Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's movie is "Stanley and Iris", directed by Martin Ritt and released by MGM in 1990.

The screenplay was written by Ritt's frequent collaborators, Harriet Frank, Jr. and Irving Ravetch, who drawn material from British author, Pat Barker's 1982 novel "Union Street".

Stanley and Iris stars, Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro with support from Swoosie Kurtz, Martha Plimpton, Harley Cross, Jamey Sheridan, and Feodor Chaliapin.

Iris King is a recently bereaved widow who works in a rundown factory bakery in a part of a northeastern city where crime is an everyday reality.

Iris lives in a two-story house she shares with her two children, 12-year-old, Richard and 16-year-old, Kelly, as well as her younger sister, Sharon, and Sharon's unemployed husband, Joe.

Iris nursed her husband for a long illness and his death has left her with few resources.

So the lack of money is a constant source of worry and tension, especially after Kelly reveals she's pregnant.

When a thief snatches Iris's purse while she's riding the bus home from work, she runs after him and gets into a fight that leaves her battered.

But Stanley Cox, a cook who works in the Bakery's canteen has followed Iris from the bus, finds her and helps her home.

A cautious friendship begins to develop between Iris and Stanley, who lives in a small apartment with his elderly father.

Stanley has some odd ways of behaving, and Iris finally realizes that he can't read.

When Stanley's boss later accuses him of changing invoices to defraud the company, Iris defends him by telling his boss, Stanley is illiterate.

But that leads to Stanley losing his job and his life, and his father's gradually unravels.

After his father dies, Stanley is driven by grief and guilt to turn to Iris for her help in doing what he needs to do, learn to read.

Director Martin Ritt was best known for films that dealt with social issues like intergenerational family conflicts, corruption, racism, trade unionism, and the Hollywood Black list.

Born in 1914 to immigrant Jewish parents, Ritt began acting after leaving college.

He was a playwright for the Federal Theatre Project during the '30s, later moving on to acting and directing with the group theater and the Actors Studio in New York City.

After serving in the Army Air Force during the Second World War, Ritt directed for stage and television in the early '50s.

His first work as a movie director was the 1957 film noir "Edge of the City", starring John Cassavetes and Sidney Poitier.

Ritt made several films with Paul Newman, including "The Long Hot Summer" in 1958, "HUD" in 1963, and "Hombre" in 1967.

Ritt later directed The "Great White Hope" with James Earl Jones in 1970, "The Front" with Woody Allen in 1976, and in 1979, "Norma Rae", the film that earned Sally Field her first Oscar for best actress.

In the '80s, Ritt directed some romantic movies, including "Cross Creek" with Mary Steenburgen and Peter Coyote in 1983.

And "Murphy's Romance" with Sally Field and James Garner in 1985.

1990, "Stanley and Iris" was his final film.

He died later that year.

As in other movies Martin Ritt directed, in "Stanley and Iris" a social issue is personalized and illuminated by focusing on the problems of an individual character.

In this case, the character is Stanley Cox, and it's through his struggles, so the audience becomes aware of some of the problems associated with adult illiteracy.

At the time of the film's release, some 27 million Americans over the age of 17 were illiterate.

The severity of the problem associated with illiteracy and the extent to which they limit a person's ability to participate fully in their society is to a large extent determined by the centrality of reading and writing in that society.

In the West, the rise of industry during the 19th century, and with it, the associated skills of recordkeeping and bookkeeping increasingly made literacy both reading and writing the useful if not essential skill for success in life.

In 2003, the national assessment of adult literacy defined literacy as the ability to use printed and written information to function in society to achieve one's goals and to develop one's knowledge and potential.

The assessment identified three types of literacy, including prose, documents like schedules and charts, and arithmetic operations.

In the years since, many literacy experts have added digital literacy to the list of necessary skills for success and contemporary life.

The screenplay for "Stanley & Iris" was written by Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch, who also wrote Martin Ritt's 1979 hit "Norma Rae" about the unionization of a North Carolina cotton mill.

Frank and Ravetch drew on material from the 1982 novel "Union Street" by British author Pat Barker.

Most film adaptations deviate from their source material when transferring it from the page to the screen, but "Stanley & Iris" bears only a passing resemblance to the book that inspired it.

Patricia Barker was born in Yorkshire in 1943 to a woman who served in the Women's Royal Naval Service and an unknown father.

Raised by her grandmother, Pat showed academic process and in time graduated from the London School of Economics.

Beginning in her mid-20s, she wrote three unpublished novels she later styled "middle class."

In a change of approach, in 1972 she created "Union Street," a novel made up of interconnected stories about seven working class women struggling to survive in an old industrial city in northeastern England.

The book is gritty and unsparing, focusing on the weight of poverty and despair in the lives of women, from a girl of 11 to a pensioner in her 80s.

The strongest among them and their main source of support is a woman named Iris King.

"Union Street" went from one publisher to another for 10 years, continually rejected because it was thought too bleak and depressing.

It was finally published in 1982 by Virago Press, a British publisher specializing in books by and about women.

"Union Street" was received with critical acclaim, although complaints about its setting and subject matter continued.

A review in "The New York Times Book Review" said, "Barker gives the sense of a writer who has enormous power that she has scarcely had to tap to write a first-rate first novel."

What Frank and Ravetch took from "Union Street" in creating the screenplay for "Stanley & Iris" was the character of Iris King, her work in a factory bakery, and the prevailing difficulties of a family living from hand to mouth, although those were considerably downplayed in the movie.

The screenplay moved the events from northeastern England to the northeastern United States and eliminated the harsh language and realism that made the novel, in the words of a reviewer writing in "The New Statesman," "a long overdue working class masterpiece."

More significantly, Frank and Ravetch introduce the character of the illiterate cook Stanley Cox, who does not appear in the novel.

Since Stanley, his troubles, and his eventual romance with Iris form the heart of the movie, it's no wonder Pat Barker has said the film bears little resemblance to her book.

"Stanley & Iris" was shot on location in Waterbury, Connecticut and Toronto, Ontario.

The cost of the film was $23 million, with Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro each receiving $3 1/2 million for playing the title roles.

Unfortunately, the film was neither a critical nor a commercial success, grossing less than $6 million worldwide.

The critical consensus was the story was episodic, with long stretches between Stanley's earliest encounters with Iris, and plot threads like that involving Iris's sister Sharon and her abusive husband Joe just left hanging.

Others were tied up too neatly, like Kelly's sudden wave of maternal affection after the birth of her baby, even though the film makes it clear that its birth has decimated her hopes for the future.

Other critics, while admitting the actors' individual talents, bemoaned the lack of chemistry between De Niro's hangdog Stanley and Fonda's impressively tanned and fit Iris.

One critic specifically panned the scene when Iris tries to teach Stanley to read the word bird.

"De Niro would never waste his time going, 'Buh buh buh,'" he wrote, "he'd just fire off an expletive while Jane cools down with some stretches.

That's the Fonda and De Niro I know."

Robert De Niro was apparently unfazed by the failure of "Stanley & Iris."

He had reason to be.

Later in 1990, he appeared in one of his best-known roles as James "Jimmy" Conway in Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" with Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci.

Jane Fonda, on the other hand, announced her retirement from films in 1991.

She did not appear in another movie until 15 years after "Stanley & Iris" when she co-starred with Jennifer Lopez in the 2005 comedy hit "Monster-in-Law."

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.