Many popular novels and comic books have been turned into movies, but The Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger holds out against this convention, refusing to let his stories be adapted for the big screen. It’s fairly well known that author J.D Salinger vehemently believes in the artistic control of his works and the privacy of his life. He is an elusive public figure whose reclusive lifestyle has become legendary. Despite incredible literary success and widespread popularity, or more likely because of it, the author moved to quiet Cornish, New Hampshire in the 1970s and did not publish any new works after 1965. "A writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him," he has said. Salinger has attempted (half-successfully) to discourage the discussion of his personal life, legally acting against the publishing of his personal correspondence with friends and family as well as declining most interviews with the media, and at best releasing sparsely worded replies to even The New York Times.

Salinger and Hollywood

In 1948, a film adaptation of his short story “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” angered Salinger so much that he refused to ever work with Hollywood again. It is rumored that he even had the barring of giving movie rights to anyone for his stories written into his last will and testament as a result of this incident. Unauthorized films have listed Salinger’s novels as part of their writing, but these films are all obscure, foreign productions (an Iranian full length film based on Franny and Zooey as well as a Mexican short based on an unnamed Salinger novel) that had very limited exposure.