Alcoholic Authors: James Rufus Agee

James Rufus Agee was a famous author and film critic whose career was cut short at age 45 because of his addiction to alcohol. He died early in life but is still remembered for such screenplays as The African Queen and the stage production of A Death in the Family.

Agee’s Early Life

Agee was born on November 17, 1909 in Knoxville, Tennessee to Hugh James Agee and Laura Whitman Tyler of French and English ancestry. His father died in an automobile accident when he was six-years-old and afterwards, Agee and his sister Emma were boarded and educated at St. Andrew School for Mountain Boys which would also provide religious training for them. It was at the school that he met Father James Harold Flye, a life-long friend who would later be the recipient of Agee’s most revealing letters.

After Agee’s mother's marriage to Father Erskind Wright, he attended Knoxville High school for one year and that summer was taken to Europe by Father Flye. Upon his return, he attended Philips Exeter Academy boarding school in New Hampshire so he could live closer to his mother who now resided in Maine. While at the Academy, he became editor of the Lantern Monthly where his first short stories, play, poetry and articles were published. Although he was not a good student, barely passing many of his courses, Agee was admitted to Harvard University’s class of 1932 and went on to be editor-in-chief of the Harvard Advocate and delivered the class ode at commencement.

Agee’s Marriages and Affairs

In 1933, he married Via Sanders but was divorced in 1938. That same year, he married Alma Mailman. Alma moved to Mexico with their one-year-old son, Joel, to live with Columnist Bodo Uhse in 1941.. At this time, Agee began living with Mia Fritsch, in Greenwich Village, who he married in 1946 after the divorce from Alma. He and Mia had three children, two daughters, Teresa and Andrea and a son, John, who was eight months old when Agee died.

Agee’s Career

After graduation from Harvard, Agee wrote for Fortune and Time magazines. In 1934, he published his only volume of poetry, Permit Me Voyage, with a foreword by Archibald MacLeish. In 1936, Agee spent eight weeks during the summer on an assignment for Fortune with photographer Walker Evans, living among sharecroppers in Alabama. When Fortune did not publish his article, he later turned the manuscript into a book entitled, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Agee became the film critic for Time in 1941, also writing occasional book reviews and later became the film critic for the Nation. After leaving both magazines in the 1950, he became a freelance writer of articles while working on movie scripts. He career became more erratic as his addiction to alcohol worsened. Although during his lifetime Agee only enjoyed modest public recognition, since his death, his literary reputation has grown. His novel, A Death in the Family, which is said to be based on events surrounding his father’s death, was published posthumously and in 1958 won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Agee and Alcohol Abuse

Agee’s heavy drinking has been blamed for his first heart attack in 1951; the second one caused his death. It has been said that his alcoholism was a result of the abandonment felt when his father died and being placed into a boarding school by his mother shortly afterwards. Agee died on May 16, 1955.

James Agee

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