W. R. Burnett

W. R. Burnett
Burnett in 1935
Born	William Riley Burnett (1899-11-25)November 25, 1899 Springfield, Ohio, U.S.
Died	April 25, 1982(1982-04-25) (aged 82) Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Resting place	Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale)
Years active	1931–1972
Spouse(s)	Marjorie Louise Barstow ​ ​ (m. 1920)​ Whitney Forbes Johnston ​ ​ (m. 1943)​
Children	James, William

William Riley Burnett (November 25, 1899 – April 25, 1982) was an American novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for the crime novel Little Caesar, the film adaptation of which is considered the first of the classic American gangster movies.

Early life

Burnett was born in Springfield, Ohio, and attended Miami Military Institute in Germantown, Ohio. He left his civil service job in Springfield to move to Chicago when he was 28, by which time he had written over 100 short stories and five novels, all unpublished.

Writing career

In Chicago, Burnett found a job as a night clerk in the seedy Northmere Hotel. He found himself associating with prize fighters, hoodlums, hustlers and hobos. They inspired Little Caesar (novel 1929, film 1931). The novel's overnight success landed him a job as a Hollywood screenwriter. Little Caesar became a classic movie, produced by First National Pictures (Warner Brothers) and starring then little known Edward G. Robinson. Burnett returned to the Al Capone theme in 1932 with Scarface. He won the 1930 O. Henry Award for his short story "Dressing-Up", published in Harper's in November 1929.

Burnett published a novel or more a year and turned most into screenplays (some as many as three times). Thematically Burnett was similar to Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain, but contrasting the corruption and corrosion of the city with the better life his characters yearned for. He portrayed characters who, for one reason or another, fell into a life of crime and were unable to climb out. They typically get one last shot at salvation but the oppressive system closes in and denies redemption.

Film work

Burnett wrote for many of the great actors and directors, including Raoul Walsh, John Huston, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, Douglas Sirk, and Michael Cimino, John Wayne (The Dark Command), Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Paul Muni, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood. He received an Oscar nomination for his script for Wake Island (1942) and a Writers Guild nomination for his script for The Great Escape. In addition to his film work, he also wrote scripts for television and radio.

In High Sierra (1941), Humphrey Bogart plays Roy Earle, a hard-bitten criminal who rejects his life of crime to help a sexually appealing crippled girl. In The Asphalt Jungle (1950), the most perfectly masterminded plot falls apart as each character reveals a weakness. In The Beast of the City (1932) starring Walter Huston, the police take the law into their own hands when the criminals walk free due to legal incompetence.

Later years

In later years, with his vision declining, he stopped writing and turned to promoting his earlier work. On his death in 1982, in Santa Monica, California, Burnett was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Critical reception

Heywood Broun described Burnett's novel Goodbye to the Past as "written with all the excitement of Little Caesar, and ten times the skill".

Works

Novels

• Little Caesar (under pen name Lincoln MacVeagh/The Dial Press - 1929)
• Iron Man (Lincoln MacVeagh/The Dial Press - 1930)
• Saint Johnson (Lincoln MacVeagh/The Dial Press - 1930)
• The Silver Eagle (Lincoln MacVeagh/The Dial Press - 1931)
• The Beast of the City (Grosset & Dunlap - 1932) [not properly a Burnett novel; credit on the book reads "novelized by Jack Lait, from the screen story by W.R. Burnett"; the book was published concurrently with the release of the M-G-M film, circa March 1932]
• The Giant Swing (Harper - 1932)
• Dark Hazard (Harper - 1933)
• Goodbye to the Past: Scenes from the Life of William Meadows (Harper - 1934)
• The Goodhues of Sinking Creek (Harper - 1934)
• Dr. Socrates (O'Bryan House Publishing LLC - 2007) [Originally serialized in Colliers Weekly Magazine in 1935]
• King Cole (Harper - 1936)
• The Dark Command: A Kansas Iliad (Knopf - 1938)
• High Sierra (Knopf - 1941)
• The Quick Brown Fox (Knopf - 1943)
• Nobody Lives Forever (Knopf - 1943)
• Tomorrow's Another Day (Knopf - 1946)
• Romelle (Knopf - 1947)
• The Asphalt Jungle (Knopf - 1949)
• Stretch Dawson (Gold Medal - 1950). The film Yellow Sky (1948) was based on an early version of the novel.
• Little Men, Big World (Knopf - 1952)
• Adobe Walls: A Novel of the Last Apache Rising (Knopf - 1953)
• Vanity Row (Knopf - 1952)
• Big Stan (Gold Medal - 1953) - written under pseudonym "John Monahan"
• Captain Lightfoot (Knopf - 1954)
• It's Always Four O'Clock (Random House - 1956) - written under pseudonym "James Updyke"
• Pale Moon (Knopf - 1956)
• Underdog (Knopf - 1957)
• Bitter Ground (Knopf - 1958)
• Mi Amigo: A Novel of the Southwest (Knopf - 1959)
• Conant (Popular Library - 1961)
• Round the Clock at Volari's (Gold Medal - 1961)
• The Goldseekers (Doubleday - 1962)
• The Widow Barony (Macdonald - 1962)
• The Abilene Samson (Pocket Books - 1963)
• Sergeants 3 (Pocket Books - 1963)
• The Roar of the Crowd: Conversations with an Ex-Big-Leaguer (C.N. Potter - 1964)
• The Winning of Mickey Free (Bantam Pathfinder - 1965)
• The Cool Man (Gold Medal - 1968)
• Good-bye, Chicago: 1928: End of an Era (St. Martin's - 1981)

Short stories

• Round Trip (1929)
• Dressing-Up (1930)
• Travelling Light (1935)
• Vanishing Act (1955)

Filmography

• Little Caesar (1930) - script, based on 1929 novel under pen name of Lincoln MacVeagh
• The Finger Points (1931) - script
• Iron Man (1931) - based on 1930 novel under pen name of Lincoln MacVeagh
• Law and Order (1932) - based on 1930 novel Saint Johnson under pen name of Lincoln MacVeagh
• Beast of the City (1932) - script
• Scarface (1932) - script
• Dark Hazard (1934) - based on novel
• The Whole Town's Talking (1935) - script and based on short story "Jail Break"
• Dr. Socrates (1935) - based on short story
• 36 Hours to Kill (1936) - based on short story "Across the Aisle"
• Wine, Women and Horses (1937) - based on novel "Dark Hazard"
• Wild West Days (1937) - from 1930 novel Saint Johnson under pen name of Lincoln MacVeagh
• Some Blondes Are Dangerous (1937) - based on novel Iron Man
• King of the Underworld (1939) - based on short story "Dr Socrates"
• The Westerner (1940) - uncredited contribution
• The Dark Command (1940) - from his novel
• Law and Order (1940) - from his novel
• High Sierra (1941) - 1941 novel, co-script
• The Get-Away (1941) - script
• Dance Hall (1941) - from his novel The Giant Swing
• This Gun for Hire (1942) - script
• Bullet Scars (1942) - uncredited remake of "Dr Socrates"
• Wake Island (1942) - script
• Crash Dive (1943) - story
• Action in the North Atlantic (1943) - script
• Background to Danger (1943) - script
• San Antonio (1945) - story, script
• Nobody Lives Forever (1946) - based on novel, script
• The Man I Love (1946) - uncredited contribution to script
• Belle Starr's Daughter (1948) - story, script
• Yellow Sky (1948) - based on novel
• Colorado Territory (1950) - uncredited remake of 1941 novel and film High Sierra
• The Asphalt Jungle (1950) - based on 1949 novel, uncredited contribution
• Iron Man (1951) - based on 1930 novel under pen name Lincoln MacVeagh
• The Racket (1951) - script
• Vendetta (1951) - script
• Law and Order (1953) - based on 1930 novel Saint Johnson, under pen name of Lincoln MacVeagh
• Arrowhead (1953) - based on his 1953 novel Adobe Walls
• Dangerous Mission (1954) - script
• Night People (1954) - uncredited contribution to script
• Captain Lightfoot (1955) - based on novel, script
• Illegal (1955) - script
• I Died a Thousand Times (1956) - based on 1941 novel High Sierra, and 1941 film script
• Accused of Murder (1957) - based on novel Vanity Row, script
• Short Cut to Hell (1957) - remake of This Gun for Hire
• The Badlanders (1958) - based on 1949 novel The Asphalt Jungle
• The Hangman (1959) - uncredited contribution to script
• September Storm (1960) - script
• The Asphalt Jungle, television series, 13 episodes (1961) - scripts, based on 1949 novel
• The Lawbreakers (1961) - script
• Sergeants Three (1962) - story, script
• Cairo (1963) - from 1949 novel The Asphalt Jungle
• The Great Escape (1963) - script, based on Paul Brickhill's 1950 non-fiction World War II history book of the same name.
• Four for Texas (1963) - uncredited contribution to script
• The Jackals (1967) - remake of Yellow Sky
• Ice Station Zebra (1968) - uncredited contribution to script, based on 1963 novel of same name by Alistair MacLean
• Stiletto (1969) - uncredited contribution to script
• Cool Breeze (1972) - from 1949 novel The Asphalt Jungle

External links

• William R. Burnett at IMDb
• W.R. Burnett bibliography
• W.R. Burnett (bio), by John Strausbaugh, at The Chiseler
• W.R. Burnett at detnovel.com
• W. R. Burnett at Find a Grave
• “'Pretty Big Once': W. R. Burnett’s Cynical Americana” by Cullen Gallagher, at the Los Angeles Review of Books