Welcome to Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm your host, Glen Holland.

Tonight's film is 1983's "The Outsiders" directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

The movie is a dramatization of the young adult novel by S.E.

Hinton.

The ensemble cast features early appearances of a host of actors who later went on to greater fame.

The leads are C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio and Patrick Swayze.

Now familiar faces in smaller roles include Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, and Diane Lane.

Supported by Leif Garrett and Tom Waits.

"The Outsiders" takes place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1965.

Teenagers there fall into several groups based mostly on social class.

Among them are the Socs, short for socials.

The well off kids with social status including football players and cheerleaders.

At the opposite end of the social scale are the Greasers.

Poor white kids from the so called bad side of town.

One of them, Pony Boy Curtis, lives with his brother Soda Pop, and their older brother Darrell, who became head of the household when the boys' parents were killed in an accident.

One evening Pony Boy is hanging out with his friend Johnny.

When they're attacked by a couple of Socs.

They escape, and later sneak into a drive-in theater with their friend Dallas.

When Dallas hits on a Soc cheerleader, Cherry, she snubs him, and he stalks off.

Cherry and her friend Marsha chat with Pony Boy and Johnny, and when the movie's over the two boys offer to walk the girls home.

But they're intercepted by Cherry's drunk boyfriend Bob, and his friend Randy.

The same Socs who assaulted Pony Boy and Johnny earlier in the evening.

To keep the peace the girls go with them, leaving Pony Boy and Johnny to walk home on their own.

Later, Bob and Randy and some other Socs find them at a park and go after them again, trying to drown Pony Boy in a fountain.

He blacks out.

When he comes too, the Socs have disappeared.

Bob's lifeless body is lying on the ground, and Johnny is holding a bloody switch blade.

S.E.

Hinton began writing "The Outsiders" in 1965 when she was 15.

The basis of her story was two gangs, the Socs and the Greasers at her school in Tulsa, Will Rogers High School.

Hinton wrote the book in the first person with one of the Greasers, Pony Boy Curtis, as narrator.

The Outsiders was published by Viking Press in 1967 when Hinton was 17.

The novel has sold more than 14,000,000 copies, and Hinton is now credited with creating the literary genre of the young adult novel with "The Outsiders" and other novels that followed it.

Those include three other novels that were made into films in the 80's.

"That Was Then, This is Now, published in 1971, Rumble Fish in 1975, and Tex in 1979.

Francis Ford Coppola's involvement with "The Outsiders" was the result of a letter to the director in 1980 from Jo Ellen Misakian, an elementary school librarian in Fresno, California.

She wrote to him on behalf of her seventh and eighth grade students, who agreed that someone should make a film of "The Outsiders", and that the best person for the job was Coppola.

Attached to the letter were 15 pages of children's signatures written in different colors.

Coppola read the book and was won over.

He conceived the adaptation as a technicolor wide screen melodrama, what he called a "Gone With the Wind" for 14 year old girls.

Coppola was at a low point in his career in the early 80's, after the resounding success of "The Godfather" films and "Apocalypse Now" in the 1970's.

The independent movie production company that he had founded with George Lucas, Zoetrope Studios, had had to be sold after the disastrous failure of his $26 million musical, "One From the Heart" in 1981.

It took Coppola years to fully pay off his debts.

But making "The Outsiders" in Tulsa offered him an opportunity for a respite from his problems.

"I used to be a great camp counselor."

Coppola told the New York Times in 1983.

"And the idea of being with half a dozen kids in the country and making a movie seemed like being a camp counselor again.

I'd forget my troubles and have some laughs again."

Francis Ford Coppola selected his young cast through a series of auditions.

Rob Lowe recalled in 2011, that instead of meeting actors individually to read for roles, Coppola would gather a group of as many as 30 at a time, and try them out in different combinations of different parts.

Ralph Macchio, who at 20 was one of the two oldest actors to be cast as Greasers, was from New York, and felt like an an outsider himself among the Californian actors.

He later said, "The casting process was brutal, because you're becoming self-conscious of any choices, because you're watching reactions based on other actors, and watching the filmmakers and how they respond because you're all trying to get the job."

"But," he admitted, "for Francis it was about mixing and matching the ensemble."

If so, the process seems to have worked.

One of the most striking things about the performances in "The Outsiders" is how completely the actors playing the Greasers cohere as a group, and their relaxed and rowdy camaraderie.

Coppola took other steps to help this happen.

During filming, the actors playing Socs were given leather bound scripts, and nicer hotel rooms than the actors playing Greasers, who were relegated to the ground floor with battered paper back scripts.

Coppola wanted to give both groups a sense of the social distance between them and generate tension.

He also had C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze spend a night in the house where the Curtis boys live in the movie.

He wanted them to cook a meal together, even though none of them knew how, and to get the experience of being in character as brothers.

Author S.E.

Hinton was involved in every aspect of the production.

She has said the boys caused quite a bit of trouble in the hotel where they were staying during the three months of filming.

She recalled a reenactment of the scene where the Socs try to drown Pony Boy with six of the actors dunking one another in the hotel's lobby fountain.

The fountain was removed within weeks.

Several years later, Tom Cruise was introduced to someone who said he'd worked at the hotel in Tulsa when the cast stayed there.

Cruise responded, "I'm sorry."

"The Outsiders" is credited with launching the core of the Brat Pack of actors who appeared in films during the 80's.

Probably no other single motion picture in American film history has featured or introduced more young actors in the early stages of their careers who would go on to star in later movies.

These actors include Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane, and Emilio Estevez.

And of course, Tom Cruise went on to star in any number of money making films in the years since The Outsiders, including appearing in six "Mission Impossible" films as Ethan Hunt.

Over the years, "The Outsiders" has earned a cult following.

Coppola received many letters from fans of Hinton's novel over the years after the film was released.

They often expressed disappointment that several key scenes from the book were omitted from the film version.

In fact, Coppola had originally filmed most of those scenes, but they had later been cut when the studio executives were concerned the film was too long.

Years later, Coppola's granddaughter was reading the book in class and was going to watch the film with her schoolmates.

Because he didn't want to disappoint them, Coppola gathered and edited back in most of the excluded footage.

Eventually, this version became his own director's cut, and was released on DVD in 2005 under the title "The Outsiders the Complete Novel".

S.E.

Hinton has a cameo laid in the film as the nurse who argues with Dallas about the whereabouts of his hospital gown.

Hinton has often said how much she loved the boys who played the Greasers.

Most of them were in their teens when the movie was filmed, and many of them were away from their home and parents for the first time.

Hinton says she became a mother figure for them and takes pride that they often called her mom.

She said in 2016, "I have so many incredible memories of that time.

It was just magical to see everything come together, and we had a lot of fun, probably too much, on set with the boys, many who were just getting their acting careers started.

And yes, I am in contact with all of the actors, and Francis Ford Coppola."

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

I'm Glen Holland.

Goodnight.