The list of prominent Hollywood people who wooed J.D. Salinger for the rights to The Catcher in the Rye is long and impressive—Elia Kazan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Harvey Weinstein, Jack Nicholson, Steven Spielberg, Marlon Brando, and Billy Wilder, according to A Reader’s Companion to J. D. Salinger’s the Catcher in the Rye, by Peter G. Beidler. In 1960 Salinger told Newsweek’s Mel Eflin that he replied to one suitor, “I cannot give my permission. I fear Holden wouldn’t like it.”
One would-be Holden that stands out, partly because it’s so bizarre, is Jerry Lewis. In his 1971 book The Total Film-Maker—published, incidentally, right around the same time he was directing and starring in his legendary, seldom-seen movie project The Day the Clown Cried, to give you an idea of his state of mind—Lewis wrote:
I have been in the throes of trying to buy The Catcher in the Rye for a long time. What’s the problem? The author, J.D. Salinger! He doesn’t want more money. He just doesn’t even want to discuss it. I’m not the only Beverly Hills resident who’d like to purchase Salinger’s novel. Dozens have tried. This happens now and then. Authors usually turn their backs on Hollywood gold only because of the potential for destruction of their material. I respect them for it! Why do I want it? I think I’m the Jewish Holden Caulfield. I’d love to play it!
It’s a testament to Salinger’s writing powers that a figure like Lewis could even for a moment imagine himself in the role—perhaps his readerly identification was that strong. One wonders if Jerry really understood anything about The Catcher in the Rye. Jewish or not, the obvious problem with casting Lewis to play Holden is age. In the novel, Caulfield has been kicked out of Pencey Prep, and is thus too young for college. At the time The Total Film-Maker was published, Lewis, born 1926, was 45 years old! Compared to the age issue, even the clear tonal difficulties of representing Holden as a goggle-eyed, guffawing spaz like Lewis seem positively manageable.
Salinger’s lover and later memoirist, Joyce Maynard, wrote in her book At Home in the World that Salinger told her that “Jerry Lewis tried for years to get his hands on the part of Holden…. Wouldn’t let up.” In Maynard’s opinion, “The only person who might ever have played Holden Caulfield would have been Jerry Salinger.” It’s unclear whether this is a reference to something that almost happened: rather remarkably, at one point Salinger considered allowing a stage adaptation—“with the author himself playing Holden.”
In 1957, Salinger replied to a fan named “Mr. Howard” who had written him to inquire why the novelist had not granted permission for The Catcher in the Rye to be made into a movie. Salinger’s reply went as follows:
The Catcher in the Rye is a very novelistic novel. There are readymade “scenes”—only a fool would deny that—but, for me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his asides about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons—in a word, his thoughts. He can’t legitimately be separated from his own first-person technique. True, if the separation is forcibly made, there is enough material left over for something called an Exciting (or maybe just Interesting) Evening in the Theater. But I find that idea if not odious, at least odious enough to keep me from selling the rights…. And Holden Caulfield himself, in my undoubtedly super-biased opinion, is essentially unactable.
Now that Salinger is dead, the path is probably clear for the inevitable Catcher adaptation with … Michael Cera or Justin Bieber or someone.
But at least the role won’t go to Andy Dick…
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
J.D. Salinger Dead At 91
A Crapper in the Rye: Own J.D. Salinger’s toilet!
Holy shit holy grail: BTS footage from Jerry Lewis’ Nazis comedy ‘The Day the Clown Cried’ surfaces!
