When The Catcher in the Rye was first released, many offers were made to adapt it for the screen; among them was Sam Goldwyn, producer of My Foolish Heart.[9] In a letter written in the early fifties, Salinger spoke of mounting a play in which he would play the role of Holden Caulfield opposite Margaret O’Brien, and, if he couldn’t play the part himself, to “forget about it.” Almost fifty years later, the writer Joyce Maynard definitively concluded, “The only person who might ever have played Holden Caulfield would have been J. D. Salinger.”[10] Despite this, Salinger told Maynard in the seventies, “Jerry Lewis tried for years to get his hands on the part of Holden,”[10] and luminaries ranging from Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson to Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio have since made efforts to make a film of Catcher.[11] In an interview with Premiere magazine, John Cusack commented that his one regret about turning twenty-one was that he had become too old to play Holden Caulfield. Legendary Oscar-winning writer-director Billy Wilder recounted his abortive attempts to snare the novel’s rights, saying,

“ Of course I read The Catcher in the Rye….Wonderful book. I loved it. I pursued it. I wanted to make a picture out of it. And then one day a young man came to the office of Leland Hayward, my agent, in New York, and said, ‘Please tell Mr. Leland Hayward to lay off. He’s very, very insensitive.’ And he walked out. That was the entire speech. I never saw him. That was J. D. Salinger and that was Catcher in the Rye.[12]