As a kind of followup to my Thursday item about City Beat critic Andy Klein pointing out the thematic parallels between Clint Eastwood‘s Flags of Our Fathers and Arthur Hiller‘s The Americanization of Emily, an HE reader named “nemo” has discovered another profound link between the two, which he pointed out yesterday afternoon:

(l. to r.) William Bradford Huie, Ira Hayes, Clint Eastwood

“Upon cross-referencing IMDB and Wikipedia, I discovered that The Americanization of Emily was based on a novel by William Bradford Huie who — this is really quite interesting — wrote the screenplay for Delbert Mann‘s 1961 movie The Outsider, starring Tony Curtis as Ira Hayes. Yes, the same real-life Hayes played by Adam Beach in Flags of Our Fathers . The Outsider also focuses on the propagandistic exploitation of Hayes after Iwo Jima.
“Obviously Huie had a strong persistent interest back in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s in taking a harsh, unromanticized look at the conduct of the American military leadership during WW II. (Huie also wrote the non-fiction book The Execution of Private Slovik, later made into a 1974 TV movie starring Martin Sheen).
“Huie was born, grew up, was educated, lived, worked, and died in Alabama. He served as a Naval officer in World War II. His journalism on racism in the South (“The Klansman” and “Three Lives for Mississippi”, about the Goodman-Chaney-Scwherner murders) earned him death threats and a cross burning on his front lawn.”