James Bridges; Director, Writer of ‘China Syndrome’

Writer-director James Bridges, whose films included “The China Syndrome,” “The Paper Chase” and “Urban Cowboy,” died Sunday at UCLA Medical Center. He was 57.

He had struggled with intestinal cancer for three years, said his friend, Aaron Latham, who co-wrote “Urban Cowboy” with Bridges, one of two films for which Bridges was nominated for an Oscar.

“He was an incredibly generous person, personally and professionally,” Latham said from his home in New York City.

Bridges’ work as a writer and director often strove to make a point about contemporary society, from its dangers (“The China Syndrome”) to its crumbling edges (“Mike’s Murder”) and the pressures on its young (“The Paper Chase”).

Reviewing his career in a 1988 interview with The Times, Bridges spoke philosophically about his successes and failures.

“I think they run in 10-year cycles of favor and disfavor, hurt and happiness,” he said.

Bridges had two big back-to-back commercial successes with “Urban Cowboy” and “The China Syndrome.” But when his very personal film “Mike’s Murder” was sneak-previewed in its original form in 1982, the audience loathed it. People screamed at the screen and there were cries of “Lynch the director!”

But Bridges had brought the violent thriller in $1 million under budget, and the film company allowed him to spend the savings on a partial remake. The later version was enthusiastically received and became something of a cult classic.

Born in Paris, Ark., Bridges came to Los Angeles in the 1950s and got bit parts in dozens of television shows, including “Dragnet” and “Matinee Theater.” Later, writing for “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” he penned 16 scripts, including “The Unlocked Window,” for which he won a Mystery Writer’s award.

His first crack at theatrical directing came in 1966 with “The Candied House,” a play written by his longtime companion, Jack Larson. By 1977, his directorial reputation was such that Tennessee Williams chose Bridges to direct the 25th anniversary revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

Bridges began in movies by writing and directing “The Babymaker” in 1970, about a woman who agrees to bear a child for a childless couple. It was based on the life of a woman Bridges knew.

Three years later, he wrote and directed “The Paper Chase,” a popular movie later made into a TV series, starring Timothy Bottoms and Lindsay Wagner as law school students and John Houseman, a former Bridges mentor, as the cantankerous professor.

That was followed in 1977 by his movie “9/30/55,” about the impact actor James Dean’s death had on youths in a small Arkansas town.

Bridges said the film was based on his experiences of the day Dean died. It was, he said, the day he decided to go to Hollywood to follow in Dean’s footsteps.

In 1979, he wrote and directed “The China Syndrome,” a movie about a nuclear accident that was released just about the time of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. The film, starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas, won Bridges an Oscar nomination for best screenplay.

“He never did one work that he didn’t believe in,” Larson said. “ ‘The China Syndrome’ is an example of that.”

Bridges lived with Larson--an actor best known for portraying Jimmy Olson in TV’s “The Adventures of Superman”--in a Los Angeles home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

In 1978, Bridges teamed up with Latham for “Urban Cowboy” after he read an article Latham had written for Esquire about “citified” cowboys who wore fancy garb, rode mechanical bulls and danced the two-step on Saturday nights.

Bridges’ other film credits include “Perfect,” about fitness mania, and “Bright Lights, Big City.”

He is also survived by his mother, Celestine Wiggins, and a sister, Mary Ann Wiggins, both of Paris, Ark., where Bridges will be buried.