The Man with the Golden Arm, which chronicles the struggles of a card dealer haunted by drug addiction, won the National Book Award in 1950. A film based on the novel, starring Frank Sinatra, still pops up on cable, but the book’s author, novelist Nelson Algren, has largely faded from memory—even though he was one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed American literary figures.
Filmmaker Michael Caplan ’80 was raised on Chicago’s South Side and remembers being taken by Algren’s gritty, true-to-life accounts of the Windy City’s underclass. His documentary, Algren, exhumes the urban author’s story and—framed against recent social protests—sets out to reestablish his legacy and continued relevance. Leander Cohen ’22 interviewed Caplan earlier this year.
Why has America forgotten Algren?
Nelson Algren wrote about drug addicts, alcoholics, sex workers—people left behind by the American dream. In 1950, his work was lauded. As time went on, though, we became less interested in people at the bottom. We wanted to read stories about people of means, like royalty. Algren got left behind because America wanted to pretend that everything was OK. It was too depressing to read about the people at the bottom.
Did your time at Carleton shape this film?
A lot of historical research went into Algren. My producer and I went to the author’s archives at Ohio State and spent days going through letters, contracts, and scrapbooks. But at Carleton, I learned to look for the bigger picture. It wasn’t enough just to tell the story of Algren, there had to be a bigger context.
You first screened the film a decade ago, but recently edited it to create this version. Why?
We wanted to reflect the world of 2020, with Black Lives Matter and the reemergence of civil rights. We wanted to reflect the fact that America is not going to treat everybody the same, which is a lesson we keep having to learn.