Jay Presson Allen
Encyclopedia
Jay Presson Allen was an American screenwriter, playwright, stage director, television producer and novelist. Known for her withering wit and sometimes-off-color wisecracks, she was one of the few women making a living as a screenwriter at a time when women were a rarity in the profession. "You write to please yourself," she said, "The only office where there’s no superior is the office of the scribe."
, she was "never particularly fond of her given name", and decided to use her first initial when writing. According to the Dictionary of Literary Biography the more elaborate form, Jay, is the work of a Social Security Clerk.
The only child of a department store
manager, she would spend every Saturday and Sunday in the movie house, from one o’clock until somebody dragged her out at seven. From that time on movies became very important to her, and Allen knew she wouldn't be staying in West Texas
. Allen attended Miss Hockaday’s School for Young Ladies in Dallas for a couple of years, but came away with, in her words, as "having had no education to speak of." She skipped college and at eighteen left home to become an actress. In New York, her career lasted "for about twenty-five minutes" Allen says, when she realized that she only liked rehearsals and the first week of performance, and would rather be "out there" where the decisions were being made.
town of Claremont
during World War II. It never occurred to her to get into the movie business as she had always considered it to be exotic. Allen became a writer by default, and having always read constantly and being able to write pretty well, she decided to "write her way out" of the marriage and set out to become financially independent of her husband. She always claimed her first husband's big fault was marrying someone too young.
Her first work, Spring Riot, was a novel published in 1948 which got mixed reviews. Allen's next effort was a play, which she sent to producer Bob Whitehead. Because he had produced Member of the Wedding, she thought he would like it since her play was also about a child, but the play came back from Whitehead's office rejected. Allen sat on it for a couple of months and sent it back, rightly figuring that some reader had rejected it instead of Whitehead himself. She was correct, and this time Whitehead read the play himself and instantly optioned it. The reader who had initially rejected her play was Lewis Allen whom she would later marry, but due to casting problems her play was never produced on stage.
Eventually the couple came back to the city to work. By this time Bob Whitehead had become a good friend and encouraged Allen to write another play. She drew on her married life and wrote The First Wife, a witty script about a suburban working couple. It would later be made into the film Wives and Lovers
in 1963, starring Janet Leigh
and Van Johnson
. When Allen read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark
, she instantly saw play potential where no-one else did. After undergoing hypnotherapy
to alleviate a year long bout of writer's block, Allen produced a draft of the play in three days.
read it and offered Allen the script for Marnie
(1964). Hitchcock brought Allen out to California to work on the film at Universal Studios
in the San Fernando Valley
. Allen, who lived close by, would bicycle to work. This upset Hitchcock, who thought it was low-class and insisted that a limousine be sent for her every day, whether she wanted it or not. On days when she tried to walk to the studio, the limousine trailed along behind her.
In Allen's opinion, she couldn't learn fast enough to make a first-rate movie, although she thought Marnie did have some good scenes in it. She took a lot of the responsibility for what is considered a very flawed movie, since Hitchcock loved her script so much so that he did not make as good a movie as he should have. Hitchcock would have made her a director but she told him no. Said Allen: "It seems perfectly clear to me that any project takes a minimum of a year to direct. I like to get things on and over with. . . . Did you ever hear the phrase, 'the lady proposes, the studio disposes'? I didn’t make it up. I would never propose myself as a director." Under Hitchcock's mentoring, Allen developed the screenwriting talent she would use the rest of her career.
Allen wrote that she never felt discriminated against. While being one of the rare female screenwriter in Hollywood in the 1960s, she said "almost all of the men I worked with were supportive. If I was getting a bum rap somewhere, I didn’t know it."
, it premiered at the Wyndham's Theatre
in May 1966 with Vanessa Redgrave
and ran hundreds of performances. In January 1968, it opened in New York with Zoe Caldwell
as Brodie and ran for an entire year. Said Allen “All the women who played Brodie got whatever prize was going around at that time. Vanessa did, Maggie [Smith
] did.
(1968); her adaptation of the French boulevard comedy by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy premiered in December 1968 with Julie Harris
as the 42-year-old who has an affair with a 22-year-old man. Harris would win a Tony Award
for her performance. In 1973 Allen adapted her play for the screen, this time with a much too young Liv Ullmann
and Edward Albert, Jr., which turned out to be a critical and commercial disappointment.
to make a film version
of Graham Greene
's Travels with My Aunt
(1972), specifically for George Cukor
to direct. Cukor for some reason wasn't getting any work and Hepburn was casting around for projects. They asked Allen to come on for the script, but she was busy and instead suggested Hugh Wheeler
. After a few months, Fryer and Hepburn still weren't happy with Wheeler's script, and Allen agreed to give it a shot and wrote a very straightforward script for them. But Hepburn had just starred in the disastrous adaptation of Madwoman of Chaillot and didn't want, in Allen's words, "to play another crazy old lady". Hepburn was reluctant to let Cukor down and wouldn't admit her reservations and began to find fault with the script, even re-writing many sections herself. Consequently Allen finally threw in the towel, telling Hepburn that she ought to write it herself; which she did. Eventually, Hepburn provoked the studio into making her quit the project, leaving Fryer free to bring Jean Brodie's Maggie Smith on board to make the picture. One speech of Allen's remains in the script, otherwise it is all Hepburn's product. The Writer's Guild
refused to put Hepburn's name on the script since she wasn't a guild member; Fryer refused to let Allen take her name off since she was the one he paid; and Wheeler was just burned that he received no credit at all.
's Cabaret
. The producers hadn't wanted to film the stage script by Joe Masteroff
and John Van Druten, and felt that not portraying the male lead as a homosexual was dishonest to the story. They wanted to go back to Christopher Isherwood
's original novel Goodbye to Berlin
of 1939, but the Berlin stories weren't structured in any linear fashion and Allen had to diagram the entire story. Allen and Fosse got along badly from the start: she found him "so depressed that it took two hours just to get him in the frame of mind for work." In Allen's opinion most of the humor from the original was lost; and believed Fosse didn't really like the lead character of Sally Bowles at all. She worked on the screenplay for ten months, but in the end Fosse and the producers were still unhappy with the final form, and having commitments elsewhere Allen handed the script over to her friend Hugh Wheeler
.
was that Barbra Streisand
had not wanted to do a sequel to Funny Girl
and was determined to give the director, Herbert Ross
a hard time. Ray Stark
had her cross-collateralized on three films and that she was, figuratively speaking, escorted to the set every day by a team of lawyers. The picture does however contain some of Allen's most satisfying work, some of which she doesn't remember writing and just seems to have come out of nowhere.
was born in Aaron Spelling
's kitchen, where he and Len Goldberg came up with the idea about a show that centered on the emotional life of a family. They pitched the idea to Allen and she liked it. Allen spent two weeks at the Beverly Hills Hotel
while she knocked out a script. Len and Aaron loved it; it was touching and had marvelous moments of compassion, and was exactly what they had talked about in the kitchen. The pilot was great, but ABC
didn't buy it. It wasn't until two years later that ABC entered a production deal with Mike Nichols
, who turned all their ideas down in favor of the script for Family that his Connecticut neighbor Jay Allen had shown him. It was Nichols who brought in Mark Rydell
for the pilot which premiered at 10:00pm Tuesday March 9, 1976; the series going on to run for four years and 86 episodes. Later in life Allen would remark about television: "I hate it, I hate it because the buck doesn't stop anywhere."
Allen wrote the novel Just Tell Me What You Want in 1969, with the idea of turning it into a screenplay, and after having trouble getting together a production, Allen sent it to Sidney Lumet
who surprisingly wanted to do it. In her opinion, Lumet is a wonderful structuralist but has his most difficult time with humorous dialogue; he hasn’t found a way to shoot humorous dialogue as brilliantly as he shoots everything else. Some of the humor was lost in Just Tell Me what you Want when Sidney gave the voice-over to Ali McGraw instead of Myrna Loy
as was originally intended. But the collaboration worked wonderfully; unbeknown to each other they both had wanted to cast Alan King
. This synchronicity in casting preference continued with all three Lumet/Allen movies.
's book, Prince of the City (1978), she was convinced it was a Sidney Lumet project, but the film rights had already been sold to Orion Pictures
for Brian De Palma
and David Rabe. Allen let it be known that if that deal should fall through, then she wanted the picture for Sidney. Just as Lumet was about to sign for a different picture, they got the call that Prince of the City was theirs. Allen hadn't wanted to write Prince of the City
; just produce it. She was put off by the book's non-linear story structure, but Lumet wouldn't make the picture without her, and agreed to write the outline for her. Lumet and Allen went over the book and agreed on what they could use and what they could do without. To her horror, Lumet would come in every day for weeks and scribble on legal pads. She was terrified that she would have to tell him that his stuff was unusable, but to her delight the outline was wonderful and she went to work. It was her first project with living subjects, and Allen interviewed nearly everyone in the book and had endless hours of Bob Leuci’s tapes for back-up. With all her research and Lumet's outline, she eventually turned out a 365-page script in 10 days. It was nearly impossible to sell the studio on a three-hour picture, but by offering to slash the budget to $10 million they agreed.
When asked if the original author ever has anything to say about how their book is treated, Allen replied: "Not if I can help it. You cannot open that can of worms. You sell your book, you go to the bank, you shut up."
's play Deathtrap
(1982) for Lumet, exchanging a weak confusing ending for a more directly resolved one. Though not being able to do what a screenwriter needs to do to a play – "opening it up", taking it outside the original set or sets, make it bigger – she was limited to bookending the script with scenes in a New York theater. The plotting was so very tight which is what the studio had wanted when they bought it. It was up to Allen to cut away the underbrush, simplifying the rhetoric as much as possible and adding some realism to the characters.
of A Little Family Business; a French boulevard comedy by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy. She was also hired by Broadway producer Allan Carr
to adapt Jean Pioret's non-musical 1973 play La Cage Aux Folles
as a musical reset in New Orleans. The never-to-be-produced production was called The Queen of Basin Street, and was to be directed by Mike Nichols
with Tommy Tune
choreographing and Maury Yeston
writing the songs. Nichols, who was a producing partner with Lewis Allen, eventually quit in a dispute over profits; Tommy Tune followed him and Carr fired Jay Allen. When Carr finally produced a musical version, Allen was forced to file suit for payment from her work on the adaptation.
Twentieth-Century Fox brought Allen in for a rewrite when they were unhappy with the script that a young talented David Mamet
had produced from Barry Reed's novel the Verdict
, thinking he had deviated too much from the original material. She produced a script they were happy with, but then handed it to Robert Redford
who began to tinker it to fit his persona. Eventually the producers took it away from Redford and offered it to Lumet, who had just seen a production of Mamet's American Buffalo
with Al Pacino
and preferred to use Mamet's original script. In the end the studio had paid both Allen and Redford and ended up with Mamet's original script anyway.
now. Television is a killer. It is really not for sissies."
starring Robert Morse
as Truman Capote
was actually a request of the Lawyer for the Capote Estate. Allen was reluctant to write about Capote at first, but once she had researched him, she found the last ten years of his life not as off-putting as she had thought: "Capote had a kind of Gallantry in the face of a devastating situation." Friends of Capote were amazed at her accuracy portraying a man she had only met but not known, and there was much question about how many of the lines are Capote's and how much is Allen, she maintains that at least 70% of the dialogue is Capote's own.
and observing particularly salacious crime trials from the benches in Manhattan Criminal Court. Allen had just about given up writing any more movies from beginning to end, preferring to do rewrites for large barrels of money. It had stopped being fun for her. Script 'development' translated to 'scripts written by committee', but the upside was that "developed" scripts tend to need rewrites – from outside the "development circle".
Her last film work was her screenplay for the 1990 remake of the classic, Lord of the Flies
. However, she disliked the finished product and had her name removed.
The trick in adapting, Allen said in a 1972 interview with The New York Times
, "is not to throw out the baby with the bath water. You can change all kinds of things, but don't muck around with the essence." Jay Presson Allen died May 1, 2006 at her home in Manhattan. She was 84 years old.
Biography
Born as Jacqueline Presson in San Angelo, TexasSan Angelo, Texas
San Angelo is a city in the state of Texas. Located in West Central Texas it is the county seat of Tom Green County. As of 2010 according to the United States Census Bureau, the city had a total population of 93,200...
, she was "never particularly fond of her given name", and decided to use her first initial when writing. According to the Dictionary of Literary Biography the more elaborate form, Jay, is the work of a Social Security Clerk.
The only child of a department store
Department store
A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...
manager, she would spend every Saturday and Sunday in the movie house, from one o’clock until somebody dragged her out at seven. From that time on movies became very important to her, and Allen knew she wouldn't be staying in West Texas
West Texas
West Texas is a vernacular term applied to a region in the southwestern quadrant of the United States that primarily encompasses the arid and semi-arid lands in the western portion of the state of Texas....
. Allen attended Miss Hockaday’s School for Young Ladies in Dallas for a couple of years, but came away with, in her words, as "having had no education to speak of." She skipped college and at eighteen left home to become an actress. In New York, her career lasted "for about twenty-five minutes" Allen says, when she realized that she only liked rehearsals and the first week of performance, and would rather be "out there" where the decisions were being made.
First marriage
In the early 1940s, Allen married "the first grown man who asked me" and lived in the southern CaliforniaSouthern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
town of Claremont
Claremont, California
Claremont is a small affluent college town in eastern Los Angeles County, California, United States, about east of downtown Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. The population as of the 2010 census is 34,926. Claremont is known for its seven higher-education institutions, its...
during World War II. It never occurred to her to get into the movie business as she had always considered it to be exotic. Allen became a writer by default, and having always read constantly and being able to write pretty well, she decided to "write her way out" of the marriage and set out to become financially independent of her husband. She always claimed her first husband's big fault was marrying someone too young.
Her first work, Spring Riot, was a novel published in 1948 which got mixed reviews. Allen's next effort was a play, which she sent to producer Bob Whitehead. Because he had produced Member of the Wedding, she thought he would like it since her play was also about a child, but the play came back from Whitehead's office rejected. Allen sat on it for a couple of months and sent it back, rightly figuring that some reader had rejected it instead of Whitehead himself. She was correct, and this time Whitehead read the play himself and instantly optioned it. The reader who had initially rejected her play was Lewis Allen whom she would later marry, but due to casting problems her play was never produced on stage.
Second marriage
Allen returned to New York and performed on radio and in cabaret, both of which she loathed, and would go through the whole performance wishing to be fired. In the meantime she started writing again, little by little, and sold some of her work to live television programs like the Philco Television Playhouse. When she married Lewis M. Allen in 1955, they moved to the countryside, where Lewis wrote and Allen in her words "didn't want to do anything." She had a baby, and spent two and a half "absolutely wonderful years in the country."Eventually the couple came back to the city to work. By this time Bob Whitehead had become a good friend and encouraged Allen to write another play. She drew on her married life and wrote The First Wife, a witty script about a suburban working couple. It would later be made into the film Wives and Lovers
Wives and Lovers (film)
Wives and Lovers is a 1963 film directed by John Rich. It stars Janet Leigh and Van Johnson. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1964.-Cast:*Janet Leigh as Bertie Austin*Van Johnson as Bill Austin*Shelley Winters as Fran Cabrell...
in 1963, starring Janet Leigh
Janet Leigh
Janet Leigh , born Jeanette Helen Morrison, was an American actress. She was the wife of actor Tony Curtis from June 1951 to September 1962 and the mother of Kelly Curtis and Jamie Lee Curtis....
and Van Johnson
Van Johnson
Van Johnson was an American film and television actor and dancer who was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios during and after World War II....
. When Allen read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark
Dame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
, she instantly saw play potential where no-one else did. After undergoing hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is a therapy that is undertaken with a subject in hypnosis.The word "hypnosis" is an abbreviation of James Braid's term "neuro-hypnotism", meaning "sleep of the nervous system"....
to alleviate a year long bout of writer's block, Allen produced a draft of the play in three days.
Marnie
While The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was still an unproduced script, Alfred HitchcockAlfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
read it and offered Allen the script for Marnie
Marnie (film)
Marnie is a 1964 psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on the novel of the same name by Winston Graham. The film stars Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. The original film score was composed by Bernard Herrmann.-Plot:...
(1964). Hitchcock brought Allen out to California to work on the film at Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
in the San Fernando Valley
San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley is an urbanized valley located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southern California, United States, defined by the dramatic mountains of the Transverse Ranges circling it...
. Allen, who lived close by, would bicycle to work. This upset Hitchcock, who thought it was low-class and insisted that a limousine be sent for her every day, whether she wanted it or not. On days when she tried to walk to the studio, the limousine trailed along behind her.
In Allen's opinion, she couldn't learn fast enough to make a first-rate movie, although she thought Marnie did have some good scenes in it. She took a lot of the responsibility for what is considered a very flawed movie, since Hitchcock loved her script so much so that he did not make as good a movie as he should have. Hitchcock would have made her a director but she told him no. Said Allen: "It seems perfectly clear to me that any project takes a minimum of a year to direct. I like to get things on and over with. . . . Did you ever hear the phrase, 'the lady proposes, the studio disposes'? I didn’t make it up. I would never propose myself as a director." Under Hitchcock's mentoring, Allen developed the screenwriting talent she would use the rest of her career.
Allen wrote that she never felt discriminated against. While being one of the rare female screenwriter in Hollywood in the 1960s, she said "almost all of the men I worked with were supportive. If I was getting a bum rap somewhere, I didn’t know it."
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, about an iconoclast Scottish girl's school teacher would not premiere on the London stage until after Marnie's completion. Produced by Donald AlberyDonald Albery
Sir Donald Arthur Rolleston Albery was an English theatre impressario who did much to translate the adventurous spirit of London in the 1960s into theatrical reality....
, it premiered at the Wyndham's Theatre
Wyndham's Theatre
Wyndham's Theatre is a West End theatre, one of two opened by the actor/manager Charles Wyndham . Located on Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster, it was designed by W.G.R. Sprague about 1898, the architect of six other London theatres between then and 1916...
in May 1966 with Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
and ran hundreds of performances. In January 1968, it opened in New York with Zoe Caldwell
Zoe Caldwell
Zoe Caldwell, OBE is an Australian-born actress.-Early life:She was born as Ada Caldwell in Melbourne, Australia and was raised in the suburb of Balwyn in Yongala Street. Her father, Edgar, was a plumber and her mother, Zoe, was a taxi dancer. Caldwell's mother, Zoe, had a Peugeot of 1950 vintage...
as Brodie and ran for an entire year. Said Allen “All the women who played Brodie got whatever prize was going around at that time. Vanessa did, Maggie [Smith
Maggie Smith
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE , better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 59 years...
] did.
Forty Carats
After Jean Brodie, Allen had another success on Broadway with Forty CaratsForty Carats
Forty Carats is a play by Jay Allen.Adapted from the French original by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, the comedy revolves around a 40-year-old American divorcee who is assisted by a 22-year-old when her car breaks down during a vacation in Greece...
(1968); her adaptation of the French boulevard comedy by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy premiered in December 1968 with Julie Harris
Julie Harris
Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...
as the 42-year-old who has an affair with a 22-year-old man. Harris would win a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for her performance. In 1973 Allen adapted her play for the screen, this time with a much too young Liv Ullmann
Liv Ullmann
Liv Johanne Ullmann is a Norwegian actress and film director, as well as one of the "muses" of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman...
and Edward Albert, Jr., which turned out to be a critical and commercial disappointment.
Travels with my Aunt
Bobby Fryer, who had produced the film of Jean Brodie, had teamed with Katharine HepburnKatharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
to make a film version
Travels with My Aunt (film)
Travels with My Aunt is a 1972 American comedy film directed by George Cukor. The screenplay by Jay Presson Allen and Hugh Wheeler is based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Graham Greene.-Plot:...
of Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
's Travels with My Aunt
Travels with My Aunt
Travels with My Aunt is a novel written by English author Graham Greene.The novel follows the travels of Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, and his eccentric Aunt Augusta as they find their way across Europe, and eventually even further afield...
(1972), specifically for George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
to direct. Cukor for some reason wasn't getting any work and Hepburn was casting around for projects. They asked Allen to come on for the script, but she was busy and instead suggested Hugh Wheeler
Hugh Wheeler
Hugh Callingham Wheeler was an English-born playwright, screenwriter, librettist, poet, and translator. He resided in the United States from 1934 until his death and became a naturalized citizen in 1942. He had attended London University.Under the noms de plume Patrick Quentin, Q...
. After a few months, Fryer and Hepburn still weren't happy with Wheeler's script, and Allen agreed to give it a shot and wrote a very straightforward script for them. But Hepburn had just starred in the disastrous adaptation of Madwoman of Chaillot and didn't want, in Allen's words, "to play another crazy old lady". Hepburn was reluctant to let Cukor down and wouldn't admit her reservations and began to find fault with the script, even re-writing many sections herself. Consequently Allen finally threw in the towel, telling Hepburn that she ought to write it herself; which she did. Eventually, Hepburn provoked the studio into making her quit the project, leaving Fryer free to bring Jean Brodie's Maggie Smith on board to make the picture. One speech of Allen's remains in the script, otherwise it is all Hepburn's product. The Writer's Guild
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
refused to put Hepburn's name on the script since she wasn't a guild member; Fryer refused to let Allen take her name off since she was the one he paid; and Wheeler was just burned that he received no credit at all.
Cabaret
Structure was what Allen brought to the screenplay for Bob FosseBob Fosse
Robert Louis “Bob” Fosse was an American actor, dancer, musical theater choreographer, director, screenwriter, film editor and film director. He won an unprecedented eight Tony Awards for choreography, as well as one for direction...
's Cabaret
Cabaret (film)
Cabaret is a 1972 musical film directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey. The film is set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931, under the ominous presence of the growing National Socialist Party....
. The producers hadn't wanted to film the stage script by Joe Masteroff
Joe Masteroff
-Career:Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Masteroff graduated from Temple University and served with the United States Air Force during World War II...
and John Van Druten, and felt that not portraying the male lead as a homosexual was dishonest to the story. They wanted to go back to Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
's original novel Goodbye to Berlin
Goodbye to Berlin
Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 short novel by Christopher Isherwood set in pre-Nazi Germany. It is often published together with Mr Norris Changes Trains in a collection called The Berlin Stories.-Details:...
of 1939, but the Berlin stories weren't structured in any linear fashion and Allen had to diagram the entire story. Allen and Fosse got along badly from the start: she found him "so depressed that it took two hours just to get him in the frame of mind for work." In Allen's opinion most of the humor from the original was lost; and believed Fosse didn't really like the lead character of Sally Bowles at all. She worked on the screenplay for ten months, but in the end Fosse and the producers were still unhappy with the final form, and having commitments elsewhere Allen handed the script over to her friend Hugh Wheeler
Hugh Wheeler
Hugh Callingham Wheeler was an English-born playwright, screenwriter, librettist, poet, and translator. He resided in the United States from 1934 until his death and became a naturalized citizen in 1942. He had attended London University.Under the noms de plume Patrick Quentin, Q...
.
Funny Lady
In Allen's opinion, the problem with Funny LadyFunny Lady
Funny Lady is a 1975 film starring Barbra Streisand, James Caan, Omar Sharif, Roddy McDowall, and Ben Vereen.A sequel to the 1968 film Funny Girl, it is a highly fictionalized account of the later life and career of comedienne Fanny Brice and her marriage to songwriter and empresario Billy Rose...
was that Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
had not wanted to do a sequel to Funny Girl
Funny Girl (film)
Funny Girl is a 1968 romantic musical film directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Isobel Lennart was adapted from her book for the stage musical of the same title...
and was determined to give the director, Herbert Ross
Herbert Ross
Herbert Ross was an American film director, producer, choreographer and actor.-Early life and career:Born Herbert David Ross in Brooklyn, New York, he made his stage debut as Third Witch with a touring company of Macbeth in 1942...
a hard time. Ray Stark
Ray Stark
Ray Stark was an American film producer and powerbroker known for his Machiavellian ways.While putting together the Broadway musical Funny Girl - the highly fictionalized account of the life of his mother-in-law, Fanny Brice - its producer David Merrick took Stark and his wife to see an unknown...
had her cross-collateralized on three films and that she was, figuratively speaking, escorted to the set every day by a team of lawyers. The picture does however contain some of Allen's most satisfying work, some of which she doesn't remember writing and just seems to have come out of nowhere.
Family
The idea for the television show FamilyFamily (TV series)
Family is an American television drama series that aired on ABC from 1976 to 1980. Creative control of the show was split between executive producers Leonard Goldberg, Aaron Spelling and Mike Nichols...
was born in Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling was an American film and television producer. As of 2009, Spelling's eponymous production company Spelling Television holds the record as the most prolific television writer, with 218 producer and executive producer credits...
's kitchen, where he and Len Goldberg came up with the idea about a show that centered on the emotional life of a family. They pitched the idea to Allen and she liked it. Allen spent two weeks at the Beverly Hills Hotel
Beverly Hills Hotel
The Beverly Hills Hotel is a hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California. It was opened on May 12, 1912 by Margaret J. Anderson and her son, Stanley S. Anderson, who had been managing the Hollywood Hotel. The original main building of The Beverly Hills Hotel was designed by Pasadena...
while she knocked out a script. Len and Aaron loved it; it was touching and had marvelous moments of compassion, and was exactly what they had talked about in the kitchen. The pilot was great, but ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
didn't buy it. It wasn't until two years later that ABC entered a production deal with Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate...
, who turned all their ideas down in favor of the script for Family that his Connecticut neighbor Jay Allen had shown him. It was Nichols who brought in Mark Rydell
Mark Rydell
Mark Rydell is an American actor, film director and producer.-Career:Rydell's initial training was in music. As a youth, he wanted to be a conductor. He began his career as an actor and first became known for his role as Walt Johnson on The Edge of Night and as Jeff Baker on As the World Turns,...
for the pilot which premiered at 10:00pm Tuesday March 9, 1976; the series going on to run for four years and 86 episodes. Later in life Allen would remark about television: "I hate it, I hate it because the buck doesn't stop anywhere."
Just Tell Me What You Want!
"Male characters are easier to write. They're simpler. I think women are generally more psychologically complicated. You have to put a little more effort into writing a woman." - Jay Presson Allen.Allen wrote the novel Just Tell Me What You Want in 1969, with the idea of turning it into a screenplay, and after having trouble getting together a production, Allen sent it to Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
who surprisingly wanted to do it. In her opinion, Lumet is a wonderful structuralist but has his most difficult time with humorous dialogue; he hasn’t found a way to shoot humorous dialogue as brilliantly as he shoots everything else. Some of the humor was lost in Just Tell Me what you Want when Sidney gave the voice-over to Ali McGraw instead of Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy was an American actress. Trained as a dancer, she devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. Originally typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent, her career prospects improved following her portrayal of Nora Charles...
as was originally intended. But the collaboration worked wonderfully; unbeknown to each other they both had wanted to cast Alan King
Alan King (comedian)
Alan King was an American actor and comedian known for his biting wit and often angry humorous rants. King became well known as a Jewish comedian and satirist. He was also a serious actor who appeared in a number of movies and television shows. King wrote several books, produced films, and...
. This synchronicity in casting preference continued with all three Lumet/Allen movies.
Prince of the City
When Allen read Robert DaleyRobert Daley
Robert Daley , is an American novelist. He is the author of 28 books, five of which have been adapted for film.Daley graduated from Fordham University in 1951 and served in the Air Force during the Korean War...
's book, Prince of the City (1978), she was convinced it was a Sidney Lumet project, but the film rights had already been sold to Orion Pictures
Orion Pictures
Orion Pictures Corporation was an American independent production company that produced movies from 1978 until 1998. It was formed in 1978 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. and three former top-level executives of United Artists. Although it was never a large motion picture producer, Orion...
for Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...
and David Rabe. Allen let it be known that if that deal should fall through, then she wanted the picture for Sidney. Just as Lumet was about to sign for a different picture, they got the call that Prince of the City was theirs. Allen hadn't wanted to write Prince of the City
Prince of the City
Prince of the City is an American crime drama film about an NYPD officer who chooses to expose police corruption for idealistic reasons. The character of Daniel Ciello was based on real-life NYPD Narcotics Detective Robert Leuci and the script was based on Robert Daley's 1978 book of the same name...
; just produce it. She was put off by the book's non-linear story structure, but Lumet wouldn't make the picture without her, and agreed to write the outline for her. Lumet and Allen went over the book and agreed on what they could use and what they could do without. To her horror, Lumet would come in every day for weeks and scribble on legal pads. She was terrified that she would have to tell him that his stuff was unusable, but to her delight the outline was wonderful and she went to work. It was her first project with living subjects, and Allen interviewed nearly everyone in the book and had endless hours of Bob Leuci’s tapes for back-up. With all her research and Lumet's outline, she eventually turned out a 365-page script in 10 days. It was nearly impossible to sell the studio on a three-hour picture, but by offering to slash the budget to $10 million they agreed.
When asked if the original author ever has anything to say about how their book is treated, Allen replied: "Not if I can help it. You cannot open that can of worms. You sell your book, you go to the bank, you shut up."
Deathtrap
Allen adapted Ira LevinIra Levin
Ira Levin was an American author, dramatist and songwriter.-Professional life:Levin attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa...
's play Deathtrap
Deathtrap
Deathtrap may refer to:*Deathtrap , a 1978 play by Ira Levin which received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play*Deathtrap , a 1982 film based on the Levin play*Deathtrap , a plot device in fiction and drama...
(1982) for Lumet, exchanging a weak confusing ending for a more directly resolved one. Though not being able to do what a screenwriter needs to do to a play – "opening it up", taking it outside the original set or sets, make it bigger – she was limited to bookending the script with scenes in a New York theater. The plotting was so very tight which is what the studio had wanted when they bought it. It was up to Allen to cut away the underbrush, simplifying the rhetoric as much as possible and adding some realism to the characters.
La Cage Aux Folles
Allen returned to the stage with an adaptation for Angela LansburyAngela Lansbury
Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
of A Little Family Business; a French boulevard comedy by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy. She was also hired by Broadway producer Allan Carr
Allan Carr
Allan Carr was an American producer and manager of stage and screen. Carr was nominated for numerous awards, winning a Tony Award and two People's Choice Awards, and was named Producer of the Year by the National Association of Theatre Owners.-Early career:Born Allan Solomon in Chicago, Illinois,...
to adapt Jean Pioret's non-musical 1973 play La Cage Aux Folles
La Cage aux Folles (play)
La Cage aux Folles is a 1973 French farce by Jean Poiret centering on confusion that ensues when Laurent, the son of a Saint Tropez night club owner and his gay lover, brings his fiancée's ultraconservative parents for dinner. The original French production premiered at the Théâtre du...
as a musical reset in New Orleans. The never-to-be-produced production was called The Queen of Basin Street, and was to be directed by Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate...
with Tommy Tune
Tommy Tune
Thomas James "Tommy" Tune is an American actor, dancer, singer, theatre director, producer, and choreographer. Over the course of his career, he has won nine Tony Awards and the National Medal of Arts.-Early years:...
choreographing and Maury Yeston
Maury Yeston
Maury Yeston is an American composer, lyricist, educator and musicologist.He is known for writing the music and lyrics to Broadway musicals, including Nine in 1982, and Titanic in 1997, both of which won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. He also won a Drama Desk Award for Nine...
writing the songs. Nichols, who was a producing partner with Lewis Allen, eventually quit in a dispute over profits; Tommy Tune followed him and Carr fired Jay Allen. When Carr finally produced a musical version, Allen was forced to file suit for payment from her work on the adaptation.
The Verdict
"What I really like to do is a very swift rewrite for a great deal of money. Then I’m out of it. There’s no emotional commitment at all – your name’s not on it, you’re home free", she would explain.Twentieth-Century Fox brought Allen in for a rewrite when they were unhappy with the script that a young talented David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
had produced from Barry Reed's novel the Verdict
The Verdict
The Verdict is a 1982 courtroom drama film which tells the story of a down-on-his-luck alcoholic lawyer who pushes a medical malpractice case in order to improve his own situation, but discovers along the way that he is doing the right thing. Since the lawsuit involves a woman in a persistent...
, thinking he had deviated too much from the original material. She produced a script they were happy with, but then handed it to Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
who began to tinker it to fit his persona. Eventually the producers took it away from Redford and offered it to Lumet, who had just seen a production of Mamet's American Buffalo
American Buffalo (play)
American Buffalo is a 1975 play by American playwright David Mamet which had its premiere in a showcase production at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago. After two more showcase productions, it opened on Broadway on February 16, 1977...
with Al Pacino
Al Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...
and preferred to use Mamet's original script. In the end the studio had paid both Allen and Redford and ended up with Mamet's original script anyway.
Hothouse
Allen tried to recapture the success of Family with Hothouse for ABC in 1988; the drama about the lives and work experiences of the staff of a mental hospital lasted eight episodes. Personally Allen thought it was some of her best work, though its short life was a mixed blessing for her, said Allen: "Unfortunately, ABC didn't have the courage of their initial convictions. They skewered it, they turned tail on it. However if they had picked it up I'd have had to turn out 26 episodes. I'd be in Forest LawnForest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery is part of the Forest Lawn chain of Southern California cemeteries. It is at 6300 Forest Lawn Drive in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California, on the lower north slope at the far east end of the Santa Monica...
now. Television is a killer. It is really not for sissies."
Tru
The 1991 Broadway production of TruTru (play)
Tru is a play by Jay Presson Allen.Adapted from the words and works of Truman Capote, it is set in the writer's New York City apartment at 870 United Nations Plaza the week before Christmas 1975...
starring Robert Morse
Robert Morse
Robert Morse is an American actor and singer. Morse is best known for his appearances in musicals and plays on Broadway. He has also acted in movies and television shows. His best known role is that of J. Pierrepont Finch in the 1961 Broadway musical, and 1967 film How to Succeed in Business...
as Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
was actually a request of the Lawyer for the Capote Estate. Allen was reluctant to write about Capote at first, but once she had researched him, she found the last ten years of his life not as off-putting as she had thought: "Capote had a kind of Gallantry in the face of a devastating situation." Friends of Capote were amazed at her accuracy portraying a man she had only met but not known, and there was much question about how many of the lines are Capote's and how much is Allen, she maintains that at least 70% of the dialogue is Capote's own.
Script doctor
When she wasn't writing, Allen and her husband were among the most visible of Manhattan's theater crowd. She would spend her later years as a script doctorScript doctor
A script doctor, also called script consultant, is a highly-skilled screenwriter, hired by a film or television production, to rewrite or polish specific aspects of an existing screenplay, including structure, characterization, dialogue, pacing, theme, and other elements...
and observing particularly salacious crime trials from the benches in Manhattan Criminal Court. Allen had just about given up writing any more movies from beginning to end, preferring to do rewrites for large barrels of money. It had stopped being fun for her. Script 'development' translated to 'scripts written by committee', but the upside was that "developed" scripts tend to need rewrites – from outside the "development circle".
"A production rewrite means that the project is in production. Big money elements – directors, actors – are pay or play. There is a shooting date. The shit is in the fan. And that’s where writers like me come in. Writers who are fast and reliable. We are nicely paid to do these production rewrites. . . and we love these jobs. Without credit? Never with credit. If you go for credit on somebody else’s work, you have to completely dismantle the structure. Who wants a job where you have to completely dismantle the structure? I only take things that I think are in reasonable shape. The director and the producer and the studio may not necessarily agree with me, but I think the script is in reasonable shape. Besides, no one but the writer ever knows how much trouble any one piece of work will be. Only the writer knows that. Only the writer. So I take what looks to me like something that is in good enough shape, yet which I can contribute to and make it worth the pay they are going to give me. . . There are more than one of us out there. These jobs are quick, sometimes they’re even fun, and you don’t have to take the terrible meetings. They’re not breathing on you. They’re just desperate to get a script. I’ve never taken anything that I knew I couldn’t help. They pay good money."
Her last film work was her screenplay for the 1990 remake of the classic, Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies (1963 film)
Lord of the Flies is a 1963 film adaptation of William Golding's novel of the same name. It was directed by Peter Brook and produced by Lewis M. Allen, known since for producing films based on modern-classic novels. The film was in production for much of 1961 though the film was not released until...
. However, she disliked the finished product and had her name removed.
The trick in adapting, Allen said in a 1972 interview with The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, "is not to throw out the baby with the bath water. You can change all kinds of things, but don't muck around with the essence." Jay Presson Allen died May 1, 2006 at her home in Manhattan. She was 84 years old.
Awards & Honors
In 1982, Allen was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.Screenplays
- Wives and LoversWives and Lovers (film)Wives and Lovers is a 1963 film directed by John Rich. It stars Janet Leigh and Van Johnson. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1964.-Cast:*Janet Leigh as Bertie Austin*Van Johnson as Bill Austin*Shelley Winters as Fran Cabrell...
(1963; playThe First Wife) - MarnieMarnie (film)Marnie is a 1964 psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on the novel of the same name by Winston Graham. The film stars Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. The original film score was composed by Bernard Herrmann.-Plot:...
(1964; screenplay) - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969; screenplay; play)
- CabaretCabaret (film)Cabaret is a 1972 musical film directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey. The film is set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931, under the ominous presence of the growing National Socialist Party....
(1972; screenplay) - Travels with My AuntTravels with My Aunt (film)Travels with My Aunt is a 1972 American comedy film directed by George Cukor. The screenplay by Jay Presson Allen and Hugh Wheeler is based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Graham Greene.-Plot:...
(1972; writer) - The BorrowersThe BorrowersThe Borrowers, published in 1952, is the first in a series of children's fantasy novels by English author Mary Norton. The novel and its sequels are about tiny people who live in people's homes and "borrow" things to survive while keeping their existence unknown...
(1973; teleplay) - 40 Carats (1973; writer)
- Funny LadyFunny LadyFunny Lady is a 1975 film starring Barbra Streisand, James Caan, Omar Sharif, Roddy McDowall, and Ben Vereen.A sequel to the 1968 film Funny Girl, it is a highly fictionalized account of the later life and career of comedienne Fanny Brice and her marriage to songwriter and empresario Billy Rose...
(1975; screenplay) - Family: Pilot "The Best Years"Family (TV series)Family is an American television drama series that aired on ABC from 1976 to 1980. Creative control of the show was split between executive producers Leonard Goldberg, Aaron Spelling and Mike Nichols...
(1976; teleplay) - A Star is BornA Star Is Born (1976 film)A Star Is Born is a 1976 American rock music musical film telling the story of a young woman, played by Barbra Streisand who enters show business, and meets and falls in love with an established male star, played by Kris Kristofferson, only to find her career ascending while his goes into decline...
(1976; uncredited rewrite) - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1978; teleplays)
- It's My TurnIt's My Turn (film)It's My Turn is a 1980 romantic comedy-drama film starring Jill Clayburgh, Michael Douglas, and Charles Grodin.The film was directed by Claudia Weill and written by Eleanor Bergstein...
(1980; executive producer) - Just Tell Me What You WantJust Tell Me What You WantJust Tell Me What You Want is a 1980 American comedy film directed by Sidney Lumet. It stars Ali MacGraw, Peter Weller and Alan King, and was also the final film of screen legend Myrna Loy....
(1980; screenplay from her novel; producer) - Prince of the CityPrince of the CityPrince of the City is an American crime drama film about an NYPD officer who chooses to expose police corruption for idealistic reasons. The character of Daniel Ciello was based on real-life NYPD Narcotics Detective Robert Leuci and the script was based on Robert Daley's 1978 book of the same name...
(1981; screenplay; executive producer) - DeathtrapDeathtrap (film)Deathtrap is a 1982 thriller film based on Ira Levin's play of the same name.The cast includes Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, Dyan Cannon, Irene Worth and Henry Jones...
(1982; screenplay; executive producer) - Hothouse (1988; executive producer, creator)
- Lord of the FliesLord of the Flies (1990 film)Lord of the Flies is a 1990 American thriller film adapted from the classic novel Lord of the Flies written by William Golding. It is the second film adaptation of the book, the first being the 1963 film Lord of the Flies. The film was a moderate box office success and critics gave it average reviews...
(1990; under the pseudonym Sara Schiff) - American Playhouse: TruAmerican PlayhouseAmerican Playhouse is an anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.It premiered on January 12, 1982 with The Shady Hill Kidnapping, written and narrated by John Cheever and directed by Paul Bogart...
(1992; teleplay) - Never Cry WolfNever Cry Wolf (film)Never Cry Wolf is a 1983 American drama film directed by Carroll Ballard. The film is an adaption of Farley Mowat's 1963 autobiography of the same name and stars Charles Martin Smith as a government biologist sent into the wilderness to study the caribou population, whose decline is believed to be...
(1983; uncredited rewrite) - CopycatCopycat (film)Copycat is an American psychological thriller, starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter. The film was directed by Jon Amiel, with a score composed by Christopher Young.-Plot:...
(1995; uncredited rewrite)
Stage Plays
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1968) adaptation
- Forty CaratsForty CaratsForty Carats is a play by Jay Allen.Adapted from the French original by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, the comedy revolves around a 40-year-old American divorcee who is assisted by a 22-year-old when her car breaks down during a vacation in Greece...
(1968) adaptation - A Little Family Business (1982) adaptation
- TruTru (play)Tru is a play by Jay Presson Allen.Adapted from the words and works of Truman Capote, it is set in the writer's New York City apartment at 870 United Nations Plaza the week before Christmas 1975...
(1989) and directed - The Big LoveThe Big LoveThe Big Love, is a non-fiction scandalous biographical account of an alleged love affair between actor Errol Flynn and then 15-year-old actress Beverly Aadland, as told by her mother, Florence Aadland....
(1991) and directed - La Cage aux FollesLa Cage aux Folles (play)La Cage aux Folles is a 1973 French farce by Jean Poiret centering on confusion that ensues when Laurent, the son of a Saint Tropez night club owner and his gay lover, brings his fiancée's ultraconservative parents for dinner. The original French production premiered at the Théâtre du...
(1995) uncredited adaptation