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Studs Lonigan

Studs Lonigan
Studs Lonigan poster.jpg
Directed by Irving Lerner
Produced by Philip Yordan
Written by Philip Yordan
Starring Christopher Knight
Frank Gorshin
Jack Nicholson
Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography Haskell Wexler
Edited by Verna Fields
Distributed by United Artists
Release date
  • October 22, 1960 (1960-10-22)
Running time
95 minutes

Studs Lonigan is a novel trilogy by American author James T. Farrell: Young Lonigan (1932), The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934), and Judgment Day (1935). In 1998, the Modern Library ranked the Studs Lonigan trilogy at 29th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

The trilogy was adapted into a minor 1960 film and a 1979 television miniseries both of which were simply titled Studs Lonigan.

Farrell wrote these three novels at a time of national despair. During the Great Depression, many of America's most gifted writers and artists aspired to create a single, powerful work of art that would fully expose the evils of capitalism and lead to a political and economic overhaul of the American system. Farrell chose to use his own personal knowledge of Irish-American life on the South Side of Chicago to create a portrait of an average American slowly destroyed by the "spiritual poverty" of his environment. Both Chicago and the Irish-American Roman Catholic Church of that era are described at length, and faulted. Farrell describes Studs sympathetically as Studs slowly deteriorates, changing from a tough but fundamentally good-hearted, adventurous teenage boy to an embittered, physically shattered alcoholic.

Parts of Farrell's novels were made into a B movie in 1960, directed by Irving Lerner and starring Christopher Knight in the title role. Other cast members included Frank Gorshin, Venetia Stevenson, and Jack Nicholson (in one of his first movie roles).


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