Column Chronicles: Strange origins of famous movies

Strange origins of famous movies

Frank Cotolo
January 26, 2017

Many people think that some of the most iconic movies in the history of cinema have become so due to their remarkable originality. That is untrue to the point of absurdity. Film historians such as I can trace the rudimentary elements of great movies back to a least common denominator that spawned the idea. Let me give you some examples from a list of the top 50 movies of all time based on intellectual content.

The Shawshank Redemption - The 1994 full-length film was based on a short story by Stephen King but he thought it up after reading an article titled "Prison Misjustice", which was a story in a cheap 1920s crime magazine that described a jail break by a man accused of killing his wife with a flaming rutabega. That story was loosely based on the words of a judge in Massachusetts when he sentenced a man to life by saying, "No one ever notices a man's shoes, do they?"

Forrest Gump - The hit novel with the same title brought the story to the screen but the novel came from an idea that author Winston Groom got when he read a letter a nine-year-old wrote to Santa Claus that dared the legendary Christmas figure to prove he had flying reindeer. That letter was turned into a documentary short by a vagrant filmmaker named Sven Svitnik, who wanted to make a feature but was "dumb as a broken adding machine", according to his mother. Sven's short followed a man searching for a thought in the Black Forest.

It's A Wonderful Life - The script for this movie, by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Jo Swerling and the movie's director Frank Capra is loosely based on Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". Everyone knows that is a fact but Dickens story comes from a tale told in England in the 1600s about a ghost that comes to a rich man in York with a plot to poison figgy pudding, whether it is baked, fried or steamed in an oven. Dennis Grapeclock is given credit for first telling that story in a town square on Christmas Eve, which became a tradition even after Grapeclock mysteriously died of pudding poison.

Casablanca - Though it was an original screenplay, it was allegedly based on a treatment that was based on a concept that was based on an idea that was based on a tirade from a studio executive at Warner Bros. The unidentified boss went berserk one day while defending the Nazis occupation of Poland while supporting a movie he wanted to make about the day that Nazi General Julius Schreck took his pants off in public to impress an all-female choir touring Morocco.

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" - The movie that saved Universal Pictures from near bankruptcy is based on a poem written by Irish poet William Allingham (1824-1889). The poem, titled "Two Crackpots and a Monster," was edited from his final collection of poems, released after his death and turned into a popular play by Sean Canary, the Village Idiot of of Dalkey, which ran for seven years.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.