• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1491 0

producer Samuel Goldwyn. It had been Salinger’s ambition to see his work adapted to the screen since “The Varioni Brothers” in 1942. The sale of “Uncle Wiggily” paid handsomely and assured Salinger increased exposure for his work. Potentially, it was a tremendous advance for his career. Though “Uncle Wiggily” might have fitted neatly onto the stage as a play, the story consisted almost entirely of dialogue and was simply too short for a film. Major enhancements would be necessary before it reached movie theaters. Salinger must have realized this, yet he sold the rights anyway. Moreover, on the advice of Dorothy Olding, who supported the sale, he abdicated any influence over the movie’s production. This left “Uncle Wiggily” completely in the hands of Goldwyn, who immediately employed the screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein, of Casablanca fame, to write the script, reconstructing Salinger’s story in the process.

Why Salinger allowed himself to be put into this position is a mystery. Here was an author who became furious over the mere suggestion that his work might be altered—when magazines had changed his story titles without consultation, he had been driven to frenzy. In 1945, he had warned Ernest Hemingway against the sale of movie rights to Hollywood. And though Salinger secretly adored films, his depiction of the movie industry in his stories was consistently scathing. There can be only one explanation why Salinger forfeited “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” to Hollywood: after struggling for so many years to attain literary success, his ambition had embedded itself so deeply as to become a reflex.

The film version of “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” was named My Foolish Heart and opened to the general public on January 21, 1950. The starring roles were played by Susan Hayward as Eloise Wengler and Dana Andrews as Walt Glass (Walt Dreiser in the movie). In order to become eligible for the 1950 Academy Awards, the film was given a limited release in New York and Los Angeles during December 1949. This is when Salinger would have first seen what Hollywood had done to his story.

The opening scenes of My Foolish Heart hold closely to Salinger’s original version, and some of the initial dialogue is verbatim. Quoted repeatedly is the line “Poor Uncle Wiggily,” which, in the film, is an expression of sympathy that falls flat and is overused. But the plot soon deviates into a tale that has little to do with the original. Early in the movie, the bitter and jaded Eloise discovers an old brown-and-white dress in the back of her closet that reminds her that she was once “a nice girl.” The image then fades, accompanied by background harps, into Eloise’s memories of Walt and her abandoned virtue.

To say that Hollywood took liberties with “Uncle Wiggily” when devising My Foolish Heart would be an understatement. Extra characters were thrown in to populate the film, among them Eloise’s husband, Lew, and her parents. In contrast, the movie sidelines the crucial character of Ramona. A story crafted by Salinger as an exposé of suburban society and a call to personal examination was twisted by Hollywood into a love story that oozed sentimentality. My Foolish Heart portrays Ramona as being the love child of Eloise and Walt, a relationship that must have surprised the author. In the film, Walt dies nobly in an Air Corps training accident rather than the pointlessness of an exploding Japanese stove. Upon Walt’s death, Eloise contrives to steal Lew from her friend Mary Jane to provide a father for the otherwise illegitimate Ramona. In the end, the memories provided by the dress convince Eloise to become “a nice girl” once again, and they all live happily ever after.

Salinger watched My Foolish Heart with horror. He detested the film but had resigned any control over his story’s interpretation when he had sold the rights to Zanuck. As with his lecture at Sarah Lawrence College, his ambition had delivered an experience so shocking that he resolved never to repeat it, and it has long been believed that Salinger doggedly prevented the adaptation