Lewis John Carlino Dead: “Great Santini”, screenwriter and director, was 88 years old

He got an Oscar name for “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” and also wrote “Seconds” and the original “The Mechanic”.

Lewis John Carlino, who wrote and directed The great Santini, the film adaptation of Pat Conroy’s autobiographical novel that starred Robert Duvall as an intimidating US Marine Corps pilot, has died. He was 88 years old.

Carlino died at his home in Whidbey Island, Washington on Wednesday of myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood disorder, said his daughter, Alessa. The Hollywood Reporter.

Carlino also adapted David Ely’s novel for John Frankenheimer’s paranoid science fiction drama Seconds (1966), with Rock Hudson; reworked Yukio Mishima’s book for the intense The sailor fell from grace with the sea (1976) – he also directed the star of Kris Kristofferson – and redesigned Joanne Greenberg’s novel for I never promised you a rose garden (1977), winning an Oscar nomination (shared with Gavin Lambert) in the process.

Carlino was also adept at the original script, writing Brotherhood (1968) and pre-Godfather Mafia film with Kirk Douglas; The mecanic (1972), with Charles Bronson as a professional assassin in cold blood and Jan-Michael Vincent as his protégé; and Resurrection (1980), starring Oscar-nominated Ellen Burstyn as a woman with mysterious healing powers.

Carlino has shown a fascination with crime – and its effects – during his career.

“You know, everyone’s talking about gangsters, crimes and stuff like that. But, as a writer, I’m really curious [about] what’s going on in someone’s mind, “it said in a 2011 interview on The mecanic. “You can talk about the act in the abstract, but when you deal with it in reality, how can a person make that adjustment in their mind and go home at night and play with their children and be with their wife?

“This curiosity, as a writer, led me to do a lot of research on killers and their methods, that sort of thing. I thought it would be really interesting to make a character who, because of the job he does, is locked up in such isolation that he desperately needs a relationship. “

Carlino received the last of his three career WGA nominations for his work on The great Santini (1979). Duvall, as Lt. Col. Wilbur “Bull” Meechum, and Michael O’Keefe, as his tortured son Ben, received Oscar names but lost to Robert De Niro’s Furious bull and Timothy Hutton from Ordinary people, respectively.

Lewis John Carlino, the son of an immigrant Sicilian tailor and a housewife, was born in Queens on New Years Day in 1932. He and his family moved to California, where he graduated from ‘high school and enrolled at El Camino College.

In 1951, Carlino joined the Air Force and served for four years during the Korean War. After his release, he used the GI Bill to enroll at the University of Southern California, where he studied theater. He graduated in 1958, then obtained his master’s degree in theater at school two years later.

At USC, Carlino wrote several plays in one act, including Brick and rose, which was produced by the American National Theater and Academy in 1957. It became the first presentation of the CBS television workshop, a series of anthology, in 1960.

Carlino traveled the world “to let ideas cook,” as he previously noted, before settling in New York, where he taught at Columbia University and continued to write plays. Two of his unique acts, Snow angel and Epiphany, made at off-Broadway in 1963 as part of a double bill called Cages and with Shelley Winters and Jack Warden.

As Cages took advantage of 176 performances at the New York Playhouse, Carlino also had success with two other productions outside Broadway, the Hollywood-set Telemachus’ clay: a collage of voices and Doubletalk, with Franchot Tone and Ruth White. (His complete drama Exercise, with Anne Jackson, would have a short run on Broadway in 1968.)

The sinister Seconds, who played In Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, revolved around the unfortunate middle-aged banker Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph), who signs with an underground company that will transform him into a beautiful new person (Hudson).

Frankenheimer reportedly abandoned Carlino’s happy ending – which brought Hamilton back to his original family – and instead made the character a victim of gloomy company.

Carlino had worked with director Monte Hellman on the development of Chartoff-Winkler Productions’ The mecanic of his novel then unpublished before the project changes studio and Michael Winner is hired at United Artists. (The action film opens with a 16-minute set without dialogue.)

The Carlino characters were then relaunched for the years 2011 and 2016 Mechanic reboots that starred Jason Statham.

I never promised you a rose garden, produced by Roger Corman in one of his most expensive projects, Kathleen Quinlan played the role of a young woman who landed in a mental institution after a suicide attempt.

Carlino spent about a week in Burstyn’s house in New York after having the idea of Resurrection, then produced the script for the film in about three weeks. The actress portrays a woman who finds herself with divine abilities after surviving a car accident that killed her husband.

“I loved it, and it made a lot of sense to a lot of people because it deals a lot with the death and the passing on the other side and the experiences of some of the people I had read who had had of – death experiences, “Burstyn said in a 2000 interview with The Guardian.

“So many people wrote and told me how they were with their parents and helped them to cross because of Resurrection. And that made me very happy. “

Carlino also wrote the scripts for Fox (1967), A reflection of fear (1972), Crazy Joe (1974) and Haunted summer (1988) and directed the sexual comedy Class (1983), with Jacqueline Bisset, Andrew McCarthy and Rob Lowe.

For television, he wrote a 1963 episode of the famous CBS series Road 66; co-creator of the drama ABC 1973-74 Doc elliot, with James Franciscus; and adapted a Gay Talese crime story for a 1973 CBS TV movie, Honor your father, which starred Joseph Bologna.

After moving to Whidbey Island in 1996, Carlino returned to his theatrical roots and was instrumental in the launch of the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts. He has produced several original productions, and his most recent work, the play Visible grace, is in development.

In addition to her daughter, survivors include her grandson, Duncan, and great-granddaughter, June. His second wife, Jilly, died in 2015.