James Poe
James Poe was an influential American screenwriter renowned for his adaptations of works by prominent Southern authors, particularly Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner. Born in 1921 in Dobbs Ferry, New York, he began his career in the film industry after leaving St. John's College and working on the news program March of Time. Poe's most notable contributions include the film adaptations of Williams's plays, such as *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof*, which was celebrated for its faithfulness to the original material while making necessary adjustments to address cultural sensitivities regarding homosexuality. He also received critical acclaim for his portrayal of the character Homer Smith in *Lilies of the Field*, emphasizing a nuanced representation that transcended racial stereotypes.
Poe won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay for his adaptation of Jules Verne's *Around the World in Eighty Days*, showcasing his skill in translating literary works to the screen. His other notable screenplays include adaptations of *The Big Knife* and *Toys in the Attic*, demonstrating his ability to enhance the strengths of original texts while addressing their weaknesses. Throughout his career, which spanned from 1941 until his passing in 1980, he remained active in various film organizations and produced works across different media, including made-for-television movies and documentaries. James Poe's legacy is marked by his thoughtful and innovative contributions to American cinema.
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James Poe
Writer
- Born: October 4, 1921
- Birthplace: Dobbs Ferry, New York
- Died: January 24, 1980
- Place of death: Malibu, California
Biography
Screenwriter James Poe gained his greatest renown for his film adaptations of plays and novels by Southern authors, notably Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Summer and Smoke and William Faulkner’s Sanctuary. Before producing these screenplays, he distinguished himself through his collaboration on the screenplay adaptation of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay as well as a New York Film Critics Award.
Poe, the son of James and Peggy Bobbit Poe, was born in 1921 in Dobbs Ferry, New York, a few miles north of New York City. He attended St. John’s College but left without graduating and took a job on the news desk of the March of Time, a news program that was screened in motion picture houses. His association with the film industry lasted from 1941 until his death in 1980, at which time he was president of James Poe Company. He was active in the American Film Institute, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the International Writers Guild.
Poe’s screenplays for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Lilies of the Field, and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? were nominated for Academy Awards in 1958, 1963, and 1969, respectively. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was praised for preserving the original impact of Williams’s play, although Poe adjusted the screenplay in deference to popular reservations about homosexuality by downplaying Williams’s portrayal of Brick, the protagonist, as gay. He also moderated the excessive use of profanity contained in the original script.
In Lilies of the Field, Poe wrote the role of Homer Smith, a black Protestant who comes to the rescue of a community of Roman Catholic nuns eking out a hardscrabble existence in the Arizona desert, in such a way that audiences value him as a person rather than as a black person. Poe’s portrayal of Smith is well-rounded and avoids racial stereotyping.
One of Poe’s most skillful adaptations was his screenplay The Big Knife, based on Clifford Odets’s satirical drama about the Hollywood film industry and the studio system. Odets’s play was well structured but was not particularly successful on Broadway. Poe, nevertheless, created a script that heightened the strong points of Odets’s original and skillfully eliminated its most glaring weaknesses. He did an equally skillful job in adapting Lillian Hellman’s play Toys in the Attic for film in 1963.
Poe wrote the scripts for two made-for-television movies, Good Night, Sweet Prince, which aired in 1969, and The Gathering, first aired in 1977. He also wrote scripts for a number of documentaries and produced radio scripts for Three Skeleton Key: A CBS Suspense Radio Play, broadcast in 1956, and for one episode of the television series Bracken’s World that aired in 1969.