Harriet Frank Jr. – screenwriter,
novelist
Born March 2, 1923; died January 28,
2020
Harriet Frank Jr, who has died aged 96,
was a screen-writer who took literary material beyond straightforward
adaptation to reimagine it afresh. Working in tandem with her screen-writer
husband Irving Ravetch, Frank did this with the likes of The Long, Hot Summer
(1958) and Hud (1963). Where the former drew from three works by William
Faulkner, the latter took a minor character from Larry McMurty’s 1961 novel,
Horseman, Pass By, making him the film’s anti-hero lead in what was dubbed a
revisionist western.
Both films were directed by Martin
Ritt, and the trio would collaborate on eight pictures in all. Ritt was the
perfect foil for Frank and Ravetch’s screenplays, which were rooted in ideas of
social justice. In Hombre (1967), Paul Newman played a white man raised by
Native Americans. Conrack (1974) cast Jon Voight as a teacher struggling against the effects of
poverty and institutionalised racism in a school on a South Carolina island.
Norma Rae (1979) saw Sally Field play the title role of a cotton
mill worker who stands up to exploitation by forming a union. Stanley
& Iris (1990) moved Pat Barker’s novel, Union Street, to America in a tale
of adult illiteracy starring Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro. Throughout all
their work, Frank and Ravetch made ordinary people extraordinary.
Harriet Frank was born Harriet
Goldstein in Portland, Oregon, one of three children to Sam Goldstein, who
owned a shoe store, and Edith Frances (née Bergman). Using her middle name and
changing the family name, her mother hosted a local radio show – Frances Frank
- Speaking Frankly. It was from her that her daughter arguably inherited her
straight-talking fearlessness.
With the depression biting hard, in
1939, Edith packed her children into the family car and upped sticks to Hollywood,
where she reinvented herself as Harriet Frank Sr, with her teenage daughter now
Harriet Frank Jr. Her mother bluffed her way into an interview with MGM studio
head, Louis B Mayer, who employed her as a story editor, advising studio bosses
on novels that might be turned into films.
Frank Jr. studied English at the
University of California, Los Angeles. After graduation, and, with her mother’s
help, Frank began working at MGM as a trainee scriptwriter. It was
while working at MGM that she met Ravetch. They married in 1946, but arrived
back from honeymoon to discover that the trainee scheme had been shut down.
Frank moved to Warner Brothers,
working on the likes of Silver River (1948), starring Errol Flynn and Ann
Sheridan; and Whiplash (1948) about a struggling artist who becomes a
prize-fighter to impress the promotor’s nightclub singer sister. Frank also
worked on episodes of Playhouse of Stars (1956-1957) and Matinee Theatre
(1957). Ravetch worked separately on westerns, until the pair decided to pool
resources, setting in motion a working partnership that saw them painstakingly
discuss, dissect and hone every line.
Frank’s early credits with Ravetch
included Ten Wanted Men (1955) starring Randolph Scott, and Run for Cover
(1955) with James Cagney. The couple’s first real hit was The Long, Hot Summer,
for which they were nominated for best written American drama by the Writers
Guild of America.
Another Faulkner adaptation, The
Sound and the Fury (1959) followed, again directed by Ritt. For Vincente
Minnelli the couple wrote Home from the Hill (1960), then, for Delbert Mann,
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960). Hud saw Frank and Ravetch nominated
for an Oscar, though Frank was too busy to attend the ceremony, buying up
antiques in Paris for the couple’s lavish Laurel Canyon home instead. Known as
La Maison, Franks filled it with books and art.
Having inherited a love of books from
her mother, Frank believed that a screenplay should stand up as a work of
literature in its own right, with all the weight of its source. Hombre (1967)
took Elmore Leonard’s novel and invested its already meaty writing with a
sensitivity and depth that still managed to capture audiences.
House of Cards (1968) saw an American
boxer stumble on a fascist plot. For The Reivers (1969) Frank returned to
material by Faulkner, while The Cowboys (1972) cast John Wayne as a rancher
forced to hire inexperienced cowhands to get his herd to market on time. The
Carey Treatment (1972) drew from Michael Crichton’s novel, A Case of Need.
Conrack, The Spikes Gang (1974) and Norma Rae followed, while Murphy’s Romance
(1985) saw Sally Field again play the lead prior to Frank’s swansong with
Ravetch and Ritt on Stanley & Iris.
Beyond film, Frank wrote short
stories for The Saturday Evening Post and two novels, which she dubbed ‘human
comedies’. Single (1977) was about four women who find and lose love, while
Special Effects (1979) focused on a film studio story editor and those falling
apart around her.
Frank’s nephew Michael’s 2017 memoir,
The Mighty Franks, immortalised his ‘Aunt Hankie’ as ‘the most magical human
being I ever knew.’ According to him, the guidance she gave him was to ‘Make
beauty whenever possible. You don’t want to be ordinary, do you? To fit in?
Fitting in is a form of living death.’
Frank is survived by
her brother Marty. Ravetch pre-deceased Frank in 2010.
The Herald, February 28th 2020
ends
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