Today's Huffery: The Greatest Screenplay Never Made

Not long ago at a Writers Guild of America event, a reporter friend came up to me. "I'm doing an article on the best screenplays that have never been made into movies," he said. "If you had to name one, what would it be?"

Without hesitating, I answered, Harrow Alley.

He scrunched his face. "I've never heard of it." And started to walk off. Just then, another screenwriter passed by, one with gravitas (and awards) to his name, a former president of the Guild. The reporter asked the same question.

Without hesitating, the gravitas writer answered, "Harrow Alley."

Now, the reporter took out his notepad. "Oh, I see," I chided. "Him you believe."

Every once in a while, some publication does an article like this. The Los Angeles Times once referred to Harrow Alley as perhaps the finest unproduced movie script ever. The Writers Guild Newsletter described it as, "A masterpiece...The most famous unproduced script in the country." In 1991, American Film magazine called Harrow Alley one of the best screenplays ever written. In July, 1999, Premieremagazine referred to it as "Arguably one of the most famous unproduced scripts of all time."

Harrow Alley is a stunning screenplay. Brilliantly crafted, dramatic, funny, heartbreaking, romantic and inspiring. It was written in the early 1960s by Walter Brown Newman, one of the great, unknown screenwriters. (Of course, most screenwriters are unknown, foolishly.) Newman's many credentials, however, include such classics as The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven and Cat Ballou. So, you see, it's got a pretty good pedigree. (Newman took his name off of The Great Escape. He was a crusty sort.)

So, why in the world has it never been made, I hear you cry?? Ah, therein lies a tale. And further tales.

Harrow Alley tells a hard story. It takes place during the Black Plague of the 14th century. The screenplay intricately weaves a breathtaking saga of how, during the worst time in the history of mankind, when the world was literally dying and no one knew how to stop it, or if it could be stopped, man will kick and fight and scratch and struggle to survive because man has a will to survive. At its center of many riveting characters are two totally opposite men, vibrant personalities whose lives intertwine and then set-off in utterly surprising ways.

When it was written, 50 years ago, most people were scared by the script, missing its rich optimism, and seeing only the rampant death, with the death-knell bell ringing unrelentingly throughout the story whenever yet another person died. It was an uncomfortable script for people to read back in 1960s, in the midst of hippies, the peace movement, drugs and the Love Generation, in the midst of Vietnam. People didn't want to deal with a movie about a plague wiping out mankind.

In William Froug's great book, The Screenwriter Looks at the Screenwriter, Newman says that one studio story editor told him, "What the hell made you write this? Boy, I read it on a rainy Sunday and damn near committed suicide." The wife of a studio head sent an incensed note to Newman, telling him he was crazy.

The thing is, for all the horror of the Plague, the script is actually intensely hopeful and uplifting. It's filled with a glorious love story, a stunning act of heroism, humor, and characters who find profound personal depth. As Newman notes, "I was simply writing about how do we live under such conditions." And after looking at it years later, "I was glad to see, in rereading, that I was saying such a great big yes to living because I had no idea I felt that way."

Finally, a legendary director was anxious to make the film -- John Huston, whose many classics included The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen. Unfortunately, at the time he'd had a series of flops and couldn't get financing.

Next, a variety of top actors got interested. Among them, Charlton Heston. Even Peter Sellers was interested. The Royal Shakespeare Company inquired about adapting it for the stage. But nothing came of it.

And then George C. Scott enters the story.

The acclaimed actor loved Harrow Alley so much that he bought it outright. Several years passed, however, until he announced he wanted to make it. And therein lies another tale.

He wanted to direct. Scott was highly admired as an actor (soon to win his Oscar for Patton). But he hadn't yet directed a movie. And so studios were hesitant -- and again the project languished for years. Eventually, Scott was willing to let someone else direct and himself produce it. And yet another tale.

To his credit, George C. Scott adored Harrow Alley so much that he insisted not one word be changed. This is unheard of in Hollywood, and monumentally admirable. But even there, that turned into another major problem: the screenplay is very long, equal to a three-hour movie. It never lags, and remains riveting... but it's still three hours. Moreover, before they get involved, most directors want their imprint and insist on changing screenplays. (Not always for the better, of course.) But Scott would always say, "No." Not one word could be changed. Even when Walter Newman himself offered to trim his own script, in an effort to finally move the project along, Scott refused. And so Harrow Alley languished even more.

Eventually, George C. Scott passed away, but people remain interested in making Harrow Alley" However, in Scott's will, there's still a condition that the script cannot be changed, and that's served to be yet another hurdle, though not necessarily an insurmountable one. In fact, new producers got involved not long ago.

And so, though Harrow Alley is still the greatest screenplay never made, there is hope that will change. After all, what terrified people 35 years ago, is commonplace today. The world deals with the plague of AIDS daily. Nuclear devastation is an ever-present threat. We live with the threat of terrorism. Furthermore, there have even now been popular movies about worldwide plagues, like Outbreak ($190 million) and Contagion ($135 million) that prove the world will flock to such stories.

To be sure, Harrow Alley has an uncomfortable theme. But to be sure, as well, it has an enthralling optimism about mankind's will to live, lyrical majesty and vibrant characters -- and two, truly epic lead roles -- that soar like you can't believe. And audiences are long-since ready for it now.

The only remaining question is if a studio is ready to step up and finally make Harrow Alley.


UPDATE – 3/10/2026
 
For reasons too long to get into, I came upon this article which I’d written over a dozen years earlier, and realized there were a few things that should be added.  One, about that status of Harrow Alley in the intervening years, and the other – material that for the life of me I don’t know why I didn’t include in the original article.  So, we'll address all of that.
 
The current status is that whoever owns the rights to the movie at the moment – and it’s been hard to track down, though it might still be the George C. Scott estate…or not – Emma Thompson has been attached since around 2007 when she was hired to write a revision.  (Around that time, the producer involved was Lindsay Doran, who had made such films as Sense and Sensibility, The Firm and Nanny McPhee.  I haven’t seen that she’s still involved, however, so it strikes me as unlikely.)  As of 2023, though, Emma Thompson was still with the film and working with a British production company, Bad Wolf, perhaps to develop it for TV.  It’s unclear if it would be as a single movie or multi-part limited series…which would be encouraging since, given the original script’s length and effort over the years to trim it, a limited series would allow as much of the original material to be done as possible.  Bad Wolf was founded in 2015 by former BBC executives Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter.  In 2021, a majority interest in the company was bought by Sony Pictures TV. 
 
I came across a very promising quote from Emma Thompson on the project – not promising because of any information about it being made, but about her screenplay revision.  The original screenplay by Walter Brown Newman is so superb I’ve been wary about any efforts to rework it for current sensibilities.  And while her quote supports my wariness, the full quote adds an encouraging twist.  She said that the revision of hers that she did initially is not what it would be all these years later.  “His is the great work — my revisions are neither here nor there,” she told Scott Foster on his Moviemaker website.  “I must tell you that the version of mine which perhaps you found online is one that was produced many years ago for a company that wanted a happy ending, amongst other not entirely suitable things.”  She added that although that 2007 revision she wrote was reverent to Newman’s version, Foster wrote that “the producers asked  her to make a few dramatic changes to fill in his most cryptic 30 pages with explanatory light. They injected plot in the gaps where Newman wanted none.”  So, it would seem that if and when Harrow Alley does get made – with Emma Thompson’s involvement – those less than reverent changes she was required to make will be gone, and the script will be close to Walter Brown Newman’s “great work.”
 
As for what I left out of the original article  --
 
-- that’s my own, very-limited involvement trying to get the movie made.  I was working at Universal Pictures in the mid-1980s, I worked at Universal Pictures in development, as an assistant to Bob Rehme who was the president of the studio.  One day, I decided to pitch Harrow Alley to him – but knew if I was was too upfront about what the project was, it would likely scare him off.  So, I first brought up that I’d come across a brilliant screenplay, and that it had long been considered in several articles and polls the greatest screenplay that had never yet been made into a movie, and that it was written by one of Hollywood’s great screenwriters who written movies such as The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven and Cat Ballou -- and that though initially it was a challenging topic, it wasn’t anymore, and would make a tremendous movie.  Bob was very excited at this point, and anxiously asked me what the project was.  I said it was called Harrow Alley, and – at this point, I had no choice but to dive in, hoping that I’d set things up well enough – it was about the Black Plague in 1665 and…  Well, there was nothing else needed to say, since his face dropped, his body shrank, and it was like all the air had been sucked out of the room.
 
About 10 years later, I made another stab at getting Harrow Alley set up, though it was a far longer shot.  With my friend Philippa Salisbury, we got a talented Hollywood financial expert to join us, and he budgeted the movie for workable cost.  I had a copy of the budget for years – it was over 300 pages.  After many years, there was no reason to keep it – but I did keep what is now one of my prize possessions (and I have absolutely no recollection how I came across it):  a detailed blueprint for the London neighborhood of Harrow Alley that had been drawn for a prospective production of the movie – what year, I don’t know – designed and signed by Elliott Scott, the legendary art director and production designer whose credits include Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Dragonslayer, Evil Under the Sun, Labyrinth, The Pirates of Penzance, The Yellow Rolls-Royce and three Oscar nominations, among them one for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? We also came up with a semi-clever way to deal with long-standing studio concern of a 177-page screenplay:  we retyped the script using a proportional Times-New Roman font that’s uses less space than the stand Courier.  Our version came in at just 138 pages!  (We knew it wouldn’t ultimately fool anyone, since they’d easily recognize the different font, but our hope was that the shorter length wouldn’t scare anyone off even before they read a word.)  Alas, it was for naught.  But we tried.  And I’ve kept trying, if only to keep the name of Harrow Alley alive.
 
And so, still, the only remaining question is if a studio is ready to step up and finally make Harrow Alley.