Overlooked Movies: The Prize

Last week I wrote about I movie that I went to with my father.  This week I'll mention one I went to with my mother.  The year was 1963, my first year of teaching, and I was visiting at home on the weekend.  I'm a sucker for books about writers.  This was during the phase when I was reading almost nothing but spy novels, so Irving Wallace's The Prize was naturally irresistible to me.  I can't remember much about the book other than that I enjoyed it and that I wanted to see the movie version.  So on Sunday afternoon before I left to return to the town where I was teaching, my mother said she'd go with me to see the movie.
  
We both liked it a lot.  It's the kind of thing that was once described as "hitchcockian," and the screenplay was in fact written by the same man who wrote North by Northwest.  Instead of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, there were Paul Newman and Elke Sommer.  Not a bad pair.  Newman has fun playing an American writer who's won the Nobel Prize.  He's a drunk and a handful, so he's assigned a keeper -- Ms. Sommer, who's a real beauty.  Edward G. Robinson plays the prize-winner in physics, and there's something very strange about him.  The second time he meets Newman, he doesn't appear to know who he is or ever to have seen him before.  Newman knows something's wrong, so he investigates.  Romance, suspense, and hilarity ensue.  It was the height of the Cold War, so naturally the Reds are involved.  Just watch the trailer embedded below, and you'll pretty much have the whole movie.  

I wouldn't mind seeing The Prize again, just to see if it's as much fun as I remember it was.  For that matter, I wouldn't even mind reading the book again.  I probably won't, and I suspect that Irving Wallace, a huge bestseller when this movie was made, is pretty much a forgotten writer today.  Or maybe not.  I see that several of his books on Kindle are available for free (today, at least; I'm writing this well in advance of its publication).  The Prize isn't one of the freebies, though.  Drat.

Update: They're no longer free.  Double drat.