Agee at 100: Centennial Essays on the Works of James Agee

A James Agee Chronology

a James agee Chronology 1909 James Rufus Agee is born November 27 to Laura Tyler Agee and Hugh James Agee in Knoxville, Tennessee. 1916 Agee’s father is killed in an automobile accident on May 18. 1919–24 Agee attends St. Andrew’s School, near Sewanee, Tennessee , where he begins a life-long friendship with Father James H. Flye. 1924 Agee attends Knoxville High School. His mother marries Father Erskine Wright and moves with him to Rockland, Maine. 1925 After traveling with Father Flye in England and France during the summer, Agee enrolls in Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. 1927 Agee is elected editor of the Exeter Monthly and president of the literary Lantern Club. 1928–32 Agee attends Harvard University. 1929 Agee spends the summer working as a migrant farm laborer in Nebraska and Kansas. 1930 Agee is introduced to the salon of Dr. Arthur Percy Saunders, whose home in Clinton, New York, is a center of culture, science, and art. 1931 Agee is elected president of the Harvard Advocate. 1932 On the recommendation of Dwight Macdonald, Agee begins work as a reporter at Fortune magazine. 1933 Agee marries Olivia (Via) Saunders on January 28. a James agee chronology ~ xviii ~ 1934 Permit Me Voyage is published in the Yale Series of Younger Poets with an introduction by Archibald MacLeish. 1935–36 On leave from Fortune from November 1935 to May 1936, Agee lives with Via in Anna Maria, off the west coast of Florida, also visiting New Orleans and St. Andrew ’s. He writes poetry and completes “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” published in Partisan Review in 1938. 1936 On assignment for Fortune’s “Life and Circumstances” series, Agee travels with photographer Walker Evans to Mills Hill, Alabama, where he lives with a family of sharecroppers for eight weeks from June to August. Fortune rejects the article Agee produces on the experience. 1937 Agee begins an affair with Alma Mailman, a friend of the Saunders family. 1938 After his divorce from Via in November, Agee marries Alma on December 6. 1939 Harper and Brothers rejects “Cotton Tenants: Three Families ,” Agee’s revision and expansion of the Fortune sharecropper article. Agee begins reviewing books for Time magazine. 1940 Agee begins an affair with Mia Fritsch, a researcher at Fortune. Alma gives birth to his first son, Joel, on March 20. Later that year Alma leaves Agee and goes with Helen Levitt to Mexico, taking Joel with her. 1941 Houghton Mifflin publishes Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Agee begins reviewing films for Time. 1942 In December, Agee begins reviewing films for The Nation. 1943 Agee writes but does not publish “America! Look at Your Shame!” 1944 On July 30 Mia gives birth prematurely to a son, who dies soon afterward. Agee and Mia marry in late August. 1945 Agee begins writing features for Time; films In the Street with Janice Loeb and Helen Levitt. 1946 Mia gives birth to Julia Teresa (Deedee), Agee’s first daughter, on November 7. a James agee chronology ~ xix ~ 1948 American composer Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, for soprano and orchestra with text by Agee, debuts in Boston. Agee leaves Time and The Nation and writes his first full-length screenplay, an adaptation of Stephen Crane’s “The Blue Hotel,” under contract to Huntington Hartford. He also writes most of A Death in the Family, which is published posthumously. 1949 The Quiet One, a documentary film by Helen Levitt, for which Agee writes the narration, opens; it is named Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. His “Comedy’s Greatest Era” appears in Life magazine on September 3. 1950 Agee’s second daughter, Andrea Maria, is born on May 15. Agee goes to California to write the screenplay for John Huston’s The African Queen. “Undirectable Director,” Agee’s portrait of Huston, appears in Life on September 18. 1951 On January 15, Agee suffers his first major heart attack and is hospitalized. Huston finishes the screenplay for The African Queen; the screenplay is nominated for an Academy Award. Houghton Mifflin publishes The Morning Watch, Agee’s novella based on experiences at St. Andrew’s. 1952 Agee is commissioned by the Ford Foundation to write a television script on Abraham Lincoln for Omnibus. Agee adapts another Stephen Crane story, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” for Huntington Hartford. 1953 Agee writes the screenplay for Noa Noa, based on Paul Gauguin’s...