Though he dedicated The Last Picture Show, published 60 years ago by Dial Press, to the residents of Archer City, Texas, many inhabitants were not thrilled by the attention they received in the first of what he called his “Thalia Trilogy,” nor with the acclaimed 1971 film adaptation by Peter Bogdanovich.
David Streitfeld summarized the local reaction in a biography of McMurtry that came out earlier this year, Western Star:
“There were roughly three
camps: Those who thought Larry made it all up. Those who thought Larry was exposing
real incidents and real people and he should be ashamed of himself. And those
who thought Larry was exposing real incidents and real people and, well, good
for him.”
Many saw
the novelist himself in one of the two teenage friends at the center of the
story, Sonny Crawford. He denied it (though he did own up to identifying with
the later midlife struggles of Sonny’s buddy, Duane Moore).
Others
said they were the originals of certain characters—notably Ceil Cleveland
Footlick, who even wrote a 1997 memoir titled Whatever Happened to Jacy
Farrow? in which she claimed to be the inspiration for the teasing teen
temptress who creates emotional havoc for Duane, Sonny, and other males in
their high school.
McMurtry
benefited from a legal environment in which prior obscenity legislation was
being overturned, enabling him to depict multiple affairs, conducted almost as
much out of boredom as anything else, in his fictional “Thalia” —a name he
appropriated from another community, thereby annoying them, too.
Lacking
intellectual stimulation, its residents are soon also without entertainment as
the local cinema gets ready to close. Stuck, and barely aspiring to go
anywhere, they find in sex an outlet to ward off frustration, cruelty,
loneliness, despair, and death.
Particularly
at that time in American life, readers (and, later, filmgoers) concentrated
more on what seemed like McMurtry’s prurient treatment of such matters than on his
poignant examination of aimless lives.
Playing
the moral center of Thalia, “Sam the Lion,” veteran character actor Ben Johnson
demurred over saying one line he deemed objectionable, concerned what his
mother would say if she saw him the film. (Eventually Bogdanovich convinced him
it was necessary, and Johnson ended up winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.)
The seeds
of the novel were evident in a McMurtry short story, “There Will Be Peace In
Korea,” published in the Winter 1964 issue of Texas Quarterly and
focusing on Duane and Sonny as they try to reestablish their friendship before
Duane ships out to Korea. Even that was the residue of the writer’s discarded
idea of interconnected short stories modeled on Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg,
Ohio.
Two years
after the publication of the Texas Quarterly article, McMurtry had
completed a novel that, while departing from the Winesburg idea, still
managed with admirable concision to depict the stunted lives of a whole
spectrum of Thalia inhabitants.
Critical
reaction to The Last Picture Show was mixed, ranging from dismissal
(“seems derived from other novels about the sexual plight of the adolescent”—The
Los Angeles Times) to enthusiastic (“perhaps the most honest, compelling
and masterful novel ever written by a Texan”—The Houston Post).
McMurtry’s
parents presented a more united front, in opposition, with his mother hiding
the book in the closet and his father asking plaintively of college-educated
Larry, “Good Lord, son, with all the words you know, couldn’t you have used
some others?”
Four
sequels to The Last Picture Show followed, steadily more depressing and
less acclaimed: Texasville (1987), Duane’s Depressed (1999), When
the Light Goes (2007), and Rhino Ranch (2009). How much of that was
due to McMurtry’s eye for possible future adaptations and how much to the physical
and emotional ills of the novelist’s later years is an open question.
But the achievement
of the original novel—and of the exquisite film made from it—remains.
(The image
accompanying this post comes from the film The Last Picture Show, featuring,
from left to right, Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, and Cybill Shepherd as Sonny,
Duane, and Jacy.)
