The View from Pompey's Head
Encyclopedia
Hamilton Basso
Joseph Hamilton Basso was an American novelist and journalist.Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Basso worked as reporter for several newspapers in New Orleans, wrote 11 novels, primarily about the South and was an associate editor at The New Yorker for more than 20 years...
which spent 40 weeks on 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...
Bestseller List after it was published by Doubleday in 1954.
Basso's novel was reviewed by The New York Times in 1954: "Zestful and non-escapist entertainment... The most pleasantly and sensibly romantic novel to come my way in a long time." The Saturday Review also reviewed the novel in 1954:
- His most impressive book to date. A long, mildly ironic, and deliberately discursive work, it weaves two of his favorite subjects, the subtle social distinctions of a small Southern city and the subtle questions of reputation and standing in New York literary and publishing circles.
The View from Pompey's Head was reprinted by the Louisiana State University Press
Louisiana State University Press
The Louisiana State University Press is a nonprofit book publisher and an academic unit of Louisiana State University. Founded in 1935, the press publishes scholarly, general interest, and regional books as part of the university’s mission to disseminate knowledge and culture...
in 1998 as part of its "Voices of the South" series. The Light Infantry Ball (1960), Basso's prequel to The View from Pompey's Head, was a finalist for the 1960 National Book Award.
James Sallis, writing in The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
commented:
- Hamilton Basso. With The View from Pompey's Head, a novel sharing themes with earlier work though palpably inferior to same, he became a bestseller. A major film ensued. If anything of Basso's is in print today, I'd be surprised. If Globe readers even know his name, I'd be surprised. Were it not for Inez Hollander Lake's fine biography of Basso, The Road from Pompey's Head (Louisiana State University Press, 1999), I myself would know little more than his name and that one novel. "Comfortably placed on The New York Times bestseller list for 40 weeks," Lake writes, "selling more than 75,000 copies, and sold to the movies for $100,000, The View from Pompey's Head was the breakthrough that Basso had been waiting for. However, just as one cannot argue that MelvilleHerman MelvilleHerman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
's TypeeTypeeTypee is American writer Herman Melville's first book, a classic in the literature of travel and adventure partly based on his actual experiences as a captive on the island Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands, in 1842...
(1846) was a better book because it sold more copies than Moby-DickMoby-DickMoby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
(1851), so it is equally impossible to claim that The View from Pompey's Head was a masterpiece because it was so popular." What it did was gather up, like a self-anthology, themes and preoccupations from Basso's earlier work: the return-of-the-native motif so important to at least three previous novels, his ongoing investigation of old vs. new South, his penchant for both the novel of character (Relics and Angels, Courthouse Square) and the novel of ideas (Days Before Lent, Wine of the Country). Its tale of a lawyer defending a black man is a direct precursor of, almost certainly a model for, To Kill a MockingbirdTo Kill a MockingbirdTo Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature...
.
Film adaptation
Basso's novel was sold to 20th Century Fox for $100,000. The 1955 film was written and directed by Philip DunnePhilip Dunne (writer)
Philip Dunne was a Hollywood screenwriter, film director and producer, who worked prolifically from 1932 until 1965. He spent the majority of his career at 20th Century Fox crafting well regarded romantic and historical dramas, usually adapted from another medium...
. Exterior shots and some interior shots were filmed in Savannah, Georgia
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
. The story begins when Manhattan attorney Anson Page (Richard Egan
Richard Egan (actor)
Richard Egan was an American actor. In some films he is credited as Richard Eagan.-Career:Born in San Francisco, California, Egan served in the United States Army as a judo instructor during World War II...
) returns to his Southern roots after 15 years, arriving in Pompey's Head, South Carolina, to investigate the mystery surrounding missing royalties due famous author Garvin Wales (Sidney Blackmer
Sidney Blackmer
Sidney Alderman Blackmer was an American actor.Blackmer was born and raised in Salisbury, North Carolina. He started off in an insurance and financial business but gave up on it. While working as a builder's laborer on a new building, he saw a Pearl White serial being filmed and immediately...
). In the small Southern town, Page sees the same problems of racial and class prejudices that had once prompted him to leave Pompey's Head. However, he also encounters his former flame, Dinah Blackford (Dana Wynter
Dana Wynter
Dana Wynter was a German-born British actress, who was brought up in England and Southern Africa. She appeared in film and television for more than forty years beginning in the 1950s, most notably in the original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.-Early life:Wynter was born as Dagmar...
), who has married businessman Mickey Higgins (Cameron Mitchell
Cameron Mitchell (actor)
Cameron Mitchell was an American film, television and Broadway actor with close ties to one of Canada's most successful families, and considered, by Lee Strasberg, to be one of the founding members of The Actor's Studio in New York City.-Early life and career:Born Cameron MacDowell Mitzel in...
). While their romance is rekindled, various secrets of the past rise to the surface.
Child actors Charles Herbert
Charles Herbert
Charles Herbert is a former American child actor of the 1950s and 1960s. Before reaching his teens, Herbert was renowned by a generation of moviegoers for an on-screen broody, mature style and wit that enabled him to go one-on-one with some of the biggest names in the industry, and his appearances...
and Evelyn Rudie
Evelyn Rudie
Evelyn Rudie is a playwright, director, songwriter, film and television actress and teacher. Since 1973, she has been the co-artistic director of the Santa Monica Playhouse...
were in the cast, along with an appearance by DeForest Kelley
DeForest Kelley
Jackson DeForest Kelley was an American actor known for his iconic roles in Westerns and as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy of the USS Enterprise in the television and film series Star Trek.-Early life:...
. Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein was an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores. In a career which spanned fifty years, he composed music for hundreds of film and television productions...
provided the music score. Released November 4, 1955, the film was retitled Secret Interlude in the UK. Marjorie Rambeau
Marjorie Rambeau
Marjorie Rambeau was an American film and stage actress.-Early life:Rambeau was born in San Francisco, California to Marcel Rambeau and Lilian Garlinda Kindelberger. Her parents split up when she was a girl. She and her mother went to Nome, Alaska where young Marjorie dressed as a boy, sang and...
received a Best Supporting Actress Award from the National Board of Review. Despite a strong curiosity about this film by viewers, it has not been available on VHS and DVD.