James Rufus Agee was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, writing for Time, he was one of the most influential film critics in the United States. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family (1957), won the author a posthumous 1958 Pulitzer Prize. Agee is also known as a co-writer of the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and as the screenwriter of the film classics The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter.

The African Queen is a 1951 adventure film adapted from the 1935 novel of the same name by C. S. Forester. The film was directed by John Huston and produced by Sam Spiegel and John Woolf. The screenplay was adapted by James Agee, John Huston, John Collier and Peter Viertel. It was photographed in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff and has a music score by Allan Gray. The film stars Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn with Robert Morley, Peter Bull, Walter Gotell, Richard Marner and Theodore Bikel.