Old Missoula

‘Cool Hand Luke’ Author – 1969

Donn Pearce Talks Tonight

Donn Pearce, author of “Cool Hand Luke,” will speak about creative writing tonight at 8:15 in the UC Ballroom. At 3:00 this afternoon, he will give an informal talk in the UC Montana Rooms. “Cool Hand Luke,” Mr. Pearce’s first novel, is currently in its third printing and last year was made into a movie starring Paul Newman. Mr. Pearce earned an academy award nomination for his work on the scenario. The novel deals with life on a Florida chain gang during the 1940’s. The author served time in prison working on a gang similar to the one he describes in his novel. Mr. Pearce has also been a painter in Greenwich Village and a merchant marine.

The above article appeared in the U of M student newspaper, The Kaimin, on May 7, 1969.

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5663&context=studentnewspaper

 

Chain Gangs No Longer Brutal, Author of ‘Cool Hand Luke’ Says

Donn Pearce, author of “Cool Hand Luke,” told an audience of about 200 persons in the UC Ballroom last night that chain gangs have no character left anymore.

Mr. Pearce served three years in a Florida chain gang during the late 1940s for grand larceny, or safecracking, as he put it. He said that during his career he opened 26 safes.

When he was doing time, he said, chain gangs were so bad that men were slitting tendons in their heels so they could not work and would have to be sent back to prison.

In 1957 chain gangs in Florida were abolished. “Now,” he said, “they call them road camps.”

Chains are no longer used and modern comforts such as barber chairs and television sets can be found in the camps, according to Mr. Pearce.

Besides talking about prison camps, Mr. Pearce also discussed the movie version of his novel.

“The only way for a writer to control his work is to be the producer, the director, and even the star,” he said.

In contrasting the differences between the movie “Cool Hand Luke,” and his novel, Mr. Pearce said that Hollywood made Luke a stereotyped “cool” character, bigger than life. His novel made Luke more believable, he said.

The movie placed more emphasis on hidden symbolism than his book, he said. Camera shots in the final scene, where Luke is dying in a church, catch shadows forming the shapes of crosses. Mr. Pearce said that his favorite review of the movie was one from the Christian Science Monitor. He said the writer tried to suggest that the movie had a religious theme and even suggested that an egg eating contest, during which Luke ate 50 eggs, symbolized Easter.

Writers are generally ignored in Hollywood, Mr. Pearce said. “Most people think Cool Hand Luke was written by Paul Newman,” he said. Mr. Newman played Luke in the movie.

There is no comparison between a writer’s pay and the star’s pay, he said. Paul Newman made $1 million for 10 weeks work. He made $80,000 for six years of working on the novel, Mr. Pearce said.

Mr. Pearce is now working on a novel about the sea.

The above article appeared in the U of M student newspaper, The Kaimin, on May 8, 1969.

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/studentnewspaper/4604/

 

As a student at U of M in 1969, I got to listen to Donn Pearce talk at the UC Montana Rooms. His lecture was not an ordinary one. He was an intimidating presence, I think, to many of the students who showed up to listen to him. He was probably also intimidating to many of U of M’s faculty & staff, who no doubt disdained his criminal history. One faculty member who certainly wasn’t intimidated by him was Jim Burke, whose writing classes I took at every opportunity. Burke invited Pearce, along with several local students to his residence to greet the author and listen to a few of his remarkable stories. Little did we know that the Instructor would become as famous as his guest.