Sunday March 3 4pm IU Fine Arts Theater Free Screening
Nineteen thirty-eight was a fateful year for Waldo Salt. It was the year the young screenwriter saw his first screenplay, The Shopwarn Angel produced by Joe Mankiewicz, with a cast featuring James Stewart, Margaret Sullivan, and Walter Pidgeon. Salt became friends with Nathaniel West and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and worked on films with some of the period’s best known stars, including Robert Mitchum, William Holden. His career as a screenwriter was off to a great start, but 1938 was also the year Salt joined the American Communist Party, the start of an affiliation that would cause him to be plucked from the brink of fame, blacklisted, and prevented from working in the industry he loved for fifteen years.
By the time the blacklist was lifted, much of Salt’s life had fallen into ruin. It was then that he wrote the screenplay for Midnight Cowboy.
Beginning with Midnight Cowboy (1969), Salt’s lifetime of experience culminated in a series of brilliantly written, critically-acclaimed screenplays, including Serpico (1972) and COMING HOME (1978).
Waldo Salt: A Screenwriter’s Journey originally aired on PBS as part of its American Masters series in 1990. A thoughtful exploration of Salt’s life and work, it received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. Director Eugene Corr will introduce the film and host a Q&A afterwards.