Five Lost Novels That Are Superior to the Classic Movies They Inspired
How often have you sat down to watch a classic film, either an older picture or one that you personally hold dear, and discovered that it was in fact based on a novel? “Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry was once a book?” you might exclaim, and yes, it’s true—that movie, obscure as it is (sorry), was a book and a good one.
Every year, Hollywood recycles the same old shit, or remakes great foreign films, virtually never succeeding at making the new movie of equal quality to the original. Decades ago, prior to the internet and cable television, pulp novels used to sell by the millions, and so publishers pumped them out by the dozens. Hollywood gobbled up these cheap properties. So many of the greatest noirs—and I’m not even talking Hammett, Chandler, or James M. Cain—are from hot little potboilers that are forgotten today. The same is true for Westerns and some of the coolest movies you’ve ever seen, probably without your even knowing it.
Every year, Hollywood recycles the same old shit, or remakes great foreign films, virtually never succeeding at making the new movie of equal quality to the original. Decades ago, prior to the internet and cable television, pulp novels used to sell by the millions, and so publishers pumped them out by the dozens. Hollywood gobbled up these cheap properties. So many of the greatest noirs—and I’m not even talking Hammett, Chandler, or James M. Cain—are from hot little potboilers that are forgotten today. The same is true for Westerns and some of the coolest movies you’ve ever seen, probably without your even knowing it.
It’s a hobby of mine to seek out and read many of these books, if only because it’s often a lot of fun just to have the experience of reenacting a movie’s plot in your mind. The Dirty Dozen, Midnight Cowboy, Nightmare Alley, and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? were all originally novels, adapted to varying degrees of faithfulness. Spending a few days reading Cowboy (which is almost exactly the same as the Oscar-winning film) conjures up images of Hoffman and Voigt wandering the streets of late 60s New York as I turn every page, a late-night pastime I enjoy tremendously.
Full disclosure: I also run the Trylon microcinema’s book club, which seeks to engage theatergoers in this lost cinematic and literary pleasure. We go to movies for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the primary motivation is our love of stories, and it baffles me that more people don’t seek out a source novel they see in the credits of a favorite film. Then again, maybe encounters with novels as hideous as Jaws broke moviegoers of any future attempts.
Over the next year I’m going to (try to) write a monthly column examining a great “lost” novel, or not-so-lost one, since I might want to discuss a popular book adapted into a movie. Since movies are simply another way of telling stories, I think it behooves us as film fans to dip into a good book now and again, to read something that inspired a favorite filmmaker.
But the books listed in today’s column fit into a very special category—these are the source novels of movies that are widely acknowledged as classics, but which have (for the most part) totally overshadowed the book. What surprised me, as both a reader and cineaste, was that the books on this list are better than the film. And in a couple cases, vastly superior. One of them is even out of print, which is a crime (especially since it’s the best one on this list). My hope is that you’ll go out and find these novels, however you can (buying on the internet or from your public library), and read them.
Full disclosure: I also run the Trylon microcinema’s book club, which seeks to engage theatergoers in this lost cinematic and literary pleasure. We go to movies for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the primary motivation is our love of stories, and it baffles me that more people don’t seek out a source novel they see in the credits of a favorite film. Then again, maybe encounters with novels as hideous as Jaws broke moviegoers of any future attempts.
Over the next year I’m going to (try to) write a monthly column examining a great “lost” novel, or not-so-lost one, since I might want to discuss a popular book adapted into a movie. Since movies are simply another way of telling stories, I think it behooves us as film fans to dip into a good book now and again, to read something that inspired a favorite filmmaker.
But the books listed in today’s column fit into a very special category—these are the source novels of movies that are widely acknowledged as classics, but which have (for the most part) totally overshadowed the book. What surprised me, as both a reader and cineaste, was that the books on this list are better than the film. And in a couple cases, vastly superior. One of them is even out of print, which is a crime (especially since it’s the best one on this list). My hope is that you’ll go out and find these novels, however you can (buying on the internet or from your public library), and read them.
| 5. THE SEARCHERS by Alan Le May Book Published: 1954 Publisher: Harper and Brothers Movie Released: 1956 Director: John Ford Cast: John Wayne, Jeffery Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood, John Qualen, Harry Carry Jr |  |
The Searchers is often called the greatest Western ever made, and I’ll admit that it is outstanding. John Ford’s epic, criticized as racist but also exposing, perhaps unintentionally (?), the prevailing attitudes of both the time period in the story, and outside the story, when it was released. The story follows Ethan Edwards (played by John Wayne), an outcast Civil War veteran, who returns to his brother’s place, embittered by his fate as a defeated Confederate, but still holds a torch for the aforementioned brother’s wife. But when Comanches kill most of the family and abduct Ethan’s niece Debbie (played later in the film by a miscast Natalie Wood), he goes on an obsessive hunt for her, reluctantly dragging along Natalie’s adopted brother, Martin (Jeffrey Hunter), who is himself half Comanche.
The movie is brilliant, a favorite of Scorsese’s, and always ranking fairly high on things like Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films poll. But the novel, by Alan le May, is truly amazing, in part because our understanding of Ethan’s racism, and the war between the Comanches (and other nations), the government, and the settlers who are caught in the middle (though deliberately so) is examined in full. You come away from this story realizing it is not really a Western as much as an incredible story of protracted combat, and you come to realize that Ethan and Martin’s search is one of the collateral problems of this combat—yes, they find the girl, years later, but by then everyone is destroyed, either figuratively or literally.
The violence and intensity of the novel is also unmatched in the film, which is itself pretty incredible (for its time). There’s a striking moment early in the book when one of the family’s neighbors is chasing the Cherokee and falls off his horse and breaks his leg. Waking days later from a fever (brought on by his leg being crushed), he looks down, sees his broken leg, and realizing that his life is now essentially worthless on the lawless and brutal plains, shoots himself in the head as he would a horse. If you love the movie, you should read this book, as well as Glenn Frankel’s study of the book, film, and the real-life legend, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend.
The movie is brilliant, a favorite of Scorsese’s, and always ranking fairly high on things like Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films poll. But the novel, by Alan le May, is truly amazing, in part because our understanding of Ethan’s racism, and the war between the Comanches (and other nations), the government, and the settlers who are caught in the middle (though deliberately so) is examined in full. You come away from this story realizing it is not really a Western as much as an incredible story of protracted combat, and you come to realize that Ethan and Martin’s search is one of the collateral problems of this combat—yes, they find the girl, years later, but by then everyone is destroyed, either figuratively or literally.
The violence and intensity of the novel is also unmatched in the film, which is itself pretty incredible (for its time). There’s a striking moment early in the book when one of the family’s neighbors is chasing the Cherokee and falls off his horse and breaks his leg. Waking days later from a fever (brought on by his leg being crushed), he looks down, sees his broken leg, and realizing that his life is now essentially worthless on the lawless and brutal plains, shoots himself in the head as he would a horse. If you love the movie, you should read this book, as well as Glenn Frankel’s study of the book, film, and the real-life legend, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend.
| 4. COOL HAND LUKE by Donn Pearce Book Published: 1965 Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons Movie Released: 1967 Director: Stuart Rosenberg Cast: Paul Newman, George Kennedy, J.D. Canon, Lou Antonio, Robert Drivas, Strother Martin |  |
Pearce didn’t just write Cool Hand Luke, which of course became the iconic Paul Newman flick of the same name; he lived the life of the men on the chain gang. A safecracker and Army deserter, Pearce spent a few years on a Florida chain gang, and his novel is a harrowing account of that life. The book has the honesty and straightforwardness that often eludes “great” writers—a strange device where the narrator begins to address the reader forces us to never quite feel as though we are one with the characters, that we are like the free people driving by and gaping at the poor men with their legs in chains, clearing brush under the hot Florida sun.
Luke in the novel doesn’t have any of the film’s Christ allegories, and is a ton more brutal. Reading the book in the Trylon Book Club, the group came to the consensus that the novel was vastly superior to the film, and left everyone reading it stunned at its honesty. If you loved the film (and most do), do not miss this novel.
Luke in the novel doesn’t have any of the film’s Christ allegories, and is a ton more brutal. Reading the book in the Trylon Book Club, the group came to the consensus that the novel was vastly superior to the film, and left everyone reading it stunned at its honesty. If you loved the film (and most do), do not miss this novel.
| 3. GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES by Anita Loos Book Published: 1925 Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap Movie Released: 1953 Director: Howard Hawks Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Charles Coburn, Elliot Reed, Tommy Noonan |  |
Originally a runaway bestseller (that helped save Harper’s Bazaar when they serialized it), Gentlemen was, if you believe it, one of James Joyce’s favorite novels, adored by H. L. Mencken, and regarded by the Guardian (London) as one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century. That last one may be a stretch, but there’s no denying the charm and appeal of Lorelei Lee, whose machinations to secure enough jewelry and funds from wealthy men to live comfortably are the stuff of flapper legend. More biting, melancholy, and uproarious than the Howard Hawks musical (which is great but fairly shallow), Loos’ Gentlemen lays bare the remarkable hypocrisy that existed in the Jazz Era battle of the sexes. The book is short—barely 125 pages—but it’s worth sitting down for a couple hours with Lorelei and her pal Dorothy as they cruise to Europe, breaking hearts and seeking their fortunes.
| 2. THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE by B. Traven Book Published: 1935 Publisher: New York: Alfred A. Knopf Movie Released: 1948 Director: John Huston Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett |  |
One of the most satisfying books to recommend to people, in part because I’ve known so many people who just adore the film, only to find the book is richer and more powerful…and more mysterious. Traven was the pseudonym of a reclusive German-American, whose name no one seems to really know. Was he an anarchist escaping persecution to Mexico? A literary agent who was only pretending to represent a guy named Traven (who was himself)? Were his books originally written in German, as his publishers claimed, or English, as the writer claimed (except that the man who made this claim has been criticized as not actually being Traven…)
This only heightens a rollicking adventure story that's already intense. You’ve seen the movie—imagine the earlier scenes, where Dobbs and Curtin struggle to build oil derricks, only to get ripped off; or later, digging for gold in the Sierra Madres. The grinding slog of this work—written beautifully by Traven, who doesn’t pull any punches or make it appear glamorous—becomes almost literally exhausting to read. When the climax approaches, and gold is stolen and people die, you feel it in your shoulders and your back, as if you’ve been lugging rock all day.
This only heightens a rollicking adventure story that's already intense. You’ve seen the movie—imagine the earlier scenes, where Dobbs and Curtin struggle to build oil derricks, only to get ripped off; or later, digging for gold in the Sierra Madres. The grinding slog of this work—written beautifully by Traven, who doesn’t pull any punches or make it appear glamorous—becomes almost literally exhausting to read. When the climax approaches, and gold is stolen and people die, you feel it in your shoulders and your back, as if you’ve been lugging rock all day.
| 1. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER by Davis Grubb Book Published: 1953 Publisher: Harper Brothers Movie Released: 1955 Director: Charles Laughton Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, James Gleason, Evelyn Varden, Peter Graves, Don Beddoe |  |
This is the book that inspired my search for these “lost” novels. The movie, with Robert Mitchum and directed by Charles Laughton, was always one of my favorites. Watching it one night, and noticing it was adapted from Davis Grubb’s source novel, I bought a copy online. Imagining I was going to have a nice distraction, I sat down to read. Instead, I was devastated.
Davis Grubb’s The Night of the Hunter is about many things. It is about how the Depression ruined a family, that’s one. There’s not time in the movie to develop the family, but in the novel we see that Ben and Willa were a good couple, not too bright, but a simple family struggling to get by. They were real, not this treacly Spielberg bullshit you’d see in movies today, but a family that bickered, laughed, who lived in a house that needed paint and foundation work, who struggled with money, and, after the children were asleep, went to bed themselves and had a good time. A vibrant family.
Like the movie, The Night of the Hunter, the novel, is really the story of John Harper, the boy, whose travails mature him beyond his years. The book, though, is an acute vision of the emotional and spiritual devastation of this young boy in the wake of a crime. In the film, John grows quickly, and the adults are fools. In Grubb’s book, we see the world through this boy’s eyes, a place where yes, his mother is silly, but she’s still his mother, the primary woman of his life, from whom he still seeks comfort and guidance, which he never receives. In the course of the novel, we see John go from boy to man, and in every step you just want to cry out and try to reach into the pages to help the poor boy, saddled with this terrible secret. At first he’s a child playing in the dirt, then a little man caring for his foolish younger sister (and what child of that age isn’t foolish? or deserves to be foolish?), and on to a fugitive trying to escape down a river and scrounge for food. His old fear of the dark gives way to a very real fear of this murderer, and we witness the darkness become his friend, and wish that there had been another reason for this. His mother, the Spoons, the townspeople, the police, even his friend Uncle Birdie, who promised him safe haven, will betray him, until he is left to run, to flee, with Pearl in tow. Even God betrays him.
I’ve read the book probably five times since that first reading in 2007—it’s one of my favorites (and being reprinted, finally, later this summer). This is why I recommend seeking out these novels—if you love the film, there’s a very good chance you’ll fall in love with the book, too. It’s worth the effort.
IN APRIL: Whit Masterson's Badge of Evil, which was adapted into Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.
Davis Grubb’s The Night of the Hunter is about many things. It is about how the Depression ruined a family, that’s one. There’s not time in the movie to develop the family, but in the novel we see that Ben and Willa were a good couple, not too bright, but a simple family struggling to get by. They were real, not this treacly Spielberg bullshit you’d see in movies today, but a family that bickered, laughed, who lived in a house that needed paint and foundation work, who struggled with money, and, after the children were asleep, went to bed themselves and had a good time. A vibrant family.
Like the movie, The Night of the Hunter, the novel, is really the story of John Harper, the boy, whose travails mature him beyond his years. The book, though, is an acute vision of the emotional and spiritual devastation of this young boy in the wake of a crime. In the film, John grows quickly, and the adults are fools. In Grubb’s book, we see the world through this boy’s eyes, a place where yes, his mother is silly, but she’s still his mother, the primary woman of his life, from whom he still seeks comfort and guidance, which he never receives. In the course of the novel, we see John go from boy to man, and in every step you just want to cry out and try to reach into the pages to help the poor boy, saddled with this terrible secret. At first he’s a child playing in the dirt, then a little man caring for his foolish younger sister (and what child of that age isn’t foolish? or deserves to be foolish?), and on to a fugitive trying to escape down a river and scrounge for food. His old fear of the dark gives way to a very real fear of this murderer, and we witness the darkness become his friend, and wish that there had been another reason for this. His mother, the Spoons, the townspeople, the police, even his friend Uncle Birdie, who promised him safe haven, will betray him, until he is left to run, to flee, with Pearl in tow. Even God betrays him.
I’ve read the book probably five times since that first reading in 2007—it’s one of my favorites (and being reprinted, finally, later this summer). This is why I recommend seeking out these novels—if you love the film, there’s a very good chance you’ll fall in love with the book, too. It’s worth the effort.
IN APRIL: Whit Masterson's Badge of Evil, which was adapted into Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.
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