Charles R Jackson and The Lost Weekend
Exploring the tortured life of the author behind the Oscar-winning 1945 classic movie
While the movie version of The Lost Weekend reaped in the plaudits amongst the critics, viewers, and even the Academy - with Ray Milland being the first Welshman to win an Oscar for his role as the alcoholic writer Don Birnam - the author of the source novel could be considered, undeservedly, forgotten.
Charles R Jackson had tragedy sewn into his life from very early on. In 1907, his older brother and sister were killed in a car that was struck by an express train. This was the catalyst behind his remaining family moving from New Jersey for Newark, New York State, where Jackson graduated from Newark High School in 1921. After a ‘furtive’ sexual encounter with a fellow fraternity member in his freshman year saw him leaving Syracuse University without graduating, his health took a downturn. He contracted tuberculosis and was committed to sanatoriums between 1927 and 1931, eventually losing a lung to the disease. His battle with tuberculosis was the catalyst for his alcoholism, which would come to dominate his entire life, and serve as inspiration for this greatest and most memorable work.
While working as a freelance writer in New York, Jackson married writer Rhoda Booth, the mother of his two daughters Sarah and Kate. Jackson’s homosexual urges were another thing that added to his tortured psyche, at a time when such urges were enough to damage career and personal prospects and cast out Jackson in the same way he was forced to leave Syracuse University under a cloud. It’s notable that the homosexual undercurrent of the source novel of The Lost Weekend were eradicated completely from the 1945 film, but they offer a key into the writer’s soul, into his darkest places.
It wasn’t long after the publication of The Lost Weekend that Hollywood came calling. Paramount Pictures paid $35,000 for the rights to turn the novel into a film. with Billy Wilder at the helm of the picture, and the hot star of the moment, Ray Milland, cast as the protagonist, success was guaranteed. Plaudits came pouring in and, at the height of this period, Jackson saw himself in demand at colleges as a speaker and gearing up for further success in his writing career. The Fall of Valor followed in 1946 and The Outer Edges in 1948, but it’s from this point that further lack of commercial success and his own demons began to catch up on Jackson.
One of the most notable scenes of The Lost Weekend movie is when Ray Milland’s Don Birnam is incarcerated in Bellevue Hospital to help overcome his alcoholism and destructive tendencies. The scenes were actually shot on location at the Bellevue Hospital for added realism and to enhance Milland’s terror at how far he has fallen. Unfortunately these struggles were all too real for Charles Jackson as in 1952 he was committed to Bellevue after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Further health issues set him back, though he did manage to write a commercially successful novel A Second-Hand Life,
During the filming of The Lost Weekend, it was noted that Jackson was rather overwhelmed by the Hollywood experience. In his feature for Vanity Fair on Jackson and the making of The Lost Weekend, Blake Bailey says
Jackson’s mild-mannered demeanour was perhaps the most exotic part of all, and never mind his artless affability. Everyone was disarmed: this dipso novelist—the model for Don Birnam!—was, quite simply, the nicest guy they’d ever met. As for Jackson, he was naturally pleased that he never had to dine alone, but more than a little bewildered: “Why I am wanted by these people I truly don’t know; I offer nothing + merely am amiable.”
Bailey goes on to illustrate that Jackson was deeply disappointed by the ‘pat’ ending of The Lost Weekend screenplay, considering Jane Wyman simply shaking Milland out of his alcoholic daze as a betrayal of what he was illustrating in his novel. And he is correct - the ending is altogether too ‘Hollywood’. The need for a nice neat ending has the power to destroy one of the bleakest depictions of alcoholism in movie history. Jackson wrote to Wilder, illustrates Bailey in his article, lamenting the fact “that a very distinguished movie” was now rendered—in one vulgar stroke—utterly “make believe” and ordinary.
Jackson further elaborated on his feelings, stating, as many before him have found out
“I am beginning to loathe & detest all that Hollywood represents,” he wrote a friend. “The moral of all this is that, once Hollywood gets your best friends, you can’t trust ’em: Hollywood comes first every time; you don’t count a-tall!”
Charles R Jackson took his own life with a barbiturate overdose on September 21st 1968. He had been working on the sequel to The Lost Weekend when he passed away. He left behind him a stunning piece of work in The Lost Weekend that deserves to be separated from its celluloid counterpart and discovered by a new audience in its own right. Jackson’s candour, and his willingness to throw open the darkest corners of his mind for public consumption was brave and compelling.
Sources and further reading
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Jackson
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324582804578344092077098404
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/03/charles-jackson-lost-weekend-billy-wilder
http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/ch-d-e/Charles%20R.%20Jackson.html
Quote of the week
Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel - Oscar Levant