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'You're born, you're gonna have trouble, you're gonna die'
Maxim Jakubowski on hardboiled novelist WR Burnett, author of
The Asphalt Jungle Friday June 23, 2000 The Guardian,
London
His career as a writer spanned over six decades and he is
responsible for some of the all-time classic crime novels and
a handful of cult movies; but when he died in 1982 at the age
of 83, his mantelpiece carried no Oscar, no American Film
Institute life achievement award, and most of his books were
out of print in America.
Such is the fate of journeyman writers who worked in the
Hollywood shadows. But the books and the films survive - and
what a career it was. If the name of William Riley Burnett is
unfamiliar, the titles of his books and many of the ensuing
films are not: Little Caesar, Scarface, High Sierra, Yellow
Sky, Dark Hazard, The Asphalt Jungle, Nobody Lives Forever,
Four for Texas, The Great Escape.
These are but a handful among the 36 published novels and 60
screenwriting credits for which he was responsible; add the
countless magazine stories, short stories, plays and even
over a 100 songs, and his contribution to 20th-century
popular culture can no longer be denied.
Fully half of his books, and the movies adapted by him or
others from them, deal with criminals and the underworld, and
that alone affords him a pedestal equal to Chandler and
Hammett, whose Hollywood careers were nowhere near matching
his. Twenty-nine movies are based on his novels and stories,
some remade several times, and he moved with effortless
comfort between genres, adapting easily to the idiosyncrasies
of westerns, war tales, dog racing or whatever subject Warner
Bros had lined up for him.
Always the consummate professional, he worked with great
directors (from Tod Browning to Howard Hawks); he was
discreet, effective, pragmatic and at the service of a story
well told. In this respect, Burnett epitomises the legion of
craftsmen who created the Golden Age of Hollywood.
He was born in 1899 in Springfield, Ohio, of Welsh-Irish
ancestry. His was a family of political bosses; his
grandfather had been mayor of Columbus and his father was the
governor's right-hand man. His acute understanding of
politics and the compromises between power and ambition would
surface in many of his books and screenplays. He studied
journalism and, following his marriage, became a statistician
for the state of Ohio, where he took his first steps in a
literary career.
Burnett moved to Chicago in 1927 and worked as a desk clerk
in the Northmere Hotel, which helped him absorb the
atmosphere of the big city and observe at first-hand its
varied characters. Much of this invisible research found its
way into his first novel, Little Caesar (1929).
Burnett had arrived in Chicago at the height of Al Capone's
dominance over the city and was among the first at the scene
of the St Valentine's Day Massacre (although he refused to
view the bloody aftermath). In the story of Cesare Bandello,
the punk who rises to mob chieftain, Burnett perfectly
captured the typical crook of the Prohibition era and the
slangy, heavily-dialogue-dependent style he adopted soon
caught the attention of Hollywood following the book's
runaway success. His writing career was launched.
Burnett would, in later interviews, claim that Jack Warner
bought the book not for its literary merits but because the
main character hailed from Youngstown, Ohio, as did the
brothers Warner. At any rate, the film version was a major
hit and made a star of Edward G Robinson.
Burnett followed his novel to Hollywood and never left. For
most of the 30s, Burnett allowed his occasional screen
writing to subsidise his novels, preferring to cede rights to
his stories and allowing others to adapt them. One notable
exception was Howard Hawks's adaptation of the novel
Scarface. Producer Howard Hughes had already used a dozen
writers on the project and despaired of finding the right
tone when he called on the author of Little Caesar and
offered him $2000 a week.
It was good timing. Too many bad choices at the track had
left Burnett broke. Although Ben Hecht wrote the final
version of the script in 10 days, the groundwork had already
been done by Burnett, who shared a credit. He would work a
few more times for the legendary Hughes in the 50s, always
brought in for last minute panic rewrites on problem movies
for RKO and enjoyed an interesting relationship with the
reclusive millionaire and producer.
Burnett's 1930 political western novel Saint Johnson is one
of the first tellings of the legend of Wyatt Earp, Doc
Holliday and the shootout at the OK Corral, a strong, fully
authentic tale of the old west that was to become a Hollywood
staple and was first adapted for the screen in 1932 as Law
and Order.
Dark Hazard, a tale of political chicanery, was filmed twice
in the 30s, as was Iron Man. But it was only after the
publication of his crime novel High Sierra (1940) that
Burnett became more active in screenwriting - at the behest
of John Huston, who described Burnett as
"one of the most neglected American writers."
The assignment to adapt his own novel vaulted Burnett into
the top ranks of Hollywood's screenwriters. The combination
of Burnett, Huston, the gutsy no-frills direction of veteran
Raoul Walsh and Humphrey Bogart created an instant noir
classic.
Bogart's character, Roy Earle, was partly inspired by John
Dillinger, and the resultant film broke so many conventions
of the gangster genre that the production code office sent
Jack Warner a list of 43 objections to the script.
Burnett would adapt the book again in 1955 as a vehicle for
Jack Palance. The film writing assignments blossomed
thereafter, with Burnett turning out original screen stories
and using his increasing supply of novels as perfect source
material. He also collaborated with the likes of Albert Maltz
and John Howard Lawson, where his more rightwing political
stance tempered their pre-HUAC-purges idealism.
In 1950, his novel The Asphalt Jungle, the first in a trilogy
about the corruption of a city (the other novels were Little
Men, Big World and Vanity Row) was picked up by MGM's Dore
Schary who wanted to do a movie with "shooting and fucking",
according to Burnett. The novel was an innovative caper story
in which the statutory criminal genius is replaced by a
consortium of crooks who work as a team to pull off a
complicated plan. Both the book and the film have weathered
well.
In his 1950s work, Burnett was at the height of his powers,
continuing to mine a dark, realistic vein of American
naturalism, about characters living outside the mainstream,
outlaws for whom he professed a continuing fascination: "A
writer has to have an imagination - that's what makes a
writer. He has to be able to put himself imaginatively in the
position of whatever character he selects. And I have a very
good grip on reality, which I inherited from my father, so I
pretty much know the limitations of humanity and the
possibilities in life, which aren't very great for anybody.
You're born, you're gonna have trouble, and you're gonna die.
That you know. There's not much else you know."
Of such innate pessimism are great stories born. His final
major screen writing job was on John Sturges' The Great
Escape, in which Steve McQueen portrayed a last variation on
the classic Burnett anti-hero: an imprisoned man for whom
there is no escape - only a ball bounced endlessly against
the wall of a cell. Not for him the spectacular deaths of
Little Caesar's Rico or High Sierra's Roy Earle.
Burnett's literary swan song was, appropriately, Goodbye
Chicago (1981), written at the age of 82. It is a novel set
in the 30s in the milieu of Burnett's greatest successes, and
concerns the investigation of the murder of a policeman's
wife. The search produces an exposure of city corruption as
well as an apocalyptic gang war. Surprisingly, it has never
been filmed. Just a year earlier he had been named a Grand
Master by the Mystery Writers of America. In Hollywood,
despite his wealth of credits, he never won any awards
although others were the beneficiaries of Oscars for films
that would not have existed without him. His obituary was
buried on page 12 of Daily Variety. Journeymen get no
rewards.
* London's NFT is featuring a WR Burnett season throughout
July as part of the Crime Scene 2000 festival. Details: 020
7928 3232.
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