Biography

William Faulkner

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Overview

Born
September 25, 1897 · New Albany, Mississippi, USA
Died
July 6, 1962 · Byhalia, Mississippi, USA (heart attack)
Birth name
William Cuthbert Falkner
Nicknames
- Bill
- Count No' Count
Height
5′ 5½″ (1.66 m)

Biography

William Faulkner, one of the 20th century's most gifted novelists, wrote for the movies in part because he could not make enough money from his novels and short stories to support his growing number of dependants. The author of such acclaimed novels as "The Sound and the Fury" and "Absalom, Absalom!", Faulkner received official screen credits for just six theatrical releases, five of which were with director Howard Hawks. Faulkner received the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1949 and he received two Pulitzer Prizes, for "A Fable" in '1955 and "The Reivers", which was published shortly before he died in 1962.
- IMDb mini biography by: John B. Padgett

Family

Spouse

Trivia

Director Howard Hawks related once how he took Faulkner and Clark Gable along with him on a hunting trip. Hawks was friends with both, but neither Faulkner nor Gable knew each other and Hawks didn't tell either one who the other was. During the trip the conversation turned to writers, and Gable asked Faulkner who he thought are the best writers. Faulkner replied, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Thomas Mann and myself." Gable said, "Oh, do you write, Mr. Faulkner?" Faulkner replied, "Yes. And what do you do, Mr. Gable?".
His screenplay for Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not (1944) marks the only time in film history that two Nobel Prize-winning authors were associated with the same motion picture... although Faulkner and Hemingway never felt much sympathy for each other.
A legendary, but possibly apocryphal, story about Faulkner relates how, after he had been hired by 20th Century-Fox as a screenwriter, he had been sitting around the Fox writers building for a few weeks without having done anything. A producer who had seen him wandering around the building asked what he was doing, and Faulkner replied that he had nothing to do. The producer asked if he had any ideas for a story. Faulkner replied that he had, but he would be better able to write it at home rather than in the Writers Building. The producer told him it was OK to go home, assuming that Faulkner meant the home in Hollywood that the studio was renting for him. A few days later the producer got a call from Faulkner, who had indeed gone home--to Oxford, Mississippi.
The character of the alcoholic Southern novelist-turned screenwriter W. P. Mayhew in the movie Barton Fink (1991) is based loosely on Faulkner.
Frequently worked with Howard Hawks.

Quotes

Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all . . . Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
I'm just a farmer who likes to tell stories.
Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.
It's not Hollywood's fault. The writer is not accustomed to money. It goes to his head and destroys him.
If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: The Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.