A Book vs. Film Comparison THE LOST WEEKEND Ben Terrall

he Lost Weekend (1945) The Lost Weekend was a runaway suc- end was the only book, out of five books, that was a breakthrough novel cess, and one of the first novels to deal with I wrote sober, without stimulus or sedative.” for author Charles Jackson, the ravages of the hardcore boozehound. Billy Wilder’s film adaptation ofThe Lost who based protagonist Don Within five years it had sold nearly half a Weekend maintained enough fealty to the Birnam’s debilitating dipso- million copies, including a Modern Library source material to inspire raves from Charles maniacalT tendencies on his own personal edition. Walter Winchell praised it as “the Jackson. Wilder’s biographer Maurice Zo- history. Jackson also drew on his life expe- Uncle Tom’s Cabin” of alcoholism. Mal- lotow suggests that the great director was in- riences to portray Birnam’s closeted homo- colm Lowry’s devastating “terminal drunk” spired to film the book as a way “to explain sexuality, though in the 1940s and 1950s, novel Under The Volcano had not yet been Raymond Chandler to himself” after the ex- Jackson was coy about the autobiographi- published when Jackson’s book hit the best- hausting experience of dealing with the ter- cal aspects of his hero’s steady inebriation, seller lists, and Charles Bukowski’s “cult minally self-destructive Chandler during the not to mention his sexual orientation. of blotto” literary personality was making of Double Indemnity (1944). In a subsequent novel, The decades in the future. Wilder’s co-writer Charles Brackett later Fall of Valor, Jackson would Ironically, Jack- claimed that the scenario was tackle homoerotic material son would later “the easiest script we head-on but, in this book, gay admit: “The wrote, thanks to the themes are mostly limited to Lost Week- superb novel.” subtext. Birnam is bounced Wilder agreed, from a fraternity where he saying that the writes a mash note to an un- more they took appreciative upperclassman; the book apart, later, homosexuality is re- the better it ferred to as “a blind alley, not seemed. Wilder shameful but useless, futile, vain, offering no attractions whatever, no hope, nowhere a chance to build.”

Doris Dowling and Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend

52 NOIR CITY I SPRING 2014 I filmnoirfoundation.org score in Blake Bailey’s excellent, exhaustively researched biography Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson. But then again, Jackson didn’t come out of the closet until the early 1960s, after divorcing his wife and moving into the Chelsea Hotel with a male lover. The one gay character in the movie (parallel- ing the same character from the book) is the alcoholic ward nurse Bim (played by Frank Faylen) who flirts with Don after he is com- mitted for dry-out time. Nor would Jackson have been shocked that his novel’s prostitute would be trans- formed into a less-clearly hooking temptress in the movie. Played by an adorably spunky Doris Dowling, who’d had an affair with Wilder during filming (later becoming the fifth Mrs. Artie Shaw), the character Gloria is drenched in hepcat jargon, including “rid- ic” for “ridiculous.” Dowling’s character probably would have appreciated the soundtrack music used for the film’s preview screenings. That upbeat jazz, more appropriate for a screwball com- edy, helped leave audiences perplexed by the film. Ultimately it was replaced by Miklos Rozsa’s theremin-dominated score, which An elaborate Times Square theater display for Billy Wilder's award-winning The Lost Weekend was a much more effective counterpoint to and Brackett consulted closely with Jackson, Wilder told a journalist: “If they’d offered me Birnam’s grueling bender. who advised the film’s star Ray Milland on the the five million, I would have.” Wilder, ably assisted by ace cinematogra- finer points of a down-and-out drunkard’s be- pher John F. Seitz, captured New York street havior. Milland skimped on food in prepara- Charles Jackson was probably scenes via a hidden camera in a vehicle that tion for the role, giving himself a haggard, not surprised that the novel’s gay content followed Ray Milland. Wilder and Seitz shot beaten-down look. was eliminated for Wilder’s movie; certainly footage of Milland prowling for an open Jackson was, for the most part, extremely there is no record of any complaint on that Third Avenue pawnshop and haunting Har- pleased with the result of this Brackett-Wilder lem sidewalks, and even gained access to Bel- collaboration. He thought the script’s opening levue Hospital, where Milland spent a night was “brilliant” (zooming in on Don’s apart- in the psychiatric ward to get a feel for what ment from blocks away, showing a liquor bot- Birnam went through. Wilder managed to fi- tle hanging outside a window where Birnam nagle a permit to film in the ward, but only stashed it) and that the initial meeting between by submitting a completely different scene Don and his love interest Helen (played by Jane to Bellevue’s administration than the one he Wyman) was “original and effective” (the two would actually film. accidentally switch coats at the opera). “I be- Jackson’s major problem with the film lieve it’s the only movie adaptation of a novel version of his novel was the happier ending which actually pleases the novelist,” he com- that Billy Wilder and his co-writer Charles mented after seeing the movie for the first time Brackett tacked on to appease Hays Office (many subsequent viewings followed) and he censors. The novel concludes with Birnam wrote a studio head: “To my dying day, I shall retreating into his apartment and planning be enormously grateful to Paramount for han- his next binge. The film changes this scenario dling my novel with such respect and for mak- to Ray Milland pecking away at a typewrit- ing such a big thing of it.” er, beginning the novel that presumably will The liquor industry was less pleased, how- redeem his suffering. Wilder denied that this ever. Several of Wilder’s biographers report was necessarily a happy ending, pointing out that gangster Frank Costello, representing that writing often ends badly, and that there distilleries concerned about negative publicity, is virtually limitless potential for misery offered to pay $5 million to suppress the film. while slaving away at a typewriter. ■

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