By Erin Free
With the writers’ strike hopefully now resolved in the US, we’ll still be mixing writers (and other creatives) in with directors in the Unsung Auteurs column from here on in. We’ve covered a few husband-and-wife writing/filmmaking duos in Unsung Auteurs (John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian), and a very worthy addition is the team of Harriet Frank Jr and Irving Ravetch, who proved themselves truly adept at the often-underrated art of adapting books and pre-existing material for the screen, and also served as frequent collaborators of director Martin Ritt, another profoundly under-celebrated behind-the-camera talent.
Aspiring scribes and playwrights, Irving Ravetch (born in 1920) and Harriet Frank Jr (born in 1923) met while both were enrolled in Metro-Goldwyn Mayer’s Young Writers Training Program, lighting the fire on what would become a very fruitful career. Initially Ravetch and Frank Jr wrote separately, with both toiling on a handful of minor programmers, Ravetch with westerns (Living In A Big Way, The Outriders, Vengeance Valley, The Lone Hand) and Frank with romance and melodrama (A Really Important Person, Silver River, Whiplash). Frank and Ravetch eventually pooled their considerable talents on the 1955 westerns Ten Wanted Men and Run For Cover, on which they crafted the stories for other writers to run with. Their next project, however, would be the one that really came to define the shape of their future careers.
With Martin Ritt in the director’ chair after a career in TV and two prior directorial efforts (1957’s very impressive Edge Of The City, and No Down Payment with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward), Harriet Frank Jr and Irving Ravetch crafted a pitch-perfect adaptation of revered author William Faulkner’s work for 1958’s The Long, Hot Summer. The story of a con man (Ritt reunited with regular leading man Paul Newman) who slithers his way into the bosom of a wealthy southern family, the sexy, steamy film was a breakout hit for Martin Ritt, and provided a fine showcase for the literate, keenly intelligent Harriet Frank Jr and Irving Ravetch, whose screenplay got right to the heart of what makes Faulkner such an essential American voice. Ritt, Frank and Ravetch applied their talents once again to Faulkner on 1959’s The Sound And The Fury, but with not quite the same level of success.
Harriet Frank Jr and Irving Ravetch effectively adapted William Inge for Delbert Mann (1960’s The Dark At The Top Of The Stairs) and William Humphrey for Vincent Minelli (1960’s Home From The Hill) before working again with Martin Ritt on what would become a major triumph for all of them. Brilliantly adapted from Larry McMurtry’s near-perfect novel, 1963’s Hud is a hard-edged masterpiece. An austere, bruising character study about the dying days of the west set amongst the stagnant landscape of a Texas ranch, the film sets the callous, unfeeling young Hud Bannon (Paul Newman at his virile best) against his father, Homer (a majestic, Oscar winning turn from veteran actor Melvyn Douglas), the very embodiment of honour, decency and the moral code of the west. Hud, meanwhile, is only concerned about money, booze, women and his own bad self. “If you don’t look out for yourself, the only hand you’ll ever get is when they lower the box,” he sneers. Caught in the middle of these two disparate influences is Hud’s impressionable young nephew Lonnie (Brandon De Wilde), who looks up to his uncle but respects his grandfather’s code. Hud is a towering work of the American cinema, and is nothing short of a masterclass on how to effectively adapt a book for the screen.
Harriet Frank Jr and Irving Ravetch then became Martin Ritt’s go-to writing team, with the duo lending their impressive skills for cinematic interpretation to adaptations of Elmore Leonard (the excellent 1967 Paul Newman western Hombre), Pat Conroy (1974’s Conrack with Jon Voight), Max Schott (the gorgeous 1985 drama Murphy’s Romance starring Sally Field and James Garner) and Pat Barker (1990’s Stanley & Iris with Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro). Frank Jr and Ravetch also worked with Ritt on one of their very few original screenplays with the brilliant 1979 Oscar winning drama Norma Rae.
Based loosely on the real-life figure of union organiser, Crystal Lee Jordan, Frank Jr and Ravetch crafted one of their best works with Norma Rae. Sally Field delivers a bravura turn as the title character, a smalltown widow with two children who works in the local textile mill, a bleak place ruled by thundering, deafness-inducing machinery and working conditions that could best be described as “old world.” A fear of victimisation and reprisals has prevented unionisation, but when New York-based union organiser, Reuben Warshawsky (Ron Leibman), arrives in town, a gradual sense of change grinds into place. Reuben finds an unlikely ally in the tough but emotionally battered Norma Rae, who has bounced from one bad relationship to the next, but boasts an indomitable spirit that makes her the perfect candidate to inspire change in her colleagues.
Though their collaborations with Martin Ritt resulted in their best work, Frank Jr and Ravetch also combined nicely with other filmmakers, with the duo crafting strong adaptations of William Faulkner (1969’s criminally underrated The Reivers with Steve McQueen) and William Dale Jennings (1972’s equally underrated The Cowboys starring John Wayne) for master director Mark Rydell, and Giles Tippette (1974’s inexplicably forgotten The Spikes Gang with Lee Marvin, Ron Howard, Gary Grimes and Charles Martin Smith) for Richard Fleischer. The duo also did a little pseudonymous work (1968’s House Of Cards, 1972’s The Carey Treatment) under the name of James P. Bonner.
Harriet Frank Jr passed away in 2020 at the age of 96, while Irving Ravetch passed in 2010 at the age of 89, with the duo leaving behind a highly impressive collection of film adaptations. Literate, intelligent and sensitive to their source material without being tightly bound by it, Frank Jr and Ravetch are unsung purveyors of an unsung artform, proving that you can work cinematic wonders with material that didn’t originate with you.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
