The Prize (1963, MGM, dir. Mark Robson, based on the novel by Irving Wallace, 129 min, PG-13). Irving Wallace was once well known for gargantuan suspense novels in which he introduces major characters slowly with separate biographical chapters early in the book and then brings them together, often in multiple international locations, as multiple protagonists. Here, Nobel Prize winners congregate in Stockholm as Cold War intrigue develops among the characters, including writer Andrew Craig (Paul Newman) and Prof. Walt Stratman (Edward G. Robinson). Literary agents rather like Wallace’s style and structural paradigm because it frees the later part of his novels for more linear storytelling, and yet he is a bit out of fashion now. Other important Wallace novels are The Plot (1968—this was supposed to become a movie but never did as far as I know, as it deals with ruses and decoys to ward off nuclear war), The Word, and (below) The Seven Minutes. All build up in the same way.
The Seven Minutes (1971, 20th Century Fox, dir. Russ Meyer, novel by Irving Wallace) This is a pretty good setup that anticipates John Grisham. The title refers to the time during the female orgasm. A bookstore sales clerk is indicted on obscenity charges, and the defense goes back to research the publication of the obscene book supposedly from the 1920s. (No such book exists on BN.) The story raises the point that ordinary people in low paying jobs can sometimes get in trouble with the law, as is the case now with convenience store clerks who sell tobacco or alcohol to minors. The original book went into the psychology of our sexual mores a lot, in a manner just coming into acceptance.
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