American writer (1909?1955)
James Rufus Agee
(
AY
-jee
; November 27, 1909 ? May 16, 1955) 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
.
Early life and education
[
edit
]
Agee was born in
Knoxville, Tennessee
, to Hugh James Agee and Laura Whitman Tyler, at Highland Avenue and 15th Street, which was renamed James Agee Street, in what is now the
Fort Sanders neighborhood
.
[1]
When Agee was six, his father was killed in an automobile accident. From the age of seven, Agee and his younger sister, Emma, were educated in several
boarding schools
. The most prominent of these was near his mother's summer cottage two miles from
Sewanee, Tennessee
.
Saint Andrews School for Mountain Boys
was run by the monastic
Order of the Holy Cross
affiliated with the
Episcopal Church
.
[2]
It was there that Agee's lifelong friendship with Episcopal priest Father James Harold Flye, a history teacher at St. Andrew's, and his wife, Grace Eleanor Houghton, began in 1919.
[3]
As Agee's close friend and mentor, Flye corresponded with him on literary and other topics through life and became a confidant of Agee's soul-wrestling. He published the letters after Agee's death.
The New York Times
Book Review called
The Letters of James Agee to Father Flye
(1962) "comparable in importance to Fitzgerald's 'The Crackup' and Thomas Wolfe's letters as a self-portrait of the artist in the modern American scene."
[4]
Agee's mother married St. Andrew's bursar Father Erskine Wright in 1924, and the two moved to
Rockland, Maine
.
[5]
Agee went to
Knoxville High School
for the 1924?25 school year, then traveled with Flye to Europe in the summer, when Agee was 16. On their return, Agee transferred to a boarding school in
New Hampshire
, entering the class of 1928 at
Phillips Exeter Academy
. Soon after, he began a correspondence with
Dwight Macdonald
.
At Phillips Exeter, Agee was president of The Lantern Club and editor of the
Monthly
, where his first short stories, plays, poetry and articles were published. Despite barely passing many of his high school courses, Agee was admitted to
Harvard College
's class of 1932, where he lived in
Thayer Hall
and
Eliot House
. At Harvard, Agee took classes taught by
Robert Hillyer
and
I. A. Richards
; his classmate in those was the future poet and critic
Robert Fitzgerald
, with whom he later worked at
Time
.
[5]
Agee was editor-in-chief of the
Harvard Advocate
and delivered the class
ode
at his
commencement
.
Career
[
edit
]
After graduation, Agee was hired by
Time Inc.
as a reporter, and moved to New York City, where he wrote for
Fortune
magazine from 1932 to 1937, although he is better known for his later film criticism in
Time
and
The Nation
. In 1934, he published his only volume of poetry,
Permit Me Voyage
, with a foreword by
Archibald MacLeish
.
In the summer of 1936, Agee spent eight weeks on assignment for
Fortune
with photographer
Walker Evans
, living among
sharecroppers
in
Alabama
.
Fortune
did not publish his article, but Agee turned the material into his 1941 book
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
.
[6]
It sold only 600 copies before being
remaindered
. Another manuscript from the same assignment discovered in 2003, titled
Cotton Tenants,
is believed to be the essay submitted to
Fortune
editors. The 30,000-word text, accompanied by photographs by Walker Evans, was published as a book in June 2013. John Jeremiah Sullivan wrote, "This is not merely an early, partial draft of Famous Men, in other words, not just a different book; it's a different Agee, an unknown Agee. Its excellence should enhance his reputation."
[7]
A significant difference between the works is the use of original names in
Cotton Tenants
; Agee assigned fictional names to the subjects of
Famous Men
to protect their identity.
[8]
Agee left
Fortune
in 1937 while working on a book, then, in 1939, he took a book reviewing job at
Time
, sometimes reviewing up to six books per week; together, he and his friend
Whittaker Chambers
ran "the back of the book" for
Time
.
[9]
In 1941, he became
Time's
film critic.
[10]
From 1942 to 1948, he worked as a film critic for
The Nation
.
[11]
Agee was an ardent champion of
Charlie Chaplin
's then unpopular film
Monsieur Verdoux
(1947), since recognized as a classic. He was a great admirer of
Laurence Olivier
's
Henry V
and
Hamlet
, especially
Henry V
.
[12]
He also was an ardent champion of D. W. Griffith's
The Birth of a Nation,
which he lavishly praised for its stylistic innovations and virtuosity without critically commenting on its celebration of the Ku Klux Klan.
Agee on Film
(1958) collected his writings of this period. Three writers listed it as one of the best film-related books ever written in a 2010 poll by the
British Film Institute
.
[13]
In 1948, Agee quit his job to become a freelance writer. One of his assignments was a well-received article for
Life Magazine
about the
silent movie
comedians
Charles Chaplin
,
Buster Keaton
,
Harold Lloyd
and
Harry Langdon
. The article has been credited for reviving Keaton's career. As a freelancer in the 1950s, Agee continued to write magazine articles while working on movie scripts; he developed a friendship with photographer
Helen Levitt
.
[14]
Screenwriting
[
edit
]
In 1947 and 1948, Agee wrote an untitled screenplay for Charlie Chaplin, in which the Tramp survives a
nuclear holocaust
; posthumously titled
The Tramp's New World
, the text was published in 2005.
[15]
The commentary Agee wrote for the 1948 documentary
The Quiet One
was his first contribution to a film that was completed and released.
[16]
Agee's career as a movie scriptwriter was curtailed by his
alcoholism
. Nevertheless, he is one of the credited screenwriters on two of the most respected films of the 1950s:
The African Queen
(1951) and
The Night of the Hunter
(1955).
His contribution to
Hunter
is shrouded in controversy. Some critics have claimed that the published script was written by the film's director,
Charles Laughton
. Reports that Agee's screenplay for
Hunter
was not used have been proved false by the 2004 discovery of his first draft, which although 293 pages in length, contains many scenes included in the film that Laughton directed. Laughton seemed to have edited great parts of the script because it was too long.
[17]
While not yet published, the first draft has been read by scholars, most notably Jeffrey Couchman of
Columbia University
. He credited Agee in the essay, "Credit Where Credit Is Due". Also false were reports that Agee was fired from the film. Laughton renewed Agee's contract and directed him to cut the script in half, which Agee did. Later, apparently at
Robert Mitchum
's request, Agee visited the set to settle a dispute between the star and Laughton. Letters and documents in the archive of Agee's agent
Paul Kohner
bear this out; they were documented by Laughton's biographer
Simon Callow
, whose
BFI
book about
The Night of the Hunter
sets this part of the record straight.
[
citation needed
]
Couchman, the author of a 2009 book about
The Night of the Hunter
, writes that Agee's screenplay would have been a film about six hours long, so Laughton had to cut and edit a considerable part of it.
[18]
Personal life
[
edit
]
Soon after graduation from
Harvard University
, he married Olivia Saunders (aka "Via") on January 28, 1933; they divorced in 1938. Later that same year, he married Alma Mailman. They divorced in 1941, and Alma moved to Mexico with their year-old son
Joel
to live with Communist politician and writer
Bodo Uhse
. Agee began living in
Greenwich Village
with Mia Fritsch, whom he married in 1946. They had two daughters, Julia (1946?2016, known throughout life as Deedee) and Andrea, and a son, John.
Death
[
edit
]
In 1951 in
Santa Barbara
, Agee, a hard drinker and chain-smoker, suffered a heart attack; on May 16, 1955, He was in Manhattan when he suffered a fatal heart attack in a taxi cab en route to a doctor's appointment.
[19]
He was buried on a farm he owned at
Hillsdale, New York
, property still held by Agee descendants.
[20]
Legacy
[
edit
]
During his lifetime, Agee enjoyed only modest public recognition. Since his death, his literary reputation has grown. In 1957, his novel
A Death in the Family
(based on the events surrounding his father's death) was published posthumously and in 1958 won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 2007, Michael Lofaro published a restored edition of the novel using Agee's original manuscripts. Agee's work had been heavily edited before its original publication by publisher David McDowell.
[21]
Agee's reviews and screenplays have been collected in two volumes of
Agee on Film
. There is some dispute over the extent of his participation in the writing of
The Night of the Hunter
.
[22]
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
has grown to be considered Agee's masterpiece.
[23]
Ignored on its original publication in 1941, the book has since been placed among the greatest literary works of the 20th century by the New York School of Journalism and the
New York Public Library
.
[
citation needed
]
It was the inspiration for the
Aaron Copland
opera
The Tender Land
.
David Simon
, journalist and creator of acclaimed television series
The Wire
, credited the book with impacting him early in his career and influencing his practice of journalism.
[24]
The composer
Samuel Barber
set sections of "Descriptions of Elysium" from
Permit Me Voyage
to music, composing a song based on "Sure On This Shining Night". In addition, he set prose from the "Knoxville" section of
A Death in the Family
in his work for
soprano
and orchestra titled
Knoxville: Summer of 1915
.
"Sure On This Shining Night" has also been set to music by composers
Rene Clausen
,
Z. Randall Stroope
, and
Morten Lauridsen
.
In late 1979, the filmmaker Ross Spears premiered his film
AGEE: A Sovereign Prince of the English Language
, which was later nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and was awarded a Blue Ribbon at the 1980 American Film Festival.
AGEE
featured four of James Agee's friends?Dwight Macdonald, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert Saudek, and
John Huston
?as well as the three women to whom James Agee had been married. In addition, Father James Harold Flye was a featured interviewee. President
Jimmy Carter
speaks about his favorite book,
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
.
The Man Who Lives Here Is Loony
, a one-act play by Knoxville-based songwriter and playwright RB Morris, takes place in a New York apartment during one night in Agee's life. The play has been performed at venues around Knoxville, and at the
Cornelia Street Cafe
in Greenwich Village.
[25]
Bibliography
[
edit
]
Published as
[
edit
]
- Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, A Death in the Family, Shorter Fiction
(
Michael Sragow
, ed.) (
Library of America
, 2005)
ISBN
978-1-931082-81-5
. Stories include "Death in the Desert", "They That Sow in Sorrow Shall Reap" and "A Mother's Tale".
- Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
, Violette Editions, 2001,
ISBN
978-1-900828-15-4
.
- Film Writing and Selected Journalism: Uncollected Film Writing, 'The Night of the Hunter', Journalism and Book Reviews
(Michael Sragow, ed.) (
Library of America
, 2005)
ISBN
978-1-931082-82-2
.
- Brooklyn Is: Southeast of the Island: Travel Notes
, (Jonathan Lethem, preface) (
Fordham University Press
, 2005)
ISBN
978-0-8232-2492-0
.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"James Agee (1909?1955): Let us now praise famous writers"
.
Chicago Tribune
. February 27, 1977. Archived from
the original
on March 16, 2013
. Retrieved
December 4,
2010
.
James Agee was born in Knoxville in 1909, to a father whose people were farmers (in Tennessee and Virginia) and a mother whose family members considered themselves "more cosmopolitan." Agee's father died young, in an accident frequently memorialized (most eloquently in the autobiographical novel A Death in the Family), but the conflict he helped engender would persist...
- ^
Journal of the Eighty-Fourth Annual Convention of the Church, Diocese of Tennessee
, Nashville, Tenn., 1916
- ^
"Father James Harold Flye Papers - Vanderbilt University"
(PDF)
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on May 2, 2016
. Retrieved
November 28,
2015
.
- ^
Rev. James H. Flye, 100, is dead; Friend of James Agee, the writer
,
The New York Times
, April 14, 1985. Retrieved November 27, 2015.
- ^
a
b
"Agee FIlms: Agee Chronology"
.
Ageefilms.org
. Archived from
the original
on October 27, 2018
. Retrieved
January 19,
2007
.
- ^
Giles Oakley (1997).
The Devil's Music
.
Da Capo Press
. p.
188
.
ISBN
978-0-306-80743-5
.
- ^
Sullivan, John Jeremiah.
"Southern Exposures"
.
BookForum
. Retrieved
June 18,
2013
.
- ^
Haughney, Christine (June 3, 2013).
"A Paean to Forbearance (the Rough Draft)"
.
New York Times
. Retrieved
June 18,
2013
.
- ^
Chambers, Whittaker (1952).
Witness
. Random House. pp.
478
, 493, 504, 615.
ISBN
0-89526-571-0
.
- ^
William Stott.
Agee, James Rufus
,
American National Biography Online
, February 2000. Retrieved November 27, 2015.
- ^
James Agee
's reviews on the Nation's website. Retrieved November 27, 2015.
- ^
"Laurence Olivier Henry V"
.
Murphsplace.com
.
- ^
"The best film books, by 51 critics | Polls & surveys | Sight & Sound"
.
British Film Institute
. Retrieved
July 25,
2019
.
- ^
Helen Levitt, Who Froze New York Street Life on Film, Is Dead at 95
,
The New York Times
, March 30, 2009. Retrieved November 27, 2015. ?
Walker Evans
of
New York's Photo League
wrote, "Levitt's work was one of James Agee's great loves, and, in turn, Agee's own magnificent eye was part of her early training."
- ^
Wranovics, John.
Chaplin and Agee
. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 29, 66, 159.
ISBN
1-4039-6866-7
- ^
Wranovics (2005), p. 78
- ^
Malcolm, Derek (April 8, 1999).
"Charles Laughton: Night of the Hunter"
.
Theguardian.com
.
- ^
Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film. Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, p. 87.
- ^
James Agee (1909?1955)
Archived
October 27, 2018, at the
Wayback Machine
Chronology of his Life and Work
- ^
Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More than 14000 Famous Persons, Scott Wilson
- ^
James Agee and Michael A. Lofaro, ed.
A Death in the Family: A Restoration of the Author's Text.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007.
ISBN
1-57233-594-7
- ^
Gritten, David (January 17, 2014).
"Night of the Hunter: a masterpiece of American cinema"
.
telegraph.co.uk
.
- ^
Morris, Nigel (2003). Poplawski, Paul (ed.).
Encyclopedia of Literary Modernism
. Greenwood Publ. p. 4.
ISBN
9780313310171
. Retrieved
August 26,
2013
.
- ^
Simon, David (April 16, 2011).
"Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee and Walker Evans"
.
davidsimon.com
.
- ^
Matthew Everett, "
R.B. Morris Revives His One-Act Play About James Agee
,"
Knoxville Mercury
, October 26, 2016.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Letters of James Agee to Father Flye,
ISBN
0-87797-301-6
- James Agee,
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, etc.
,
The Library of America
, 159, with notes by Michael Sragow, 2005.
- Alma Neuman,
Always Straight Ahead: A Memoir
, Louisiana State University Press, 176 pages, 1993.
ISBN
0-8071-1792-7
.
- Kenneth Seib, "James Agee: Promise and Fulfillment", in
Critical Essays in Modern Literature
, University of Pittsburgh Press, 175 pages, 1968.
- Genevieve Moreau,
The Restless Journey of James Agee
, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1977.
- Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film
, ed. Ian Aitken, London: Routledge, 2005
- Paul F. Brown,
Rufus: James Agee in Tennessee,
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 422 pages, 2018.
ISBN
1621904245
.
- [1]
Works by James Agee
at
Open Library
- [2]
James Agee
at the Internet Book List
- A chronology of James Agee's life & work
Archived
October 27, 2018, at the
Wayback Machine
, Agee Films
- James Agee Collection
Archived
February 10, 2012, at the
Wayback Machine
, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
- Essay on Agee's Collected Work,
The New Yorker
- Let Us Now Praise Famous Men on Violette Editions
Archived
June 2, 2016, at the
Wayback Machine
- Agee Films: Agee
Archived
August 21, 2019, at the
Wayback Machine
- James Agee: A Bibliography,
First Editions
- James Agee Film Project Photographs, 1879 - 1956
- [3]
James Agee
on the
Muck Rack
journalist listing site
|
---|
Previously the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel from 1917?1947
|
1918?1925
| | |
---|
1926?1950
| |
---|
1951?1975
| |
---|
1976?2000
| |
---|
2001?present
| |
---|
|
---|
International
| |
---|
National
| |
---|
Academics
| |
---|
Artists
| |
---|
People
| |
---|
Other
| |
---|