On this day in movie history - Double Indemnity (1973 movie & books):

Double Indemnity

directed by Jack Smight,

written by Steven Bochco, Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler,

based on the novel by James M. Cain,

released in the United States on October 13, 1973.

Music by Billy Goldenberg.

Cast: Richard Crenna, Lee J. Cobb, Robert Webber, Samantha Eggar, Arch Johnson, Kathleen Cody, John Fiedler, John Elerick, Joan Pringle, Gene Dynarski, Ken Renard, Joyce Cunning, Arnold F. Turner, Rand Brooks, Tom Curtis, John Furlong.

Recommended reading:

Double Indemnity

By James M. Cain.

Filmed as:

Double Indemnity (1944), directed by Billy Wilder.

Double Indemnity (1973), directed by Jack Smight.

Published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard.

Published 1943.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 9780679723226

ISBN-13: 9780679723226

Description:

“An American masterpiece.” – Ross Macdonald.

“No one has ever stopped reading in the middle of one of Jim Cain’s books.” – Saturday Review of Literature.

Walter Huff was an insurance salesman with an unfailing instinct for clients who might be in trouble, and his instinct led him to Phyllis Nirdlinger. Phyllis wanted to buy an accident policy on her husband. Then she wanted her husband to have an accident. Walter wanted Phyllis. To get her, he would arrange the perfect murder and betray everything he had ever lived for.

Tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful, Double Indemnity gives us an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. First published in 1935, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain as a virtuoso of the roman noir.

Double Indemnity: The Complete Screenplay

By Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler, Jeffrey Meyers.

Published by University of California Press.

Published 2000.

ISBN-10: 0520218485

ISBN-13: 9780520218482

Description:

On every level -- writing, direction, acting -- Double Indemnity (1944) is a triumph and stands as one of the greatest achievements in Billy Wilder's career. Adapted from the James M. Cain novel by director Wilder and novelist Raymond Chandler, it tells the story of an insurance salesman, played by Fred MacMurray, who is lured into a murder-for-insurance plot by Barbara Stanwyck, in an archetypal femme fatale role. From its grim story to its dark, atmospheric lighting, Double Indemnity is a definitive example of World War II-era film noir. Wilder's approach is everywhere evident: in the brutal cynicism the film displays, the moral complexity, and in the empathy we feel for the killers. The film received almost unanimous critical success, garnering seven Academy Award nominations. More than fifty years later, most critics agree that this classic is one of the best films of all time. The collaboration between Wilder and Raymond Chandler produced a masterful script and some of the most memorable dialogue ever spoken in a movie.

This facsimile edition of Double Indemnity contains Wilder and Chandler's original -- and quite different -- ending, published here for the first time. Jeffrey Meyers's introduction contextualizes the screenplay, providing hilarious anecdotes about the turbulent collaboration, as well as background information about Wilder and the film's casting and production.

Recommended reading - Jealous Woman (1950):

Jealous Woman

By James M. Cain.

First published in 1950.

Published by Black Lizard Books.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0887390889

ISBN-13: 978-0887390883

Description:

An ambitious Reno salesman. A wealthy would-be divorcée. An insurance policy. It’s a toxic combination in this noir thriller by an MWA Grand Master . . .

Jane Delvan had dark, red hair and plenty of shape of a nice, refined kind. To Ed Horner she was only a little fancy flirtation under the Nevada moon, but he found some peculiar circumstances developing when Jane’s husband, Tom Delavan, himself came to town, followed very shortly afterwards by his first wife, the beautiful but jealous Lady Sperry.

Ed wondered what kind of game Jane Delavan was playing with him, leading him on as she was? And why should Lady Sperry take a heated interest in him of a sudden? What were the cause of secret midnight callers roaming at will through hotel bedrooms? Suddenly Ed Horner found himself slowly being ringed about by a group of hard-hating, highly emotional people who all had motives that involved them in a case of murder and the Jealous Woman.

If Las Vegas is a city of lovers, in Reno, the business is divorce. Six weeks in Reno can erase the darkest marriages, and the only question is how to pass the time – craps or roulette? Jane Delavan is a roulette woman, a stately beauty from back East who is too classy for the motel where she’s shacked up. She’s come for a divorce, but her husband has other ideas. He wants an annulment, and in exchange offers to take out a $100,000 insurance policy on himself – just in case something happens to him before their paperwork goes through. Jane is cunning enough to make sure that if she wants something to happen, it will. Ed Horner is the insurance agent sent to settle the agreement, and it doesn’t take long for Jane to settle him. They fall in love over twenty-five-cent roulette and soon have a bigger score in mind. In the Biggest Little City in the World, a king-size scheme is brewing . . .

“Cleverly plotted.” – The New York Times.

“Swift and absorbing.” – The Wall Street Journal.

Recommended reading - Sinful Woman (1948):

Sinful Woman

By James M. Cain.

Published in 1948.

ISBN 13: 9780887390890

ISBN 10: 0887390897

Description:

“Cleverly plotted.” – The New York Times.

“Swift and absorbing.” – The Wall Street Journal.

A starlet comes to Reno to start a new life – and end her old one forever. Sylvia Shoreham’s Hollywood dreams came true long ago. Critically beloved for her beauty, talent, and style, she was on her way to international stardom when a bad contract committed her to seven years of trashy comedies and half-baked melodramas. Her marriage to her producer husband has become a rotten, loveless sham, so Sylvia’s silver screen life verges on a nightmare. To escape her celluloid hell, she has only one option: Forget Hollywood. It’s time for a Reno vacation. She comes to Nevada hoping for a divorce from her husband, Vicki, and an end to her contract, but the ugly side of the business follows her. To protect herself from Vicki, she enlists Nevada’s biggest Sylvia Shoreham fan. He’s six feet tall, strong as a mule, and just happens to be Reno’s sheriff. When her divorce turns into a war, this Hollywood icon will be glad to have him on her side.

Recommended reading - The Magician's Wife (1965):

The Magician's Wife

By James M. Cain.

Published by Carnegie Mellon University Press.

Published 1965.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0887480187

ISBN-13: 978-0887480188

Description:

In The Magician’s Wife, Cain returns to his classic themes of lust and greed. Clay Lockwood, a business executive, falls in love with the irresistible Sally Alexis, wife of a professional magician. Their story is one of the inexorable process of “wishes coming true” – the realization of which was always, for Cain, “a terrifying concept.”

James M. Cain was born in Annapolis in 1892. He lived and worked in Hollywood for seventeen years, and spent the last years of his life in Hyattsville, Maryland. His work, especially the best-sellers The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and The Butterfly, is known to millions in this country and abroad.

Recommended reading - The Embezzler (1940):

The Embezzler

aka Money and the Woman.

By James M. Cain.

Published by‎ Avon Books, Inc.

Published 1940.

Paperback novella.

ASIN: B002MICS6C

Description:

A bank employee’s wife teams up with his boss – with fatal results – in this noir novella by the legendary author of The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Despite an ulcer that requires surgery, workaholic Charles Brent doesn’t want to take time off from his job as a head teller at the bank. What eventually convinces him to give in and take a break is the prospect of his young wife, Sheila, temporarily taking over his responsibilities. Then, in Charles’s absence, his wife and his boss discover the embezzlement he’s been hiding—and the reason behind it. But instead of reporting Charles, the two form a pact . . .

Originally published under the title Money and the Woman, The Embezzler is a standout novella from James M. Cain, celebrated crime writer and master of the noir thriller.

“James M. Cain is one novelist who has something to teach just about any writer, and delight just about any reader.” – Anne Rice, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Interview with a Vampire.

“One of the greats of American noir.” – The Guardian.

Recommended reading - Mildred Pierce (1941):

Mildred Pierce

By James M. Cain.

Published by Vintage Crime / Black Lizard.

Published 1941.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0679723218

ISBN-13: 978-0679723219

Description:

Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness. She used those attributes to survive a divorce and poverty and to claw her way out of the lower middle class. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for men and an unreasoning devotion to a monstrous daughter. Out of these elements James M. Cain created a novel of acute social observation and devastating emotional violence, with a heroine whose ambitions and suffering are never less than recognizable.

Recommended reading – The Cocktail Waitress (2012).

The Cocktail Waitress

by James M. Cain.

Hard Case Crime.

Published posthumously.

Hardcover.

First edition.

Published 2012.

ISBN-10: 1781160325

ISBN-13: 978-1781160329

Description:

Grieving widow … or black widow?

The day Joan Medford buried her husband was a fateful one – because before the day was out she’d meet the two men who would change her life forever. Forced to take a job waitressing to support herself and her child, Joan finds herself caught between the handsome young schemer whose touch she comes to crave and the wealthy older man whose touch repels her … but who otherwise would make a tempting husband number two. It’s a classic Cain triangle – brutal sexual and stark – that can only end in death. But for whom, the guilty … or the innocent?

The final novel written by James M. Cain and never before published, The Cocktail Waitress is a testament to the enduring power of one of the most acclaimed novelists of the twentieth century. The author of unforgettable noir classics such as Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain’s work remains as impossible to put down today as when first written, and will leave even jaded modern readers breathless. Featuring an afterword by Edgar and Shamus Award-winning editor Charles Ardai. One of the most celebrated and notorious crime writers of all time, James M. Cain launched his career with the publication of two back-to-back masterpieces – The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity – selling millions of copies worldwide and inspiring classic movies. Cain continued with an unmatched run of noir novels including Mildred Pierce which inspired both the Academy Award-winning film starring Joan Crawford and the Emmy-winning HBO miniseries starring Kate Winslet. Cain died in 1977. And that’s where everyone thought the story ended. But James M. Cain had one more story to tell – one last blistering tale of sex and greed, betrayal and deception, written at the end of his life but never published – The Cocktail Waitress. Destined to take its place alongside his other classics, The Cocktail Waitress is Cain at his brutal and seductive best.

"Here, long after anyone would have expected it, is the voice of James M. Cain, as fresh and as relevant as ever. The Cocktail Waitress will involve you, and then shock you with an ending you'll never forget. A true rarity: a reader’s novel that’s also a literary event." – Stephen King.

On this day in movie history - Double Indemnity (1944 movie & books):

Double Indemnity

directed by Billy Wilder,

written by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler,

based on the novel by James M. Cain,

was released in the United States on July 3, 1944.
Music by Miklós Rózsa.

Cast:

Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather, Tom Powers, Byron Barr, Richard Gaines, Fortunio Bonanova, John Philliber, Raymond Chandler, Bess Flowers, Betty Farrington, Teala Loring, Sam McDaniel, Miriam Nelson, Douglas Spencer.

Recommended reading:

Double Indemnity

By James M. Cain.

Filmed as:

Double Indemnity (1944), directed by Billy Wilder.

Double Indemnity (1973), directed by Jack Smight.

Published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard.

Published 1943.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 9780679723226

ISBN-13: 9780679723226

Description:

“An American masterpiece.” – Ross Macdonald.

“No one has ever stopped reading in the middle of one of Jim Cain’s books.” – Saturday Review of Literature.

Walter Huff was an insurance salesman with an unfailing instinct for clients who might be in trouble, and his instinct led him to Phyllis Nirdlinger. Phyllis wanted to buy an accident policy on her husband. Then she wanted her husband to have an accident. Walter wanted Phyllis. To get her, he would arrange the perfect murder and betray everything he had ever lived for.

Tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful, Double Indemnity gives us an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. First published in 1935, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain as a virtuoso of the roman noir.

Double Indemnity: The Complete Screenplay

By Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler, Jeffrey Meyers.

Published by University of California Press.

Published 2000.

ISBN-10: 0520218485

ISBN-13: 9780520218482

Description:

On every level -- writing, direction, acting -- Double Indemnity (1944) is a triumph and stands as one of the greatest achievements in Billy Wilder's career. Adapted from the James M. Cain novel by director Wilder and novelist Raymond Chandler, it tells the story of an insurance salesman, played by Fred MacMurray, who is lured into a murder-for-insurance plot by Barbara Stanwyck, in an archetypal femme fatale role. From its grim story to its dark, atmospheric lighting, Double Indemnity is a definitive example of World War II-era film noir. Wilder's approach is everywhere evident: in the brutal cynicism the film displays, the moral complexity, and in the empathy we feel for the killers. The film received almost unanimous critical success, garnering seven Academy Award nominations. More than fifty years later, most critics agree that this classic is one of the best films of all time. The collaboration between Wilder and Raymond Chandler produced a masterful script and some of the most memorable dialogue ever spoken in a movie.

This facsimile edition of Double Indemnity contains Wilder and Chandler's original -- and quite different -- ending, published here for the first time. Jeffrey Meyers's introduction contextualizes the screenplay, providing hilarious anecdotes about the turbulent collaboration, as well as background information about Wilder and the film's casting and production.