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Henry James adaptations

Henry James novels have been regularly adapted for the stage, television, radio and cinema. One of the most famous adaptations was William Wyler's The Heiress (1949), based on Washington Square with Olivia de Havilland. But this was not the first filmed version of a James text; this honor went to Berkeley Square (1933), based on a successful Broadway play of the same name, and on the James story The Sense of the Past, with Leslie Howard in the leading role.

More recently there have been numerous adaptations of Henry James' novels, including three by the Merchant-Ivory partnership (The Europeans (1979), The Bostonians (1984) and The Golden Bowl (2001). The short story The Turn of the Screw has also been regularly adapted, with the most notable version being The Innocents (1961), based on the Broadway play by William Archibald.

Notable television adaptations of James's novels include The Portrait of a Lady (1968) and The Golden Bowl (1972), both for the BBC (and broadcast later in the Masterpiece Theatre series). Daisy Miller was reshaped into an hour-long drama by NBC in the mid-1940s, while The Portrait of a Lady has been regularly broadcast by the BBC, most recently in the classic serial slot (2008).

Henry James has also been adapted for the stage: apart from Berkeley Square and The Innocents (already mentioned), The Portrait of a Lady was dramatized as a Broadway production in 1956, while The Wings of the Dove ran in London in 1963. The Portrait of a Lady was revived once more in a touring production in Great Britain in 2008, in a version by Nicki Frei.

Sources: John R.Bradley (ed.), Henry James on Stage and Screen (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2000); Susan M.Griffin (ed.), Henry James Goes to the Movies (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2001); Laurence Raw, Adapting Henry James to the Screen: Gender, Fiction and Film (Lanham, MD and London: Scarecrow Press, 2006)