By Mike McGranaghan

James Agee was one of the most versatile writers this country has ever known. He was a poet, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (“A Death in the Family”), a screenwriter (The African Queen), and a film critic (for publications such as Time and Life). He was also a passionate Charlie Chaplin fan. Twenty years ago, an undergraduate named John Wranovics found a dusty shoebox containing an unpublished screenplay that Agee had written with Chaplin in mind. Agee’s family denied Wranovics’ request to publish this lost work. Three years ago, Agee’s son-in-law (who was by now in charge of the late writer’s trust) found Wranovics’ original request letter and gave his blessing for the project. The resulting book – “Chaplin and Agee: The Untold Story of the Tramp, the Writer, and the Lost Screenplay” is now available from Palgrave Macmillan.

In the first half of the book, Wranovics chronicles Agee’s life, work, and fascination with Chaplin. Despite the eloquence of his written words, Agee appeared to have little or no concern for personal style; he was prone to poor hygiene and grooming, and his clothes were often rumpled or inappropriate for the occasion. Nevertheless, Agee had an undeniable way with words that quickly got him writing assignments for top publications. During his time as a film critic, Agee wrote extensively about Chaplin, whom he considered an unparalleled genius.

Agee’s interest in writing a screenplay for the comedian was largely inspired by two significant events: McCarthyism and the atom bomb. While promoting his satire Monsieur Verdoux, Chaplin was defending himself from media accusations that he was a Communist supporter. (One of his primary – and most dogged – critics was none other than Ed Sullivan, then a gossip columnist.) Agee came to his hero’s defense at a Verdoux press conference, chastising those in the media who would cast aspersions on an entertainer who had brought joy to so many. Agee’s public stance, which was repeated in print, succeeded in gaining Chapin’s notice. The two men exchanged a series of friendly letters.

For Agee, that was not enough. Deeply distraught over America’s use of the atomic bomb (and fearful of its future ramifications), the writer conceived a passionate story idea whose message he felt would best be conveyed through the use of Chaplin’s “Tramp” persona. The story, which was intended to be a warning about the abuse of scientific advancements in wartime, encapsulated all Agee’s philosophies on atomic warfare, tempered by the warm, humanistic humor of the Tramp. To keep himself in Chaplin’s mind, Agee wrote an unprecedented 3-part review of Monsieur Verdoux and even name-dropped Chaplin in reviews of other people’s films (always making sure to herald Chaplin’s genius, of course). Agee also took advantage of his acquaintances with people who knew Chaplin personally. This tactic eventually worked in starting a friendship between the two; Agee became a regular guest at Chaplin’s home and the men often dined together with their wives.

Nevertheless, Chaplin didn’t bite on the idea. Agee continued to work on it, all the while developing an equally significant friendship with director John Huston, for whom he wrote a few screenplays including The African Queen. It was the Tramp movie that most captured Agee’s interest, however. Wranovics makes it clear that Agee truly believed his screenplay (in Chaplin’s hands) would result in a beloved piece of entertainment that also stirred thought in the masses.

Reading “Chaplin and Agee,” begs the question of why the comedian chose not to film Agee’s screenplay. The answer is clear: Agee’s screenplay (reprinted in its entirety in the book’s second half) is essentially unfilmable. The Tramp’s New World is passionate, meaningful, confusing, self-absorbed, intriguing, relevant, cerebral, misguided, and emotional. In other words, it’s a great big contradiction that would not likely have transferred well to the visual medium of film. For starters, there are some gaps in logic. The script takes place in a post-atomic world where the Tramp is one of the few remaining survivors. In the opening scenes, he finds annihilated people flash-frozen to buildings or crumbling into dust, yet moments later Agee has the Tramp enter buildings and remove items. Wouldn’t they be destroyed too?

A more significant hurdle is that Agee’s screenplay is written as a missive rather than as an actual script. Spanning nearly 80 pages, The Tramp’s New World has much more philosophizing and conceptualizing than it does plot or comedy. Agee describes a conflict between a group of scientists who want to rebuild the world their way and a group of survivors who are struggling to maintain their identities in this new environment. Despite his frequent claims that he hasn’t worked everything out, Agee goes into overly elaborate detail about every angle of this story, often in distinctly uncinematic terms. Here’s how he describes a moment when the Tramp and a female survivor listen to music while caring for an infant:

They must reflect every phrase, every inflection, every note of the music; of itself; and in context of all that it evokes out of their own past, their sense of their own and of the world’s future, their realization of themselves, of the present, of the baby, of each other; of their certainty, still, that only they survive; their incredible good fortune to have found each other; of their tenderness and pity towards the whole, poor, insane, annihilated human race that somehow managed to crystallize such music.

Later, he very distinctly (and again, uncinematically) describes his vision of one way in which the scientist characters will function within the story: There should also be a little class in Democracy, which will encapsulate and demonstrate as neatly as in geometry (quite unconsciously, of course – this is “ideal Democracy”) all the hideous liabilities of democracy as practiced by the totally docile, conforming, group-minded; will show that it can be the most suffocating of all forms of totalitarianism if misused and misunderstood only a few notches further than is prevalent practice here, today.

Underneath this frequently confusing material is a gem of a premise, though. There’s little doubt that Chaplin could have done something with the fundamental outline of Agee’s story. Putting the Tramp in a post-atomic world probably would have worked, especially given the worldwide adoration of the persona. It’s not hard to imagine Chaplin making a sincere, thoughtful, funny film out of Agee’s core idea. If Agee had trouble putting it all into a filmable context, he at least had the foundation of something special.

Whether or not Chaplin used the idea, The Tramp’s New World stands as a heartfelt, passion-infused work from one of the most acclaimed writers of the 20th century. Agee took all his concerns about atomic warfare and McCarthyism, melded them together, and put them in the form of a Charlie Chaplin comedy. Although it never came to pass, it is certainly intriguing to imagine what the end result of the film might have been.

”Chaplin and Agee” does a remarkable job detailing Agee’s obsession with this story, as well as his insistent belief that he and Chaplin could have made an important statement. Wranovics takes a lost section of film history and brings it to light, in page-turning style. His evocation of old Hollywood is compelling, and he beautifully conveys the personalities of his titular subjects. Film buffs may lament the fact that Chaplin never used his brilliance to shape and mold Agee’s unwieldy-yet-intensely-personal screenplay; however, they will certainly find this book to be a solidly enjoyable excursion into a potential classic that never was.