Robert Towne raised the prominence of scriptwriting in American culture.
Towne, who died Monday at his Los Angeles home at age 89, received the critical acclaim once given directors and novelists.
Although recognized by Academy Awards categories, screenwriting was undervalued until Towne and other "New Hollywood" script mavens arrived in the late 1960s and early '70s.
Following Towne, many young literary aspirants turned to writing movies rather than plays, magazine articles and books.
Receiving the 1975 Academy Award for his "Chinatown" screenplay, Towne also wrote "The Last Detail" and "Shampoo" and made significant contributions to "The Godfather" and "Bonnie and Clyde," along with other movies.
While Towne's "Chinatown" script is known as an exemplar of the screenwriter's art, director Roman Polanski changed the ending, to Towne's intense opposition.
Still grieving the murder of his wife Sharon Tate by the Charles Manson gang, Polanski insisted that the movie end with the shocking slaying of Faye Dunaway's character Evelyn Mulwray by her father, the despicable Noah Cross, chillingly played by John Huston. In Towne's original script, Cross is killed by his daughter.
Mrs. Mulwray's tragic end leads to the famous last line, "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
It's never been disclosed who wrote the finale, but Towne originally had the idea of Chinatown as a symbol of Los Angeles' greed and immortality, which he said derived from a conversation with a Los Angeles detective.
According to author Sam Wasson's "The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood," Towne received uncredited help on his "Chinatown" script from his Pomona College classmate Edward Taylor, with whom Towne worked throughout his career.
Towne like his close friend Jack Nicholson began writing, directing and acting for B movie horror master Roger Corman, who recently died. Nicholson portrayed Towne's 1930s Los Angeles detective Jake Gittes in "Chinatown" and Navy officer Billy L. "Badass" Buddusky in "The Last Detail," two of Nicholson's defining roles.
Warren Beatty, another Towne friend, also portrayed a memorable Los Angeles prototype, the hairdresser George Roundy, in the 1975 movie "Shampoo," which Beatty co-wrote with Towne.
Towne directed several movies, including the 1988 crime thriller "Tequila Sunrise" and the 2006 romantic drama "Ask the Dust," starring Collin Farrell and Salma Hayek.
Inspired by Los Angeles writer Raymond Chandler and his famous detective Philip Marlowe in writing "Chinatown," Towne also wrote the screenplay of "Ask the Dust," saluting John Fante, another classic Los Angeles author.
Towne's cinematic visions of Los Angeles match Chandler and Fante's depictions of the city as a soulless place of broken dreams.
While "Chinatown" and other Towne movies will excite new generations of viewers, young writers will also study his scripts for their literary value.
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