacher who is a psychotic serial killer pursuing two children for $50,000 in money stolen by their father after marrying and murdering their widowed mother. The film also stars Burgess Meredith in the role of her son's friend, the river rat Birdy.
Paul Gregory was an American film, theatre and television producer.