William R. Burnett
Encyclopedia
William Riley Burnett often credited as W. R. Burnett, was an American novelist and screenwriter
. He is best known for the crime novel, Little Caesar, whose film adaptation is considered the first of the classic American gangster movies.
Burnett was born in Springfield, Ohio
, U.S
. He left his civil service job there to move to Chicago when he was 28, by which time he had written over a hundred short stories and five novels, all unpublished.
(novel 1929, film 1931). Its 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 the then-unknown Edward G. Robinson
. The Al Capone
theme was one he returned to in 1932 with Scarface
. In addition to this, Burnett had won the 1930 O. Henry Award
for his short story "Dressing-Up" published in Harper's Magazine
in November 1929.
Burnett kept busy, producing a novel or more a year and turning most into screenplays (some as many as three times). Thematically Burnett was similar to Dashiell Hammett
and James M. Cain
but his contrasting of the corruption and corrosion of the city with the better life his characters yearned for, represented by the paradise of the pastoral, was fresh and original. He portrayed characters who, for one reason or another, fell into a life of crime. Once sucked into this life they were unable to climb out. They typically get one last shot at salvation but the oppressive system closes in and denies redemption.
Burnett's characters exist in a world of twilight morality — virtue can come from gangsters and criminals, malice from guardians and protectors. Above all, all of his characters are human, and this could be their undoing. In High Sierra (1941), Humphrey Bogart
plays Roy Earle, a hard-bitten criminal who rejects his life of crime to help a crippled girl. In The Asphalt Jungle
(1949), the most perfectly masterminded plot falls apart as each character reveals a weakness. In The Beast of the City
(1932), the police take the law into their own hands when the criminals walk free on a legal loophole, presaging Dirty Harry
by almost 40 years.
, 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 Oscar nominations for his scripts for Wake Island
(1942) and The Great Escape
. In addition to his film work he also wrote scripts for television
and radio
.
, where his anti-hero ideology was enthusiastically embraced.
On his death in 1982, in Santa Monica, California, Burnett was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California
.
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
. He is best known for the crime novel, Little Caesar, whose film adaptation is considered the first of the classic American gangster movies.
Burnett was born in Springfield, Ohio
Springfield, Ohio
Springfield is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Clark County. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio and is situated on the Mad River, Buck Creek and Beaver Creek, approximately west of Columbus and northeast of Dayton. Springfield is home to Wittenberg...
, U.S
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He left his civil service job there to move to Chicago when he was 28, by which time he had written over a hundred short stories and five novels, all unpublished.
Writing career
In Chicago he found a job as a night clerk in a seedy hotel. Suddenly Burnett found himself associating with a cornucopia of characters straight from the mean streets: prize fighters, hoodlums, hustlers, and hobos. They inspired Little CaesarLittle Caesar
Little Caesar may refer to:* Little Caesar , a 1929 novel by William R. Burnett* Little Caesar , a 1931 film based on the novel* Little Caesar , a hard rock band* Little Caesars, a pizza chain...
(novel 1929, film 1931). Its overnight success landed him a job as a Hollywood
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
screenwriter. Little Caesar became a classic movie, produced by First National Pictures (Warner Brothers) and starring the then-unknown Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson was a Romanian-born American actor. A popular star during Hollywood's Golden Age, he is best remembered for his roles as gangsters, such as Rico in his star-making film Little Caesar and as Rocco in Key Largo...
. The Al Capone
Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early...
theme was one he returned to in 1932 with Scarface
Scarface (1932 film)
Scarface is a 1932 American gangster film starring Paul Muni and George Raft, produced by Howard Hughes, directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, and written by Ben Hecht based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Armitage Trail...
. In addition to this, Burnett had won the 1930 O. Henry Award
O. Henry Award
The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
for his short story "Dressing-Up" published in Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
in November 1929.
Burnett kept busy, producing a novel or more a year and turning most into screenplays (some as many as three times). Thematically Burnett was similar to Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...
and James M. Cain
James M. Cain
James Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...
but his contrasting of the corruption and corrosion of the city with the better life his characters yearned for, represented by the paradise of the pastoral, was fresh and original. He portrayed characters who, for one reason or another, fell into a life of crime. Once sucked into this life they were unable to climb out. They typically get one last shot at salvation but the oppressive system closes in and denies redemption.
Burnett's characters exist in a world of twilight morality — virtue can come from gangsters and criminals, malice from guardians and protectors. Above all, all of his characters are human, and this could be their undoing. In High Sierra (1941), Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
plays Roy Earle, a hard-bitten criminal who rejects his life of crime to help a crippled girl. In The Asphalt Jungle
The Asphalt Jungle
The Asphalt Jungle is a 1950 film noir directed by John Huston. The caper film is based on the novel of the same name by W. R. Burnett and stars an ensemble cast including Sterling Hayden, Jean Hagen, Sam Jaffe, Louis Calhern, James Whitmore, and, in a minor but key role, Marilyn Monroe, an unknown...
(1949), the most perfectly masterminded plot falls apart as each character reveals a weakness. In The Beast of the City
The Beast of the City
The Beast of the City is a 1932 pre-Code gangster movie featuring cops as vigilantes and known for its singularly vicious ending. Written by W.R...
(1932), the police take the law into their own hands when the criminals walk free on a legal loophole, presaging Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry is a 1971 American crime thriller produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the Dirty Harry series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first outing as San Francisco Police Department Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan....
by almost 40 years.
Film work
Burnett worked with many of the greats in acting and directing, including Raoul WalshRaoul Walsh
Raoul Walsh was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh...
, John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
, John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
, Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
, Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause....
, Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk was a Danish-German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s.-Life and work:...
, and Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for writing and directing Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter and the infamous Heaven's Gate. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial subject...
, John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
(The Dark Command), Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
, Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino was an English-born film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed seven others, mostly in the United States. She appeared in serial television programmes 58 times and directed 50 other episodes...
, Paul Muni
Paul Muni
Paul Muni was an Austrian-Hungarian-born American stage and film actor...
, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
, Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen
Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...
and Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
. He received Oscar nominations for his scripts for Wake Island
Wake Island (1942 film)
Wake Island is a 1942 American film written by W. R. Burnett and Frank Butler, and directed by John Farrow. The film tells the story of the United States military garrison on Wake Island and the onslaught by the Japanese following the attack on Pearl Harbor...
(1942) and The Great Escape
The Great Escape (film)
The Great Escape is a 1963 American film about an escape by Allied prisoners of war from a German POW camp during World War II, starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough...
. In addition to his film work he also wrote scripts for television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
.
Later years
In later years, with his vision declining, he stopped writing and turned to promoting his earlier work. In his career he achieved huge popularity in EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, where his anti-hero ideology was enthusiastically embraced.
On his death in 1982, in Santa Monica, California, Burnett was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California
Glendale, California
Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...
.