“Honey, don’t go shootin’ all the dogs ’cause one of ’ems got fleas.”
Hud is a screen adaptation by director Martin Ritt of Larry McMurtry’s first novel, Horseman Pass By. McMurtry’s later novels also were successfully adapted into films, including Peter Bogdanovich’s, The Last Picture Show (1971) and James L. Brooks’, Terms of Endearment (1983), which won Best Picture (1984). McMurtry won the Pulitzer in 1985 for Lonesome Dove that was made into a TV mini-series. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005). Hud was filmed on location in Claude, Texas. Paul Newman was so frustrated by how censors reacted to several of his earlier edgy films, including The Hustler (1961) and The Long Hot Summer (1958) that he chose the most unsavory character and story he could find. Which was Hud, the amoral loner and seducer. Newman played the part of Hud as a villain and said he was later stunned that so many young moviegoers had a poster of Hud and viewed him as their hero. In preparation, Newman worked on a Texas cattle ranch for several weeks acquiring calluses along with a cowboy’s lope. Patricia Neal came out of retirement to play the vulnerable housekeeper, Alma Brown. She won the Oscar for Best Actress and Melvyn Douglas for Best Supporting Actor, but Newman lost the Oscar for Best Actor to Sidney Poitier, for Lilies of the Field. Newman had been nominated nine times for Best Actor before finally winning after reprising his role from The Hustler – as an older but wiser pool hustler in Martin Scorsese’s, The Color of Money (1986).
