The Three Faces of “Miss Lonelyhearts”
Originally published in 1933, Nathanael West's short novel, Miss Lonelyhearts, paints a comically black portrait of the human condition and the world as a whole. A cynical newspaper editor hires an earnest and kind-hearted would-be reporter simply to prove to himself that the kid is as craven and rotten inside as everyone else in this stinking world. Toward this end, he hands the kid the “Miss Lonelyhearts” advice column. The letters from the lost, the crippled, the beaten and forsaken, and the helpless—people looking for some kind of salvation or simple hope—make up the heart of the book, but even beyond the letters, every one of West’s characters is plagued by some deep ugliness. And in those early years of the Great Depression, the world that surrounds them all is no less bleak. The misery runs to such absurd depths, in fact, that sometimes the only thing a reader can do is look on in astonished horror or recognition.
The book didn’t sell very well (perhaps people didn’t need any reminding that we were all fucked), which makes it all the more amazing that the rights to the book would be snatched up by Hollywood and turned into a film not just once, but three times over the next quarter-century.
When 20th Century Fox acquired the rights shortly after the book’s publication, the initial question must have been “how do we present this material to a glum Depression-era audience?” Well, the answer was simple. You hire Lee Tracy, toss the novel out the window, and rewrite it as a frothy screwball comedy. It was the oldest and most beloved of Hollywood’s ways of dealing with literature.
Directed by Alfred L. Werker (a busy contract director since the late ‘20s) and written by Leonard Praskins, Advice to the Lovelorn stars Tracy as Toby Prentiss, an undependable reporter who is punished for missing a big story by being forced to take over the “Miss Lonelyhearts” column. (The name of the column was the only element of West’s novel to survive the adaptation). Prentiss’s attempts to sabotage the humiliating assignment backfires, however, when his unconventional and shocking bits of advice become a big hit and boost the paper’s circulation. The usual predicaments and hijinx ensue, most of them involving his girl Louise (Sally Blane).
A momentary dark turn opens the third act, when Prentiss’s mother dies after he gives her some medicine bought from a crooked druggist he’d been plugging in his column. It’s not long, though, before things turn wacky again and wrap up nicely and neatly and happily.
While it’s understandable why Fox didn’t want to go plumbing the shadowy corners of human misery in 1933, one has to wonder if West was disgusted with what had been done with his novel, or if he was just happy with the check. After all, it was that same year that he signed a contract to be a scriptwriter for Columbia.
Twelve years later, the animated opening and “Pop Goes the Weasel” on the soundtrack made it clear that I’ll Tell the World was no closer to West’s original vision than Advice for the Lovelorn. In fact it’s difficult to find any connection to West here apart from his name in the opening credits.
Lee Tracy returns, this time as Gabriel Patton, in a comedy directed by Leslie Goodwins and written by Henry Blankford. Patton is a motormouth insurance salesman whose gift of gab earns him a job as a sports announcer on a local radio station, and later as the station’s on-air advice columnist (I guess that’s the connection, though the name “Miss Lonelyhearts” was dropped by this point.) More hijinx and girl trouble follows. And musical numbers. Mostly musical numbers. When the tap dancer began her routine (the film also includes four songs and a jazz piano number) I found myself thinking that it was probably a good thing that West had been dead for four years by the time this came out.
Again, however, you can almost understand the motivation. The war was coming to an end, the Allies had been victorious, and it simply wasn’t the time to remind the masses how awful life could be.
It would be another thirteen years before Miss Lonelyhearts raised his weary head again. In 1958 United Artists decided that audiences were either mature or cynical enough to deal with a film version that remained true to West’s novel (or at least true to the popular stage play based on the novel). They gathered an all-star cast which included Montgomery Clift, Robert Ryan, Maureen Stapleton, Myrna Loy, Thomas Hart, and Jackie Coogan. Screenwriter Dore Schart adapted the play, and the film, Lonelyhearts, was directed by Vincent Donehue, who was perhaps the obvious choice given that he also directed Peter Pan.
Filmed in a decidedly (and appropriate) noir style, Lonelyhearts is as close to a true adaptation as we’re likely to see. While there were certain necessary changes and additions made in the stage play and the film, it’s surprising how much of the more shocking elements of the novel are at least referred to in blunt terms, from deformity, to cheap infidelity (a recurring theme) to impotence.
Montgomery Clift is believably damaged here as the idealistic would-be reporter with an ugly secret in his past. Robert Ryan —and this is saying something — gives what may be the most brutally cynical performance of his career as the editor determined to break Adam's spirit (as well as his own wife’s). And as Fay Doyle, Maureen Stapleton is lonely, vulnerable, and scheming.
Even if the film ends on something akin to an upbeat note with several characters finding forgiveness and a change of heart, viewers are left with the sense that it’s artificial—a momentary glitch in the normal way of the world.
After a decade of noir, a straight version of West’s 1933 novel only made sense. It was a culmination, a distillation of the post-war ennui. There are no contrived crimes here to propel the action, only people whose lives had been wrecked by simple mistakes, accidents, and circumstance. And perhaps one too many tap dancing routines.
by Jim Knipfel