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Posted: |
Oct 16, 2017 - 3:04 PM
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By: |
Rozsaphile
(Member)
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Nora Johnson was the author of The World of Henry Orient (1958) and co-scenarist of the delightful 1964 film version directed by George Roy Hill. (Elmer Bernstein's charming score is available from FSM.) She was the daughter of the famous screenwriter and director Nunnally Johnson (The Grapes of Wrath, How to Marry a Millionaire, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, The Three Faces of Eve, etc.). Her novel, grounded in her own adolescent experience, is somewhat darker than the film version. It was also adapted, less happily, into the 1967 Broadway musical Henry, Sweet Henry. That collaboration with her dominating father proved less fortunate and resulted in period of estrangement between the two. Nora Johnson told the painful story in Flashback, her 1979 memoir of growing up in a prominent Hollywood family.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/obituaries/nora-johnson-dead-author-of-the-world-of-henry-orient.html?_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/12/archives/books-of-the-times-disclaims-objectivity-hollywood-as-backdrop.html
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I was out of town and incommunicado when you posted this, John -- for the which, many thanks -- so I'm rather belated to chime in. (Hey everybody else -- what's your excuse? At the very least, she was instrumental in providing FSM with one of its best Elmer Bernstein score CDs.)
As befits the lady's bicoastal childhood, permit me to match your NY Times obit with the one that appeared out here in Tinseltown:
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-nora-johnson-20171011-story.html
(The local rag seems to have been less than accurate in referencing the Broadway version of HENRY ORIENT. As it happens, neither paper happened to mention that the real-iife pianist who inspired her youthful misadventures and subsequent novel was, according to one source, Oscar Levant.)
Anyhow, thanks for the thread, John, and a special thank you for service above and beyond for including the book review. (I've got to find where I've hidden my copy of the book itself...)
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