Background
James Agee was born on 27 November 1909 in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States.
James Agee was born on 27 November 1909 in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States.
James Agee was a student of Phillips Exeter Academy. He graduated from Harvard, 1932.
From the mid forties on, Agee made a set at Huston, it was authentic admiration, or hero worship, but it was also a pioneering case of the movie critic lusting to sit at the all-night dinner with the big guys and walk away with a writing job. Agee worked on the script and commentary of The Quiet One (49, Sidney Meyers); he did a script for The African Queen (51, Huston), which was substantially redone by others; he did the “Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" episode from Face to Face (52, John Brahm and Bretaigne Windust), and he wrote the first screenplay for The Night of the Hunter (55, Charles Laughton).
The last was undoubtedly his most valuable work, and even if it is true that Agee’s script was painfully long and literary, and not even quite finished, Agee’s vision and his Tennessee roots meant a lot to Laughton.
Three years after his death he won a Pulitzer for his novel A Death in the Family.
The Quiet One (1949)