The Appalachia Story [The Last American]

N.p. N.p., Circa 1950s. Treatment script for an unproduced film.

Copy belonging to screenwriter Harold Jacob Smith, with the maker annotation of "H.J. Smith" and a telephone number on the top left corner of the front wrapper. Script with four carbon typescript pages, the final three pages and a second title page, with the alternative title "The Last American," found preceding the title page matching the front wrapper. The title page with the title matching the front wrapper with a manuscript marker annotation striking second screenwriter, Nathan E. Douglas.

Nathan E. Douglas was the pseudonym of blacklisted screenwriter Nedrick Young, with whom Smith co-wrote the Academy Award winning script for the 1958 film "The Defiant Ones," as well as the acclaimed 1960 film "Inherit the Wind."

For generations Joshua Cable's family have lived on their farm in the Appalachia Mountains. After strip mining has left everyone but the coal companies destitute, and all the farms poisoned with coal dust, Cable desperately gathers the help of other impoverished men to steal equipment from the coal company and mine his farmland for coal, in spite of having sold the mineral rights to his land to the coal company years ago.

Tan titled wrappers. Two title pages present, one with credits for screenwriter Harold Jacob Smith and one for screenwriters Harold Jacob Smith and Nathan E. Douglas, with Douglas' name stuck. 37 leaves, with last page of text numbered 33. Mimeograph duplication, with four pages carbon typescript, rectos only. Pages Near Fine, wrapper Near Fine, bound internally with two gold brads.

[Book #169980]