John Henry O'Hara (January 31, 1905 – April 11, 1970) was an American writer. He was one of America's most prolific writers of
short stories
A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...
, credited with helping to invent ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' magazine short story style.
[John O'Hara: Stories, Charles McGrath, ed., The Library of America, 2016.] He became a best-selling novelist before the age of 30 with ''
Appointment in Samarra'' and ''
BUtterfield 8
''BUtterfield 8'' is a 1960 American drama film directed by Daniel Mann, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey. Taylor won her first Academy Award for her performance in a leading role. The film was based on a 1935 novel of the same ...
''. While O'Hara's legacy as a writer is debated, his work was praised by such contemporaries as
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...
and
F. Scott Fitzgerald, and his champions rank him highly among the major under-appreciated American writers of the 20th century. Few college students educated after O'Hara's death in 1970 have discovered him, chiefly because he refused to allow his work to be reprinted in anthologies used to teach literature at the college level.
"O’Hara may not have been the best story writer of the twentieth century, but he is the most addictive," wrote
Lorin Stein
Lorin Hollister Stein (born April 22, 1973) is an American critic, editor, and translator. He was the editor in chief of ''The Paris Review''Dave Itzkoff (March 5, 2010)"Paris Review Names New Editor" ArtsBeat, ''The New York Times''. but resigned ...
, then editor-in-chief of ''
The Paris Review
''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, ...
'', in a 2013 appreciation of O'Hara's work. Stein added, "You can binge on his collections the way some people binge on ''
Mad Men
''Mad Men'' is an American historical drama, period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on cable network AMC (TV channel), AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, with seven seasons ...
'', and for some of the same reasons. On the topics of class, sex, and alcohol—that is, the topics that mattered to him—his novels amount to a secret history of American life."
O'Hara achieved substantial commercial success in the years after World War II, when his fiction repeatedly appeared in ''
Publishers Weekly's'' annual list of the top ten best-selling fiction works in the United States. These best sellers included ''A Rage to Live'' (1949), ''Ten North Frederick'' (1955), ''From the Terrace'' (1959), ''Ourselves to Know'' (1960), ''Sermons and Soda Water'' (1960) and ''Elizabeth Appleton'' (1963). Five of his works were adapted into popular films in the 1950s and 1960s.
Despite the popularity of these books, O'Hara accumulated detractors due to his outsized and easily bruised ego, alcoholic irascibility, long-held resentments and politically conservative views that were unfashionable in literary circles in the 1960s.
[Introduction by Philip B. Eppard, Critical Essays on John O'Hara, Philip B. Eppard, ed., G. K. Hall & Co., 1994.] After O'Hara's death,
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tar ...
, an admirer of O'Hara's writing, said that the prolific author "out-produced our capacity for appreciation; maybe now we can settle down and marvel at him all over again."
Early life and education
O'Hara was born in
Pottsville, Pennsylvania
Pottsville is a city and the county seat of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 13,346 at the 2020 census, and is the principal city of the Pottsville, PA Micropolitan Statistical Area. The city lies along the wes ...
, to an affluent
Irish American
Irish Americans () are Irish ethnics who live within in the United States, whether immigrants from Ireland or Americans with full or partial Irish ancestry.
Irish immigration to the United States
From the 17th century to the mid-19th c ...
family. Though his family lived among the gentry of eastern Pennsylvania during his childhood, O'Hara's
Irish Catholic
Irish Catholics () are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland, defined by their adherence to Catholic Christianity and their shared Irish ethnic, linguistic, and cultural heritage.The term distinguishes Catholics of Irish descent, particul ...
background gave him the perspective of an outsider to elite
WASP
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder ...
society, a theme he wrote of again and again. He attended the
secondary school
A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...
Niagara Prep in
Lewiston, New York
Lewiston is a Administrative divisions of New York#Town, town in Niagara County, New York, Niagara County, New York (state), New York, United States. The population was 15,944 at the 2020 census. The town and its contained village are named aft ...
, where he was named Class Poet for Class of 1924. His father died about that time, leaving him unable to afford
Yale
Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...
, the college of his dreams, and he fell overnight from the privileged life of a well-heeled doctor's family, including club memberships, riding and dance lessons, fancy cars in the barn, and domestic servants in the house. By all accounts, this social fall afflicted O'Hara with status anxiety for the rest of his life, honing the cutting social class awareness that characterizes his work.
Brendan Gill
Brendan Gill (October 4, 1914 – December 27, 1997) was an American journalist. He wrote for ''The New Yorker'' for more than 60 years. Gill also contributed film criticism for ''Film Comment'', wrote about design and architecture for Architectu ...
, who worked with O'Hara at the ''
New Yorker
New Yorker may refer to:
* A resident of New York:
** A resident of New York City and its suburbs
*** List of people from New York City
** A resident of the New York (state), State of New York
*** Demographics of New York (state)
* ''The New Yor ...
'', claimed that O'Hara was nearly obsessed with a sense of social inferiority due to not having attended Yale. "People used to make fun of the fact that O'Hara wanted so desperately to have gone to Yale, but it was never a joke to O'Hara. It seemed... that there wasn't anything he didn't know about it in regard to college and prep-school matters." Hemingway once said someone should "start a bloody fund to send John O'Hara to Yale."
As his literary acclaim grew, O'Hara yearned for an honorary degree from Yale, but never received it. According to Gill, the college was unwilling to award the honor precisely because O'Hara had obstreperously "asked for it."
Career and reputation
Initially, O'Hara worked as a reporter for various newspapers. Moving to New York City, he began to write short stories for magazines. During the early part of his career, he was also a film critic, a radio commentator and a press agent. In 1934, O'Hara published his first novel, ''
Appointment in Samarra''. Endorsing the novel,
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...
wrote: "If you want to read a book by a man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it marvelously well, read ''Appointment in Samarra.''" O'Hara followed ''Samarra'' with ''
BUtterfield 8
''BUtterfield 8'' is a 1960 American drama film directed by Daniel Mann, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey. Taylor won her first Academy Award for her performance in a leading role. The film was based on a 1935 novel of the same ...
,'' his
roman à clef
A ''roman à clef'' ( ; ; ) is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people and the "key" is the relationship between the non-fiction and the fiction. This m ...
based upon the tragic, short life of flapper
Starr Faithfull, whose mysterious death in 1931 became a tabloid sensation. Over four decades, O'Hara published novels, novellas, plays, screenplays and more than 400 short stories, the majority of them in the ''New Yorker''.
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, he was a correspondent in the
Pacific theater
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
. After the war, he wrote screenplays and more novels, including ''
Ten North Frederick
''Ten North Frederick'' is a novel by John O'Hara, published by Random House in 1955. It tells the story of Joseph Chapin, an ambitious man who desires to become president of the United States, and his relationships with his patrician wife, tw ...
'', for which he won the 1956
National Book Award
The National Book Awards (NBA) are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. ...
and ''
From the Terrace
''From the Terrace'' is a 1960 American DeLuxe Color romantic drama film in CinemaScope directed by Mark Robson from a screenplay by Ernest Lehman, based on the 1958 novel of the same name by John O'Hara. The film stars Paul Newman, Joanne Wo ...
'' (1958), which he considered his "greatest achievement as a novelist."
Late in life, with his reputation established, he became a newspaper columnist. In his last decade, O'Hara created "a body of work of magnificent dimensions," wrote the novelist
George V. Higgins, whose own trademark dialogue was influenced heavily by O'Hara's style. "Between 1960 and 1968," Higgins noted, O'Hara "published six novels, seven collections of short fiction, and some 137 terse and extended stories that all by themselves would supply credentials for a towering reputation in the world of perfect justice that he never did quite find."
Many of O'Hara's stories (and his later novels written in the 1950s) are set in Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, a barely fictionalized version of his home town of Pottsville, a small city in the
anthracite region of the northeastern United States. He named Gibbsville for his friend and frequent editor at the ''New Yorker''
Wolcott Gibbs
Wolcott Gibbs (March 15, 1902 – August 16, 1958) was an American editor, humorist, theatre critic, playwright and writer of short stories, who worked for ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1927 until his death. He is notable for his 1936 parody ...
. Most of his other stories were set in New York or Hollywood.
O'Hara's short stories earned him his highest critical acclaim. He contributed more of them to the ''New Yorker'' than any other writer. He complained that his numerous short stories took his time away from writing novels. "I had an apparently inexhaustible urge to express an unlimited supply of short story ideas. No writing has ever come more easily to me," he claimed.
In the
Library of America
The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published more than 300 volumes by authors ...
's collection of 60 of O'Hara's best stories, editor Charles McGrath praises them for their "sketchlike lightness and brevity... in which nothing necessarily 'happens' in the old-fashioned sense, but in which some crucial loss or discovery is revealed just by implication ... a sense of speed and economy is just what makes the best of these stories so thrilling." Gill, who worked with O'Hara at the ''New Yorker'', ranks him "among the greatest short-story writers in English, or in any other language" and credits him with helping "to invent what the world came to call the ''New Yorker'' short story." In the foreword to a collection published four years before his death, O'Hara declared, "No one writes them any better than I do." Two more volumes of his stories were published soon after his death.
Despite his success as a best-selling author, most of O'Hara's longer work is not held in as high regard by the literary establishment. Critic
Benjamin Schwarz and writer Christina Schwarz claimed: "So widespread is the literary world's scorn for John O'Hara that the inclusion of ''Appointment in Samarra'' on the
Modern Library
The Modern Library is an American book publishing Imprint (trade name), imprint and formerly the parent company of Random House. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, Moder ...
's
list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century was used to ridicule the entire project."
Some of O'Hara's novels and stories are tied off with clumsy, abrupt endings. Some of the harsh literary criticism is attributed to personal dislike of O'Hara's abrasive ego and arrogant manner, his vigorous self-promotion, his obsession with his social status, and the politically conservative columns he wrote late in his career. Early and mid-20th century critics also disparaged his novels for their blunt and non-judgmental depictions of loose women and homosexuals, but critics writing after the
sexual revolution
The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the late 1950s to the early 1 ...
saw in O'Hara a pioneer in showing female sexuality in frank, realistic ways. John Kenneth Galbraith, writing about the strict Calvinist culture of his early 20th century childhood in remote, rural Ontario, remembered, "We were taught that sexual intercourse was, under all circumstances, a sin, and we were free from the countervailing influence of movies, television and John O'Hara." O'Hara's most biting critics regard his novels as shallow and overly concerned with sexual desire, drinking and surface details at the expense of deeper meaning. Many of his leading characters are alcoholics who live as emotional zombies, anesthetized by drinking to the agony of the human heart in conflict with itself. As his contemporary
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...
said of such writers in his
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...
address of 1949, "He writes not of the heart but of the glands."
In 1949, O'Hara left the ''New Yorker'' bitterly, after it published a withering review of O'Hara's long novel ''A Rage to Live'' by his colleague
Brendan Gill
Brendan Gill (October 4, 1914 – December 27, 1997) was an American journalist. He wrote for ''The New Yorker'' for more than 60 years. Gill also contributed film criticism for ''Film Comment'', wrote about design and architecture for Architectu ...
. Gill disparaged O'Hara's book as "a formula family novel," one of those turned out by "writers of the third and fourth magnitude in such disheartening abundance," and declared it "a catastrophe" by an author who "plainly intended to write nothing less than a great American novel." Literary critics called Gill's review a "savage attack" and a "cruel hatchet job" on one of the ''New Yorker''s most popular writers. "During the preceding two decades O'Hara had been the ''New Yorker''
's most prolific contributor of stories" (no fewer than 197 by one count). After the magazine published Gill's review, O'Hara quit writing for the ''New Yorker'' for more than a decade, and when readers complained to Gill for driving O'Hara away, Gill deflected blame onto another ''New Yorker'' contributor,
James Thurber
James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) was an American cartoonist, writer, humorist, journalist, and playwright. He was best known for his gag cartoon, cartoons and short stories, published mainly in ''The New Yorker'' an ...
, for stirring up animosity. O'Hara would not resume writing for the ''New Yorker'' until the 1960s, upon the arrival of a new editor who sought out O'Hara with an olive branch. Nearly 50 years after the scandalous review, at a forum on O'Hara's legacy held in 1996, Gill stood up in the audience to explain his attack on O'Hara, pleading that "I had to tell the truth about the novel."
According to biographer Frank MacShane, O'Hara thought that Hemingway's death made O'Hara the leading candidate for the
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...
. O'Hara wrote to his daughter, "I really think I will get it," and "I want the Nobel prize ... so bad I can taste it." MacShane says that
T.S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...
told O'Hara that he had, in fact, been nominated twice. When
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck ( ; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social percep ...
won the prize in 1962, O'Hara wired, "Congratulations, I can think of only one other author I'd rather see get it." In a letter to Steinbeck two years before that, O'Hara placed himself with Steinbeck in the pantheon of great 20th century American writers, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner, singling out Faulkner among them as "the one, the genius."
O'Hara's work has many literary admirers, including authors such as
Joan Didion
Joan Didion (; December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism, along with Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe.
Didio ...
,
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tar ...
,
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930 – May 14, 2018)Some sources say 1931; ''The New York Times'' and Reuters both initially reported 1931 in their obituaries before changing to 1930. See and was an American author and journalist widely ...
,
Gay Talese
Gaetano "Gay" Talese (; born February 7, 1932) is an American writer. As a journalist for ''The New York Times'' and ''Esquire (magazine), Esquire'' magazine during the 1960s, he helped to define contemporary literary journalism and is considere ...
,
Fran Lebowitz
Frances Ann Lebowitz (; born October 27, 1950) is an American author, public speaker, and actor. She is known for her sardonic social commentary on American life as filtered through her New York City sensibilities and her association with many p ...
and
Shelby Foote
Shelby Dade Foote Jr. (November 17, 1916 – June 27, 2005) was an American writer, historian and journalist. Although he primarily viewed himself as a novelist, he is now best known for his authorship of ''The Civil War: A Narrative'', a three- ...
.
Charles McGrath, a former fiction editor of the ''New Yorker'' and former editor of the ''New York Times Book Review'', has called O'Hara "one of the great listeners of American fiction, able to write dialogue that sounded the way people really talk, and he also learned the eavesdropper's secret—how often people leave unsaid what is really on their minds." O'Hara said he learned from reading
Ring Lardner
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner (March 6, 1885 – September 25, 1933) was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical writings on sports, marriage, and the theatre. His contemporaries—Ernest Hemingway, Virginia W ...
"that if you wrote down speech as it is spoken truly, you produce true characters," and added, "Sometimes I almost feel that I ought to apologize for having the ability to write good dialogue, and yet it's the attribute most lacking in American writers and almost totally lacking in the British."
Death
O'Hara died from
cardiovascular disease
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is any disease involving the heart or blood vessels. CVDs constitute a class of diseases that includes: coronary artery diseases (e.g. angina, heart attack), heart failure, hypertensive heart disease, rheumati ...
in Princeton, New Jersey, and is interred in the
Princeton Cemetery
Princeton Cemetery is located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. It is owned by the Nassau Presbyterian Church. In his 1878 history of Princeton, New Jersey, John F. Hageman refers to the cemetery as "The Westminster Abbey of the United S ...
. A comment he made about himself and which was chosen by his wife for his
epitaph
An epitaph (; ) is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves be ...
reads: "Better than anyone else, he told the truth about his time. He was a professional. He wrote honestly and well."
Of this, Gill commented: "From the far side of the grave, he remains self-defensive and overbearing. Better than anyone else? Not merely better than any other writer of fiction but better than any dramatist, any poet, any biographer, any historian? It is an astonishing claim."
After his death, O'Hara's study and its contents were reconstructed in 1974 for display at
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...
, where his papers are held. His childhood home, the
John O'Hara House in Pottsville, was added to the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 1978.
Adaptations

O'Hara's
epistolary novel
An epistolary novel () is a novel written as a series of letters between the fictional characters of a narrative. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse other kinds of fictional document with the letters, most commonly di ...
''
Pal Joey'' (1940) led to the successful Broadway musical, with
libretto
A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to th ...
by O'Hara and songs by
Rodgers and Hart
Rodgers and Hart were an American songwriting partnership between composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and the lyricist Lorenz Hart (1895–1943). They worked together on 28 stage musicals and more than 500 songs from 1919 until Hart's ...
. In 1957, ''
Pal Joey'' was made into a musical film starring Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, and Barbara Nichols.
''
From the Terrace
''From the Terrace'' is a 1960 American DeLuxe Color romantic drama film in CinemaScope directed by Mark Robson from a screenplay by Ernest Lehman, based on the 1958 novel of the same name by John O'Hara. The film stars Paul Newman, Joanne Wo ...
'' is a 1960 film adapted from O'Hara's 1958 novel. The film starred
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, race car driver, philanthropist, and activist. He was the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Paul Newman, numerous awards ...
as disenchanted Alfred Eaton, son of a wealthy but indifferent father and alcoholic mother as well as
Joanne Woodward
Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward (born February 27, 1930) is an American retired actress. She made her career breakthrough in the 1950s and earned esteem and respect playing complex women with a characteristic nuance and depth of character. ...
as his socially ambitious, self-pitying and unfaithful wife Mary St. John.
Also in 1960, O'Hara's best-selling 1935 novel ''BUtterfield 8'' was released as a
film with the same name.
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was an English and American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 19 ...
won the
Academy Award for Best Actress
The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It has been awarded since the 1st Academy Awards to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a lead ...
for her portrayal of Gloria Wandrous. Of the film version, Taylor famously said, "I think it stinks."
''
Ten North Frederick
''Ten North Frederick'' is a novel by John O'Hara, published by Random House in 1955. It tells the story of Joseph Chapin, an ambitious man who desires to become president of the United States, and his relationships with his patrician wife, tw ...
'' is a 1958 film based on O'Hara's 1955 novel.
Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, silent screen persona and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, ...
starred as Joe Chapin, with
Diane Varsi
Diane Marie Antonia Varsi (February 23, 1938 – November 19, 1992) was an American film actressHyams, Joe (December 16, 1957)"In Hollywood: Diane Varsi Sees Herself as 'Just an Actor,' Not Star" ''New York Herald Tribune''. p. 15. Retri ...
, Ray Stricklyn, Suzy Parker, and
Geraldine Fitzgerald
Geraldine Mary Fitzgerald (November 24, 1913 – July 17, 2005) was an Irish actress. She received the Daytime Emmy Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. She was a member of the American T ...
in supporting roles. O'Hara called Cooper's performance "sensitive, understanding and true."
[Meyers, Jeffrey (1998). ''Gary Cooper: American Hero'', p. 289. New York: HarperCollins. .]
''
A Rage to Live'' is a 1965 film directed by Walter Grauman and starring
Suzanne Pleshette
Suzanne Pleshette (January 31, 1937 – January 19, 2008) was an American actress. Pleshette was known for her roles in theatre, film, and television. She was nominated for three Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. For her role as Emily Hart ...
as Grace Caldwell Tate, a well-mannered, upper-crust beauty whose passions wreak havoc on her social circle. The screenplay by John T. Kelley is based on O'Hara's best-selling 1949 novel.
O'Hara's short stories about Gibbsville were used as the basis for the 1975 NBC television movie ''
John O'Hara's Gibbsville'' (also known as ''The Turning Point of Jim Malloy'') and for the short-lived 1976 NBC dramatic television series ''
Gibbsville''.
In 1987, an adaptation of O'Hara's 1966 story "Natica Jackson," about a film actress in 1930s Hollywood, was produced for the
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
anthology series ''
Great Performances
''Great Performances'' is a television anthology series dedicated to the performing arts; the banner has been used to televise plays, musicals, opera, ballet, concerts, as well as occasional documentaries. It is produced by the PBS member statio ...
''. It was directed by
Paul Bogart
Paul Bogart (né Bogoff; November 13, 1919 – April 15, 2012) was an Americans, American television director and producer. Bogart directed episodes of the television series 'Way Out (TV series), Way Out'' in 1961, ''Coronet Blue'' in 1967, '' ...
and starred
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer ( ; born April 29, 1958) is an American actress. She was one of the most bankable stars in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood during the 1980s and 1990s, and her List of Michelle Pfeiffer performances, performances ...
in the title role.
The television period drama series ''
Mad Men
''Mad Men'' is an American historical drama, period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on cable network AMC (TV channel), AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, with seven seasons ...
'', on
AMC
AMC may refer to:
Film and television
* AMC Theatres, an American movie theater chain
* AMC Networks, an American entertainment company
** AMC (TV channel)
** AMC+, streaming service
** AMC Networks International, an entertainment company
*** ...
from 2007 to 2015, generated renewed popular interest in O'Hara's work, which dealt with similar themes of mid-20th century American society.
Columns
In the early 1950s, O'Hara wrote a weekly book column, "Sweet and Sour" for the ''Trenton Times-Advertiser'' and a biweekly column, "Appointment with O'Hara", for ''
Collier's
}
''Collier's'' was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter F. Collier, Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as ''Collier's Once a Week'', then renamed in 1895 as ''Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal'', shortened i ...
'' magazine. MacShane calls them "garrulous and outspoken" and says neither "added much of importance to O'Hara's work". Biographer Shelden Grebstein says that O'Hara in these columns was "simultaneously embarrassing and infuriating in his vaingloriousness, vindictiveness, and general bellicosity." Biographer Geoffrey Woolf says these earlier columns anticipated "his disastrous 'My Turn' in ''
Newsday
''Newsday'' is a daily newspaper in the United States primarily serving Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, although it is also sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The slogan of the newspaper is "Newsday, Your Eye on LI" ...
'', which endured fifty-three weeks ... beginning in late 1964... of his dismissive and contemptuous worst".
His first ''Newsday'' column opened with the line, "Let's get off to a really bad start." His second complained, "the same hysteria that afflicted the Prohibitionists is now evident among the anti-cigarettists." His third column nominally supported the
Republican Party nominee
Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was an American politician and major general in the United States Air Force, Air Force Reserve who served as a United States senator from 1953 to 1965 and 1969 to 1987, and was the Re ...
for U.S. president by identifying his cause with fans of the corny accordionist and band leader
Lawrence Welk
Lawrence Welk (March 11, 1903 – May 17, 1992) was an American accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted ''The Lawrence Welk Show'' from 1951 to 1982. The program was known for its light and family-friendly style, and the ...
. "I think it's time the Lawrence Welk people had their say," wrote O'Hara. "The
Lester Lanin
Nathaniel Lester Lanin (August 26, 1907 – October 27, 2004) was an American jazz and pop music bandleader. He was famous for long, smoothly arranged medleys, at a consistent rhythm and tempo, which were designed for continuous dancing. Lanin ...
and
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( ; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improvisation, improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy El ...
people have been on too long. When the country is in trouble, like war kind of trouble, man, it is the Lawrence Welk people who can be depended upon, all the way." In his fifth column, he argued that
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, civil and political rights, civil rights activist and political philosopher who was a leader of the civil rights move ...
should not have received the Nobel Peace Prize.
The syndicated column was not a success, published by a continuously decreasing number of newspapers, and did not endear him to the politically liberal New York literary establishment.
Several of his columns demonstrate his knowledge of trivia about and yearning for association with
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an American collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference of eight Private university, private Research university, research universities in the Northeastern United States. It participates in the National Collegia ...
colleges. As he noted, "Through the years I have acquired a vast amount of information about colleges and universities." The May 8, 1965, column takes as its ostensible topic the fact that Yale owns stock in
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American Commercial broadcasting, commercial broadcast Television broadcaster, television and radio Radio network, network that serves as the flagship property of the Disney Entertainment division ...
and thus is a beneficiary of the television program ''
Peyton Place''. O'Hara writes:
Later, he notes that
James Gould Cozzens is a "genuine Harvard alumnus" and speculates that Harvard should broker a television serialization of a Cozzens novel:
His September 4, 1965, column deals entirely with his failure to have received any honorary degrees, going into detail about three honorary degrees he was actually offered but, for various reasons, did not accept. In the column, he lists the awards he has received:
He complains that the colleges write him "highly complimentary" letters asking him to perform "chores" such as officiating as
writer-in-residence
Artist-in-residence (also Writer-in-residence), or artist residencies, encompass a wide spectrum of artistic programs that involve a collaboration between artists and hosting organisations, institutions, or communities. They are programs that pr ...
, judging literary contests, and give lectures, yet do not give him degree citations. "The five major distinctions," he notes, "were awarded me by other writers, not by
cademia"
The column closes with the comment:
Bibliography
Novels
* ''
Appointment in Samarra'' (1934)
* ''
BUtterfield 8
''BUtterfield 8'' is a 1960 American drama film directed by Daniel Mann, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey. Taylor won her first Academy Award for her performance in a leading role. The film was based on a 1935 novel of the same ...
'' (1935)
* ''
Hope of Heaven'' (1938)
* ''
Pal Joey'' (1940)
* ''
A Rage to Live'' (1949)
* ''The Farmers Hotel'' (1951) — adapted from O'Hara's original play
* ''
Ten North Frederick
''Ten North Frederick'' is a novel by John O'Hara, published by Random House in 1955. It tells the story of Joseph Chapin, an ambitious man who desires to become president of the United States, and his relationships with his patrician wife, tw ...
'' (1955) — winner of the
National Book Award for Fiction
The National Book Award for Fiction is one of five annual National Book Awards, which recognize outstanding literary work by United States citizens. Since 1987, the awards have been administered and presented by the National Book Foundation, bu ...
["National Book Awards – 1956"]
National Book Foundation
The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established with the goal "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America." Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: ...
. Retrieved March 31, 2012. With essay by Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.
* ''
A Family Party'' (1956)
* ''From the Terrace'' (1958)
* ''
Ourselves to Know'' (1960)
* ''
The Big Laugh'' (1962)
* ''
Elizabeth Appleton'' (1963)
* ''The Lockwood Concern'' (1965)
* ''The Instrument'' (1967)
* ''Lovey Childs: A Philadelphian's Story'' (1969)
* ''The Ewings'' (1970)
* ''The Second Ewings'' (1972)
Short story collections
* ''The Doctor’s Son and Other Stories'' (1935)
* ''Files on Parade'' (1939)
* ''Pipe Night'' (1945)
* ''Hellbox'' (1947)
* ''Sermons and Soda Water: A Trilogy of Three Novellas'' (1960)
* ''Assembly'' (1961)
* ''The Cape Cod Lighter'' (1962)
* ''The Hat on the Bed'' (1963)
* ''The Horse Knows the Way'' (1964)
* ''Waiting for Winter'' (1966)
* ''And Other Stories'' (1968)
* ''The Time Element and Other Stories'' (1972)
* ''Good Samaritan and Other Stories'' (1974)
* ''Gibbsville, PA'' (Carroll & Graf, 1992, )
Screenplays
* ''
He Married His Wife
''He Married His Wife'' is a 1940 film about a race horse owner ( Joel McCrea) who wants his ex-wife ( Nancy Kelly) to remarry so he'll no longer have to pay alimony. This movie is a black-and-white comedy released January 19 1940, directed by ...
'' (1940)
* ''
Moontide
''Moontide'' is a 1942 American romantic drama with elements of a thriller. It was produced by Mark Hellinger and directed by Archie Mayo, who took over direction after the initial director Fritz Lang left the project early in the shooting sch ...
'' (1942)
Plays
* ''Five Plays'' (1961)
''(The Farmers Hotel'',
''The Searching Sun'',
''The Champagne Pool'',
''Veronique'',
''The Way It Was)''
* ''Two by O'Hara'' (1979)
''(The Man Who Could Not Lose''
creen treatmentand ''Far from Heaven''
lay
Lay or LAY may refer to:
Places
*Lay Range, a subrange of mountains in British Columbia, Canada
* Lay, Loire, a French commune
*Lay (river), France
* Lay, Iran, a village
* Lay, Kansas, United States, an unincorporated community
* Lay Dam, Alaba ...
Nonfiction
* ''Sweet and Sour'' (1954) Assorted columns on books and authors
* ''My Turn'' (1966). Fifty-three weekly columns written for ''
Newsday
''Newsday'' is a daily newspaper in the United States primarily serving Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, although it is also sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The slogan of the newspaper is "Newsday, Your Eye on LI" ...
''
* ''Letters'' (1978).
Other
''BUtterfield 8'', ''Pal Joey'' and ''The Doctor's Son and Other Stories'' were published as
Armed Services Edition
Armed Services Editions (ASEs) were small paperback books of fiction and nonfiction that were distributed in the American military during World War II. From 1943 to 1947, some 122 million copies of more than 1,300 ASE titles were distributed to ...
s during WWII.
References
Further reading
* Gill, Brendan. ''
Here at The New Yorker''. Random House, 1975. Da Capo Press, 1997, . (O'Hara desperately wanting to attend Yale, p. 117. Failure to get honorary Yale degree, p. 268.)
* O'Hara, John (1966), ''My Turn: Fifty-three Pieces by John O'Hara'' (collected newspaper columns), Random House.
* Farr, Finis (1973): ''O'Hara: A Biography.'' Boston: Little Brown.
*
Bruccoli, Matthew J. (1975): ''The O'Hara Concern: A Biography of John O'Hara.'' New York: Random House.
* MacShane, Frank (1980): ''The Life of John O'Hara.'' New York: Dutton.
* Woolf, Geoffrey (2003): ''The Art of Burning Bridges: A Life of John O'Hara.'' New York: Knopf.
The Western Canon Appointment in Samarra included by
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world". Af ...
.
External links
Philly Burbs O'Hara's lost papers and reward*
*
*
*
John O'Hara Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ohara, John
1905 births
1970 deaths
20th-century American novelists
American columnists
American male novelists
American male screenwriters
American male journalists
National Book Award winners
People from Pottsville, Pennsylvania
The New Yorker people
Niagara University alumni
Novelists from Pennsylvania
American male short story writers
American people of Irish descent
20th-century American short story writers
Journalists from Pennsylvania
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
Screenwriters from Pennsylvania
Screenwriters from New York (state)
Burials at Princeton Cemetery
20th-century American screenwriters
20th-century American journalists
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters