An American Tragedy

A call from a Hollywood screenwriter friend yesterday reminded us that Upstate New York has at least one more literary association, in addition to James Fenimore Cooper and Mark Twain. Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy was based on a real-life murder case in Cortland, NY, which we also drove through on our recent pilgrimage to New York's cultural meccas. The book became George Stevens' film A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. Interestingly, legendary Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein prepared a screenplay of Dreiser's novel, but it was never filmed.