Edmund Naughton

Edmund Naughton (1926–2013) was an American writer and journalist whose first novel, McCabe (1959), was the basis for the 1971 film McCabe & Mrs. Miller. The film, directed by Robert Altman, is now considered a masterpiece. After 1958, Naughton lived in France and England. Between 1959 and 1984, Naughton published six novels in the genres of westerns and of crime fiction. The first two were published in French translation as well as English; the last two were published only in translation.

Edmund Naughton
Photograph from the dust jacket of McCabe (1959).
Born
Edmund J. Naughton

(1926-03-07)March 7, 1926
Borough of Manhattan, New York, New York, USA[1]
DiedSeptember 9, 2013(2013-09-09) (aged 87)[2]
Alma materBoston College
Fordham University
OccupationWriter, journalist
Years active1953 - 1984

Naughton was born and raised in New York City and educated in Catholic schools. He received a bachelor's degree from Boston College in 1948,[3] and an M.F.A. degree from Fordham University in 1953. He then became a police reporter for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky.[4] As described in a short biographical notice, "he stayed for 5 years on the police beat, which he worked down to an average of an hour & a half's work per day. The rest of the time he spent playing cards and drinking beer with policemen. Once he went on an actual manhunt with them. He wrote McCabe in 1957-1958, largely out of his experience on the police beat, transposing his characters to the West." In 1958 Naughton moved to Paris, France, where he worked for the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, and as an English teacher.[5]

McCabe, which had been well-reviewed by Nelson C. Nye in The New York Times,[6] was translated into French as La Belle Main in 1960,[7] and into German as Keine Chance für McCabe in 1966.[8] He published his second novel, The Pardner, in 1971, which was also promptly translated into French (as Oh! collègue).[9][10] In association with the 1971 film based on it, McCabe was published in new editions and a new translation into Italian (I Compari). The novel was last reprinted as a mass market paperback in 1992.[11]

Naughton published four more novels. A Case in Madrid was published in 1973 and The Maximum Game in 1975.[12][13] Two more novels appeared only in French translation: Les Cow-boys dehors! (1982 - Wild Horses) and Grand Noir et le petit Blanc (1984 - White Man, Black Man).[14][15] French critic Claude Mesplède included Naughton in the Dictionnaire des littératures policières (lit. Dictionary of Crime Literature). Mesplède writes that Naughton lost his job as a journalist in Louisville following public revelations that he was homosexual, and that this episode motivated his emigration from the United States to Europe.[16]

Film adaptation of McCabe

The adaptation of Naughton's novel for the film McCabe & Mrs. Miller gave him wide recognition; the film is considered a masterpiece by prominent critics, and was entered into the U.S. National Film Registry in 2010.[17][18][19][20][21] The story of the adaptation has been told by several film historians.[22][23][24] The rights to McCabe were purchased in 1968 by producer David Foster through Naughton's agent in Paris, Ellen Wright.

Ben Maddow was hired to write a screenplay based on the novel, and there are two versions of his work in the archives of the Margaret Herrick Library. Maddow had made substantial changes to the plot of the novel.[24] In October 1969 Robert Altman had been signed to direct a film adaptation of the novel. Brian McKay was hired to write a second, independent screenplay. A later "shooting screenplay" is available in archives.[25] Only McKay and Altman were listed as screenwriters in the film's credits. Critic Matthew Dessem has compared the actual film with the Maddow and McKay screenplays and with Naughton's novel. Dessem concludes that the structure of the final film is reasonably faithful to Naughton's original novel.[24]

References
  1. "New York, New York, Birth Index, 1910-1965 [database on-line]". Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. 2017.
  2. "Edmund J Naughton, 09 Sep 2013". United States Social Security Death Index. FamilySearch. May 20, 2014. The entry also gives Naughton's date of birth as March 7, 1926.
  3. "B.C. men write for national magazine". The Heights. XXXII (13). Boston College. December 7, 1950. Retrieved 2016-10-27.
  4. "Edmund Naughton". The Courier-Journal. May 2, 1954. p. 130. Edmund Naughton is a Courier-Journal police reporter from New York who loves "Western" movies, and has hitch hiked through the West. When he met Sergeant House on the police beat he naturally became interested in a bronco-busting detective.
  5. Naughton, Edmund (1991). McCabe. Leisure Books. ISBN 9780843930252. OCLC 23129272. This book is a paperback reprint of the 1959 novel; see Naughton, Edmund (1959). McCabe: a Novel. New York: MacMillan. OCLC 908603122.
  6. Nye, Nelson (December 6, 1959). "Western Roundup". The New York Times. a distinctly unusual bit of Western realism
  7. Naughton, Edmund (1960). La Belle Main (in French). Gilberte Sollacaro (translation). Gallimard. OCLC 460578114. Translation of McCabe.
  8. Naughton, Edmund (1966). Keine Chance für McCabe (in German). Lore Treplin (translation). Rowolt. OCLC 73837841.
  9. Naughton, Edmund (1972). The Pardner. Berkley Pub. Corp. OCLC 19319482.
  10. Naughton, Edmund (1971). Oh! collègue. Rosine Fitzgerald (translation). Gallimard. ISBN 9782070484362. OCLC 462112922.
  11. "Search results for 'mccabe "edmund naughton"'". WorldCat.
  12. Naughton, Edmund (1973). A Case in Madrid. Curtis Books. OCLC 9690280.
  13. Naughton, Edmund (1975). The Maximum Game. Warner Books. ISBN 9780446765848. OCLC 17537691.
  14. Naughton, Edmund (1982). Les Cow-boys dehors!. Rosine Fitzgerald (translator). Gallimard. ISBN 9782070488780. OCLC 461746239.
  15. Naughton, Edmund (1984). Grand Noir et le petit Blanc. Gallimard. ISBN 9782070489626. OCLC 420189359.
  16. Mesplède, Claude, ed. (2007). Dictionnaire des littératures policières (in French). 2. Nantes: Joseph K. pp. 413–414. ISBN 978-2-910-68645-1. OCLC 315873361.
  17. Ebert, Roger (November 14, 1999). "McCabe & Mrs. Miller". Chicago Sun Times.
  18. Brooks, Xan (May 3, 2007). "McCabe and Mrs Miller". The Guardian. Until now, I always had the bold, bawdy Nashville filed as the ultimate Altman movie. I'm now wondering if this minor-key masterpiece might not just have the edge.
  19. Chaw, Walter. "TCM Greatest Films Classic Collection – Western Adventures". Film Freak Central. Archived from the original on 2010-04-09. The father of contemplative American classics like Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man and Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, like The Wild Bunch, packs every bit the wallop of relevance and currency that it did over three decades ago. No hint of hyperbole, they are two of the best films ever made.
  20. Yanick, Joe (October 16, 2016). "Criterion Crash Course: Moviemaking Lessons from Criterion's McCabe & Mrs. Miller". Moviemaker. 'Masterpiece' is a word that gets bandied around far too often, to the point of devaluing its meaning. In reality, few moviemakers have a masterpiece in them. In the grand scheme, most people’s best work still falls short of transcendent greatness. 1971’s McCabe & Mrs Miller arguably marks the first of numerous masterpieces from the late Robert Altman.
  21. Barnes, Mike (December 28, 2010). "'Empire Strikes Back', 'Airplane!' Among 25 Movies Named to National Film Registry". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2012-11-26.
  22. McGilligan, Patrick (1989). Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff. Macmillan. p. 339. ISBN 9780312304676. OCLC 18521062.
  23. Niemi, Robert (2016). The Cinema of Robert Altman: Hollywood Maverick. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231850865.
  24. Dessem, Matthew (October 2, 2014). "The making and unmaking of McCabe & Mrs. Miller". The Dissolve. Archived from the original on 2017-10-24.
  25. "Robert Altman's and Brian McKay's screenplay for McCabe & Mrs. Miller by La Familia Film". Issuu. Retrieved 2016-10-29. Image of an original typescript; the location of the actual typescript isn't given.

Further reading
  • Robbins, David (2011). "McCabe: From Story to Screen". Comparison of the novel with the screenplay of the film. Robbins, a prolific writer, favors the novel.
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