James Agee

Birthday: 27 November 1909, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA

Birth Name: James Rufus Agee

James Agee, Pulitzer Prize winning author, was born in Knoxville in 1909. The intense writer was to enjoy little real success in his lifetime, but after death won accolades. In 1958 he won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his uncompleted biographical novel A Death in the Family. Agee also wrote the classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men with Walker Evans and the Oscar nominated screenplay for The African Queen with John Huston. Agee also appeared in a film and several TV shows while working in Hollywood. He died in 1955, only 45 years old, of a heart attack in NYC. Show less «

[reviewing Give My Regards to Broadway (1948)] Vaudeville is dead; I wish to God someone would bury ...Show more »

[reviewing Give My Regards to Broadway (1948)] Vaudeville is dead; I wish to God someone would bury it. Show less «

[on Judy Garland] How good she is! She is no Venus, let us admit--but how delightful is her smile, h...Show more »

[on Judy Garland] How good she is! She is no Venus, let us admit--but how delightful is her smile, how genuine her emotion, how sure her timing, and how brilliantly she brings off her effects. Show less «

[on Lauren Bacall] She has a javelin-like vitality, a born dancer's eloquence in movement, a fierce ...Show more »

[on Lauren Bacall] She has a javelin-like vitality, a born dancer's eloquence in movement, a fierce female shrewdness and a special sweet sourness. With these faculties, plus a stone-crushing self-confidence and a trombone voice, she manages to get across the toughest girl a piously regenerate Hollywood had dreamed of in a long, long while. Show less «

[on D.W. Griffith] There is not a man working in movies, nor a man who cares for them, who does not ...Show more »

[on D.W. Griffith] There is not a man working in movies, nor a man who cares for them, who does not owe Griffith more than he owes anyone else. Show less «

[reviewing Tycoon (1947)] Several tons of dynamite are set off in this movie, none of it under the r...Show more »

[reviewing Tycoon (1947)] Several tons of dynamite are set off in this movie, none of it under the right people. Show less «

All over Alabama the lamps are out--Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

[reviewing The Iron Curtain (1948)] If it could be proved that there is any nation on earth which do...Show more »

[reviewing The Iron Curtain (1948)] If it could be proved that there is any nation on earth which does not employ spies, that would be news. This is just the same old toothless dog biting the same old legless man. Show less «

[on John Huston]: A natural-born anti-authoritarian individualistic libertarian anarchist, without p...Show more »

[on John Huston]: A natural-born anti-authoritarian individualistic libertarian anarchist, without portfolio. Show less «

[on Gracie Fields] I think Miss Fields is about as nice a woman over 40 as I have ever seen; I have ...Show more »

[on Gracie Fields] I think Miss Fields is about as nice a woman over 40 as I have ever seen; I have certainly never seen anyone in movies to approach her in that age bracket. Show less «

A streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping, belling and starting; stertorous; rousing and raising a...Show more »

A streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping, belling and starting; stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks; the iron whine rises on rising speed; still risen, faints, halts, the faint stinging bell; rises again, still fainter, fainting, lifting, lifts, faints forgone: forgotten. Now is that night one blue dew. Show less «

[on Preston Sturges] Preston is like a man from the Italian Renaissance--he wants to do everything a...Show more »

[on Preston Sturges] Preston is like a man from the Italian Renaissance--he wants to do everything at once. Show less «

James Agee

James Agee's FILMOGRAPHY

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