Jim Thompson's happy ending?

Nope, Walter Hill's, apparently at the behest of Steve McQueen. McQueen, who controlled the production company for the 1972 movie The Getaway, based on Thompson's novel, "objected to the depressing ending" of Thompson's screeplay and had Hill replace him.

I haven't read the book, and I don't know what kind of an ending Thompson concocted for the screenplay. But he was not a happy-ending type, and I'd guess his version did not finish the way the movie does: with McQueen and Ali MacGraw emerging like transfigured lovers from a pile of garbage and trucking off to live happily ever after down Mexico way.

What are your favorite, most shocking, most surprising, most inappropriate or just plain weirdest Hollywood happy endings imposed on movie versions of novels or stories?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010