New York and Hollywood · 1944–1962
AA’s members dreaded a film of The Lost Weekend, then cheered it, and Hollywood came asking for a picture about AA.
“Outsiders can understand us, after all.”
In 1944 Charles Jackson published The Lost Weekend, a novel about five days in the life of a drinking writer, Don Birnam. It became a favorite in AA for how true it rang. As Marty M., one of the first women to stay sober in AA, put it, many members had gone as far as Birnam, and farther, “and we could identify ourselves on nearly every page.”
Then word came that Hollywood would film it, and members groaned. “There we’d be, we alcoholics, misunderstood yet again,” Marty wrote. Paramount released the picture in November 1945, directed by Billy Wilder and produced by Charles Brackett, with Ray Milland as Birnam.
She reviewed it that December in the Grapevine, in the issue with which, Lois W. remembered, it became AA’s national magazine. Her verdict on the members’ fears: “That hasn’t happened.” An actor who wasn’t an alcoholic had caught the feeling of being one, and outsiders could understand them after all. Her one complaint was the ending, which has Birnam escaping his obsession by writing a book about it: “it is never so simple as that.” The next spring the picture won four Academy Awards, best picture among them.
Now the studios wanted a picture about AA itself, Pass It On says; the novel was fiction, but many details of Birnam’s life “resembled Bill’s drinking career.” In a letter of June 1946, back from a rest in Vermont, Bill W. wrote that he had got “heavily involved, at the office, in a Hollywood movie project.” And: “I got tired; once, I got mad.” That summer, Lois remembered, they stopped in Hollywood to see how a script was coming along for an AA picture Hal Wallis was to produce; its writer had been to their house to talk with Bill. It was never filmed. AA’s trustees “indefinitely postponed any offer of A.A.’s collaboration” in a commercial picture.
Others went ahead. Marty “consulted intensively” on the script of Smash-Up (1947), about a singer’s alcoholic wife, and spent two weeks in Hollywood coaching its star, Susan Hayward. By the 1950s AA itself turned up on the screen. In Come Back, Little Sheba (1952), which Hal Wallis produced, a sober chiropractor goes to AA meetings, and AA cooperated on Days of Wine and Roses, a television play in 1958 and a film four years later.
It’s late 1945, and a new picture from Paramount is in the movie houses: The Lost Weekend, from Charles Jackson’s novel about five days in a drunk’s life. AA’s members had read the book and found themselves on nearly every page. When they heard Hollywood was filming it, many of them groaned. They’d be misunderstood again.
Then Marty M. sees it, and tells them in AA’s magazine that the picture gets it right. Outsiders can understand us, after all.
It wins four Academy Awards, and the studios come calling. They want a picture about AA itself. A producer has a script written, and Bill W. gets caught up in it. But AA’s trustees put the offer off, and the picture is never made.
Twelve years later, AA lends a hand to a television play, Days of Wine and Roses, built around an AA meeting.
On the screen
Five pictures about drinking, from the end of the war to 1962, and what AA did about each one.
From Marty M.’s review (Grapevine, 1945), Lois W.’s memoir (1979), Marty’s biography (2001), Bill W.’s landmarks in AA Comes of Age, Pass It On (1984), the Grapevine’s timeline of 2002, and the AFI Catalog.
1945
Paramount, from Charles Jackson’s novel. Not about AA, Lois W. noted. AA’s new national magazine reviewed it and called it “the finest piece of film-making seen in a very long time.”
Reviewed in the Grapevine
Marty M., 1945; AFI Catalog
1946
Hal Wallis was to produce it, and its writer talked with Bill W. at his home. AA’s trustees put off any offer of AA’s help.
Never filmed
Lois W., 1979
1947
Universal-International. Marty M. consulted on the script and coached its star, Susan Hayward, and the producer, Walter Wanger, took advice from her committee for education on alcoholism.
Marty M. advised
Her committee, in People Like YouSally and David R. Brown, 2001; AFI Catalog
1952
Paramount, produced by Hal Wallis, from William Inge’s play. Doc, a chiropractor, has a year sober in AA, and the screen version added a scene at an AA meeting.
AA in the story
AFI Catalog; Pass It On, 1984
1958 and 1962
First a live television play on CBS’s Playhouse 90, built around an AA meeting, then a Warner Bros. film. AA cooperated on both, Bill’s landmarks say, and the Grapevine’s timeline has AA’s office staff previewing the film.
AA helped
AA Comes of Age; Grapevine, 2002
Not now, then yes
In 1946 AA’s trustees put off a commercial picture about AA. Twelve years later AA was cooperating on a television play built around one of its meetings.
For a closer look
Who protested The Lost Weekend; where the dates and studios disagree; and a call to a friend in a jam.
Before The Lost Weekend opened, the AFI Catalog’s notes record, whisky interests protested the filming. The liquor trade feared that reformers would point to Birnam as a typical drinker, and prohibition groups protested that the picture would make people drink. Once it opened, Seagram-Distillers praised it, endorsing its view that “some men should not drink!”
Hollywood’s own censors, the Production Code office, at first tried to talk Smash-Up’s producer out of another picture about drinking. He won approval by arguing that its drinking served the story.
Marty’s biographers count the two pictures as the first to show drinking not as the pursuit of pleasure but as a destructive compulsion.
Bill’s list of landmarks, in later printings of AA Comes of Age, says the film of Days of Wine and Roses was made in 1963. The AFI Catalog has it opening in Los Angeles on Christmas Day, 1962, and in New York on January 17, 1963, and the Grapevine’s timeline of 2002 has AA’s office staff previewing it in 1963.
Arthur S.’s timeline credits The Lost Weekend to Universal. The AFI Catalog and the Grapevine’s timeline name Paramount; Universal-International made Smash-Up.
Come Back, Little Sheba opened in New York two days before Christmas, 1952, and went into general release in March 1953, so both years turn up.
Bill W. remembered once breaking into Fulton Oursler’s busy day for help “in Hollywood where we were in a jam with a motion picture producer.” Oursler had edited Liberty when it printed AA’s first magazine story in 1939 (Twelve postcards tells it), and he was now an AA trustee. He got on the long-distance phone and called back within the hour to say it was settled. Bill didn’t say when, or which producer.
Another studio’s script, Mr. and Miss Anonymous, struck AA’s office as lopsided and in poor taste, and was revised under the threat of an injunction. Legacy, in Rule 62, tells what came of it.