Jay Presson Allen: Difference between revisions

| imagesize = 225px220px

| caption = Jay Presson Allen in c.{{circa}} 1970

| death_place = [[Manhattan, New York City]], U.S.

| occupation = {{hlist|Screenwriter<br/>Producer<br>Director<br>Novelist<br/>Playwright|playwright|novelist}}

'''Jay Presson Allen''' (born '''Jacqueline Presson'''; March 3, 1922 – May 1, 2006) was an American screenwriter, playwright, stage director, television producer, and novelist. Known for her withering wit and sometimes- off-color wisecracks, she was one of the few women making a living as a screenwriter at a time when women were a rarity in the profession.<ref name="NYT">''New York Times'', Obituary. May 2, 2006.</ref> "You write to please yourself," she said, "The only office where there's no superior is the office of the scribe."<ref name="LAT">''L.A. Times.'' October 5, 1982. 6.</ref>

Allen was born '''Jacqueline Presson''' in [[San Angelo, Texas]], on March 3, 1922,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/jay-presson-allen-6101901.html|title=Jay Presson Allen|date=May 4, 2006|website=The Independent|accessdateaccess-date=April 28, 2019}}</ref> the only child of buyer Willie Mae (née Miller), aand buyer,department andstore merchant Albert Jack Presson, a [[department store]] merchant.<ref>[http://www.filmreference.com/film/75/Jay-Presson-Allen.html Profile] Filmreference.com; accessed October 16, 2014.</ref> She was "never particularly fond of her given name", and decided to use her first initial when writing. She would spend everyall Saturdayday and Sunday inat the movie house every weekend, from one1 o'clockp.m. until somebody dragged her out at seven7 p.m. From that time on, movies became very important to her, and Allenshe knew she wouldn'twould not be staying in [[Westher Texas]]hometown. AllenShe attended [[Hockaday School|Miss Hockaday's School for Young Ladies]] in [[Dallas]] for a couple of years, but camelater away,said inshe herleft words,the school "having had no education to speak of"."<ref name="McGilligan">McGilligan, 1986.</ref> She skipped college and at 18 left home to become an actress. In New York, her career lasted "for about twenty-five minutes", Allen says, when she realized that she only liked rehearsals and the first week of performance, and would rather be "out there" where the decisions were being made.<ref name="Acker">Acker, 1991. pp. 201–203.</ref>

Eventually the couple came back to the city to work. By then, Bob Whitehead had become a good friend and encouraged Allen to write another play. She drew on her married life and wrote ''The First Wife'', about a suburban working couple. It was made into the film ''[[Wives and Lovers (film)|Wives and Lovers]]'' in 1963, starring [[Janet Leigh]] and [[Van Johnson]]. When Allen read ''[[The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (novel)|The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie]]'', by [[Muriel Spark]], she instantly saw play potential where no one else did. After undergoing [[hypnotherapy]] to alleviate a yearlong bout of writer's block, Allen produced a draft of the play in three days.<ref name="LAT">''L.A. Times.'' October 5, 1982. 6.</ref>

While ''The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'' was still an unproduced script, [[Alfred Hitchcock]] read it and offered Allen the script for ''[[Marnie (film)|Marnie]]'' (1964). Hitchcock brought Allen to California to work on the film at [[Universal Pictures|Universal Studios]] in the [[San Fernando Valley]]. Allen, who lived close by, would bicycle to work. This upset Hitchcock, who insisted that a limousine be sent for her every day, whether she wanted it or not. On days when she tried to walk to the studio, the limousine trailed along behind her. {{citation needed|date=October 2014}}

In Allen's opinion, she couldn'tcould not learn fast enough to make a first-rate movie, although she thought ''Marnie'' did have some good scenes in it. Hitchcock would have made her a director but she told him no. Said Allen: "It seems perfectly clear to me that any project takes a minimum of a year to direct. I like to get things on and over with. ... Did you ever hear the phrase, 'the lady proposes, the studio disposes'? I didn't make it up. I would never propose myself as a director."<ref name="Acker"/> Under Hitchcock's mentoring, Allen developed the screenwriting talent she would use the rest of her career. Allen wrote that she never felt discriminated against. While being one of the rare female screenwriters in Hollywood in the 1960s, she said "almost all of the men I worked with were supportive. If I was getting a bum rap somewhere, I didn't know it."<ref name="Acker"/>

''[[The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (film)#Stage|The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie]]'', about an iconoclast Scottish girls' school teacher, did not premiere on the London stage until after ''Marnie'''s completion. Produced by [[Donald Albery]], it premiered at the [[Wyndham's Theatre]] in May 1966 with [[Vanessa Redgrave]] and ran hundreds of performances. In January 1968, it opened in New York with [[Zoe Caldwell]] as Brodie and ran for an entire year. Allen also wrote the screenplay for the 1969 film starring Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens.

After ''Jean Brodie'', Allen had another success on Broadway with ''[[Forty Carats]]'' (1968). Her adaptation of the French boulevard comedy by [[Pierre Barillet]] and [[Jean-Pierre Gredy]] premiered in December 1968 with [[Julie Harris (American actress)|Julie Harris]] as the 42-year-old who has an affair with a 22-year-old man.<ref name="Guardian">''The Guardian Obituary'', May 5, 2006; accessed October 17, 2014.</ref> Harris won a [[Tony Award]] for her performance. In 1973, Allen adapted her play for the screen, which turned out to be a critical and commercial disappointment.<ref name="Soares">''Alternate Film Guide''. May 2, 2006; accessed October 16, 2014.</ref>

[[Bobby Fryer]], who had produced the [[The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (film)|''Jean Brodie'' film]], had collaborated with [[Katharine Hepburn]] to make the film version of [[Graham Greene]]'s ''[[Travels with My Aunt (film)|Travels with My Aunt]]'' (1972), specifically for [[George Cukor]] to direct. Cukor for some reason wasn'twas not getting any work and Hepburn was casting around for projects. They asked Allen to come on board for the script, but she was busy and instead suggested [[Hugh Wheeler]]. After a few months, Fryer and Hepburn still weren't happy with Wheeler's script, so Allen agreed to work on the project and wrote a very straightforward script for them. But Hepburn had just starred in the disastrous adaptation of ''[[Madwoman of Chaillot]]'' and didn'tdid not want, in Allen's words, "to play another crazy old lady." Hepburn was reluctant to let Cukor down and wouldn'twould not admit her reservations and began to find fault with the script, even rewriting many sections herself. Consequently, Allen finally gave up the endeavor, telling Hepburn that she ought to write it herself, which the actress did. Eventually, Hepburn provoked the studio into making her quit the project, leaving Fryer free to bring ''Jean Brodie'''s Maggie Smith onto the picture. One speech of Allen's remains in the script, otherwise it is all Hepburn's product. The [[Writers Guild of America|Writer's Guild]] refused to put Hepburn's name on the script because she wasn'twas not a guild member; Fryer refused to let Allen take her name off because she was the one he paid, and Wheeler was burned that he received no credit at all.<ref name="McGilligan"/>

Structure was what Allen brought to the screenplay for [[Bob Fosse]]'s ''[[Cabaret (1972 film)|Cabaret]]''.{{cn|date=February 2022}} The producers hadn'thad not wanted to film the stage script by [[Joe Masteroff]] and [[John Van Druten]], and felt that not portraying the male lead as a homosexual was dishonest to the story. They wanted to go back to [[Christopher Isherwood]]'s original novel ''[[Goodbye to Berlin]]'' of 1939, but the Berlin stories weren't structured in any linear fashion and Allen had to diagram the entire story.<ref name="Crist">Crist, 1984. pp.282–311.</ref> Allen and Fosse got along badly from the start: she found him "so depressed that it took two hours just to get him in the frame of mind for work."<ref>Gottfried, 2003. p.205.</ref> In Allen's opinion most of the humor from the original was lost; she believed Fosse didn'tdid not really like the lead character of Sally Bowles at all.<ref name="Crist"/> She worked on the screenplay for ten months, but in the end Fosse and the producers were still unhappy with the final form, and having commitments elsewhere, Allen handed the script over to her friend [[Hugh Wheeler]].

The idea for the television show ''[[Family (1976 TV series)|Family]]'' was born in [[Aaron Spelling]]'s kitchen, where he and [[Leonard Goldberg]] came up with the idea about a show that centered on the emotional life of a family. They pitched the idea to Allen and she liked it. Allen spent two weeks at the [[Beverly Hills Hotel]] while she knocked out a script. Len and Aaron loved it; it was touching and had marvelous moments of compassion, and was exactly what they had talked about in the kitchen. The pilot was great, but [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]] didn'tdid not buy it. It wasn'twas not until two years later that ABC entered a production deal with [[Mike Nichols]], who turned down all their ideas in favor of the script for ''Family'' that his Connecticut neighbor Jay Allen had shown him. It was Nichols who brought in [[Mark Rydell]] for the pilot, which premiered at 10:00pm00&nbsp;pm on March 9, 1976; the series went on to run for four years and 86 episodes.<ref>Spelling, 1996. p.97.</ref> Later in life Allen would remark about television: "I hate it, I hate it because the buck doesn't stop anywhere."<ref name="Soares"/>

Allen wrote the novel ''Just Tell Me What You Want!'' in 1969, with the idea of turning it into a screenplay. After having trouble getting together a production, Allen sent it to [[Sidney Lumet]], who surprisingly wanted to do it. In her opinion, Lumet was a wonderful structuralist but has his most difficult time with humorous dialogue; he hadn'thad not found a way to shoot humorous dialogue as brilliantly as he shot everything else.<ref name="McGilligan"/>

When Allen read [[Robert Daley]]'s book, ''Prince of the City'' (1978), she was convinced it was a Sidney Lumet project, but the film rights had already been sold to [[Orion Pictures]] for [[Brian De Palma]] and [[David Rabe]]. Allen let it be known that if that deal should fall through, then she wanted the picture for Sidney. Just as Lumet was about to sign for a different picture, they got the call that ''Prince of the City'' was theirs. Allen hadn'thad not wanted to write ''[[Prince of the City (film)|Prince of the City]]'', just produce it. She was put off by the book's non-linear story structure, but Lumet wouldn'twould not make the picture without her and agreed to write the outline for her. Lumet and Allen went over the book and agreed on what they could use and what they could do without. To her horror, Lumet would come in every day for weeks and scribble on legal pads. She was terrified that she would have to tell him that his stuff was unusable, but to her delight the outline was wonderful and she went to work.<ref name="McGilligan"/> It was her first project with living subjects, and Allen interviewed nearly everyone in the book and had endless hours of Bob Leuci's tapes for back-up. With all her research and Lumet's outline, she eventually turned out a 365-page script in 10 days.<ref name="Crist"/> It was nearly impossible to sell the studio on a three-hour picture, but by offering to slash the budget to $10 million they agreed.

Allen returned to the stage with an adaptation for [[Angela Lansbury]] of ''A Little Family Business'', a French boulevard comedy by [[Pierre Barillet]] and [[Jean-Pierre Gredy]].<ref name="LAT"/> She was also hired by Broadway producer [[Allan Carr]] to adapt [[Jean Pioret]]Poiret's non-musical 1973 play ''[[La Cage aux Folles (play)|La Cage Aux Folles]]'' as a musical reset in New Orleans. The never-to-be-produced production was called ''The Queen of Basin Street'', and was to be directed by [[Mike Nichols]] with [[Tommy Tune]] choreographing and [[Maury Yeston]] writing the songs. Nichols, who was a producing partner with Lewis Allen, eventually quit in a dispute over profits; Tommy Tune followed him and Carr fired Jay Allen.<ref>Suskin, 2000.</ref> When Carr finally produced a musical version, Allen was forced to file suit for payment from her work on the adaptation.<ref>''Jay Allen vs. Allan Carr, 1983''</ref>

When she wasn'twas not writing, Allen and her husband were among the most visible of Manhattan's theater crowd.<ref name="LAT"/> She would spend her later years as a [[script doctor]] and observing particularly salacious crime trials from the benches in Manhattan Criminal Court.<ref name="NYT"/> Allen had just about given up writing any more movies from beginning to end, preferring to do lucrative rewrites. It had stopped being fun for her. Script 'development' translated to 'scripts written by committee', but the upside was that "developed" scripts tend to need rewrites – from outside the "development circle".<blockquote>"A production rewrite means that the project is in production. Big money elements – directors, actors – are pay or play. There is a shooting date. The shit is in the fan. And that's where writers like me come in. Writers who are fast and reliable. We are nicely paid to do these production rewrites... and we love these jobs. Without credit? Never with credit. If you go for credit on somebody else's work, you have to completely dismantle the structure. Who wants a job where you have to completely dismantle the structure? I only take things that I think are in reasonable shape. The director and the producer and the studio may not necessarily agree with me, but I think the script is in reasonable shape. Besides, no one but the writer ever knows how much trouble any one piece of work will be. Only the writer knows that. Only the writer. So I take what looks to me like something that is in good enough shape, yet which I can contribute to and make it worth the pay they are going to give me... There are more than one of us out there. These jobs are quick, sometimes they're even fun, and you don't have to take the terrible meetings. They're not breathing on you. They're just desperate to get a script. I've never taken anything that I knew I couldn't help. They pay good money."<ref name="Crist"/></blockquote>

In 1986, she had signed an agreement with [[Lorimar-Telepictures]] in order to help develop, write and produce projects, in collaboration with [[ABC Entertainment]].<ref>{{Cite news|date=1986-12-17|title=Screenwriter Allen In Pact With L-T To Develop Series|pages=38, 82|work=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]}}</ref> Her last film work was her screenplay for the 1990 remake of the classic, ''[[Lord of the Flies (1990 film)|Lord of the Flies]]''. However, she disliked the finished product and had her name removed.<ref name="Soares"/> The trick in adapting, Allen said in a 1972 interview with ''[[The New York Times]]'', "is not to throw out the baby with the bath water. You can change all kinds of things, but don't muck around with the essence."<ref name="NYT"/>

Jay Presson Allen diedsuffered Maya 1,[[stroke]] 2006and died at her home in Manhattan following a [[strokeManhattan]] on May 1, aged2006, at the age of 84.<ref name="NYT"/>

In 1982, Allen was awarded the [[Women in Film Los Angeles|Women in Film]] [[Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards#THE CRYSTAL AWARD|Crystal Award]] for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://wif.org/past-recipients|archiveurlarchive-url=https://wwwweb.webcitationarchive.org/614ten37o?url=web/20110830035734/http://www.wif.org/past-recipients|url-status=dead|title=Wif.org|archivedatearchive-date=August 2030, 2011|accessdateaccess-date=April 28, 2019}}</ref>

* ''[[Copycat (1995 film)|Copycat]]'' (1995; uncredited rewrite)

* ''[[The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (novel)|The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie]]'' (1966), ''adaptation''

* ''[[Forty Carats]]'' (1968), ''adaptation''

* ''[[A Little Family Business]]'' (1982), ''adaptation''

* ''[[La Cage aux Folles (play)|La Cage aux Folles]]'' (1995), ''uncredited adaptation''

* ''[[Family (1976 TV series)|Family]]'' pilot: "The Best Years" (1976; teleplay)

*{{cite news|first=Ronald|last=Bergan|title=Jay Presson Allen Writer of screen adaptations true to the original's essence|date=May 5, 2006|url=http://film.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/0,,1768028,00.html|work=The Guardian|accessdateaccess-date=March 1, 2008}}

*{{cite news|first=Campbell|last=Robertson|title=Jay Presson Allen, 84, Writer of Adaptations for the Stage, Dies|date=May 2, 2006|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/theater/02allen.html|work=New York Times|accessdateaccess-date=March 1, 2008}}

*{{cite news|first=Paul|last=Rosenfield|title=The Prime Prose of Jay Allen|date=October 5, 1982|url=https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/advancedsearch.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030801080732/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/advancedsearch.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=August 1, 2003|work=L.A.Times|accessdateaccess-date=March 1, 2008}}

*{{cite news|first=Andre|last=Soares|title=Jay Presson Allen|date=May 2, 2006|url=http://www.altfg.com/blog/biography-obit/jay-presson-allen|work =Alternate Film Guide|accessdateaccess-date=March 1, 2008}}

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