James Myers Thompson (September 27, 1906 – April 7, 1977) was an American novelist and screenwriter, known for his hardboiled crime fiction.

Film director Stephen Frears, who directed an adaptation of Thompson's The Grifters in 1990, also identified elements of Greek tragedy in his themes.

In 1910, they reunited in Oklahoma City, and eventually moved again to Fort Worth, Texas, where Big Jim worked in the oil industry, making and losing a fortune.

For about two years during prohibition in Fort Worth, Texas, Thompson worked long and often wild nights as a bellboy while attending school in the day.

One biographical profile reports that "Thompson quickly adapted to the needs of the hotel's guests, busily catering to tastes ranging from questionable morality to directly and undeniably illegal."

In the oil fields, he met Harry McClintock, a musician, as well as a member and organizer for Industrial Workers of the World, who recruited him into the union.

Thompson's autobiographical "Oil Field Vignettes" was published in 1929 (found in March 2010 by history recovery specialist Lee Roy Chapman).

He began attending the University of Nebraska the same year as part of a program for gifted students with "untraditional educational backgrounds."

His 1936 "Ditch of Doom," published in Master Detective magazine, was selected by the Library of America in the early 21st century for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American writing for true crime.

Lion's Arnold Hano was his ideal editor, offering the writer essentially free rein about content, yet expecting him to be productive and reliable.

[1] Savage Night contains an interlude—whether or not it is fantasy or dream, hallucination or flashback is unclear—when Bigger meets a poor, verbose writer who, much like Thompson, has a penchant for booze and makes a living writing pulp fiction to be sold alongside pornography.

In 1955, Thompson moved to Hollywood, California, where Stanley Kubrick commissioned him to write the screenplay adaptation of Lionel White's novel Clean Break.

They collaborated again on Paths of Glory (with Calder Willingham) and in the criminal story titled Lunatic at Large that never materialized despite Thompson's having completed and submitted the screen treatment.

Beginning in 1959, and continuing through the mid-1960s, Thompson also began writing television programs, including episodes of the action/adventure shows Mackenzie's Raiders (1959), Cain's Hundred (1961) and Convoy (1965).

[11] In the late 1960s, Thompson wrote his two final original books, King Blood and Child of Rage (its provisional title was White Mother, Black Son), neither of which were published until the early 1970s, the latter in the UK.

In many regards, The Getaway was a frustrating repeat of his earlier experience collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the screenplay of the 1956 film The Killing.

Thompson wrote a script, but Steve McQueen (who was cast in the movie's lead role of Doc McCoy) rejected it as too reliant on dialogue, with not enough action.

Thompson's papers from 1955-1958, including typescripts and original drafts of about a dozen novels, are archived at UCLA's Charles E. Young Research Library.

[14] Thompson's stories are about grifters, losers, sociopaths and psychopaths—some at the fringe of society, some at its heart—their nihilistic world-view being best-served by first-person narratives revealing a frighteningly deep understanding of the warped mind.

There are few good guys in Thompson's literature: most of his characters are abusive or simply biding time until an opportunity presents itself, though many also have decent impulses.

Thompson wrote quickly (many novels were written in a month); using his newspaper experience to write concise, evocative prose with little editing.

He also managed unusual and highly successful literary tricks: halfway through A Hell of a Woman, the first-person narrator Frank "Dolly" Dillon has a mental breakdown; the sides of his personality then take turns narrating the chapters, alternately violently psychotic (telling the sordid tale that happened) or sweet-natured and patient (telling the idealized fantasy that did not happen).

Donald E. Westlake, who adapted The Grifters for the screen, observed that alcoholism had a great role in Thompson's literature, but it tended to be tacit and subtle.

[3] Two of Thompson's books (The Getaway and The Killer Inside Me) were adapted as Hollywood motion pictures during his lifetime receiving relatively poor reviews.

1280 for his 1981 film Coup de Torchon, changing the setting from the American South to a French colony in West Africa of the 1930s.

Aside from shift in setting, Polito argues that Coup de Torchon was remarkably faithful to the plot and the spirit of the novel, and—along with the 1990 film The Grifters—remains arguably the most authentic adaptation of any of Thompson's work.

Dewaere conveys a tragic dimension to his manic portrayal of a mediocre door-to-door salesman, at one point repeatedly bashing his head against a car in an effort to exorcise his angst and guilt.

Three novels were adapted for new film treatments during that period: The Kill-Off; After Dark, My Sweet; and The Grifters, which garnered four Academy Award nominations.