“Silent Spring,” the groundbreaking nonfiction bestseller by Rachel Carson that led to the banning of the pesticide DDT in 1972, is to be turned into a movie by Robert Chartoff. The producer of the “Rocky” series, “Raging Bull,” and “The Right Stuff,” Chartoff announced yesterday, 50 years to the month of the book’s publication, that he has acquired the feature rights to it. According to Variety, his company will raise “the film’s financing through independent equity sources.”

A rigorously scientific marine biologist and indefatigable conservationist, author, and journalist, Carson (1907-64) is regarded by many as the mother of the global environmental movement. Her documenting of the dangers of pesticides, particularly on birds, in “Silent Spring,” led to Carson being posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter in 1980. In 1981, a 17¢ Great Americans postage stamp was issued in her honor.

“Fifty years ago, our passion for pesticides knew no bounds with abuses ranging from massive aerial spray campaigns to impregnating DDT in the wallpaper of children’s bedrooms,” Chartoff said. “Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring’ launched a national debate fought out on front pages of newspapers, on television and in JFK’s news conferences.”

The movie, Variety says, “will chronicle Carson’s struggle against the chemical industry she fought, which led to a campaign to discredit both her and her work.” There is obviously potential for Chartoff to make a film along the lines of (but less charged with violence than) Michael Mann’s “The Insider,” which starred Russell Crowe as tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand.

Although Carson didn’t advocate the wholesale banning of DDT and other pesticides, she anticipated a fierce reaction from the chemical industry. She and her agent had her book vetted by scientists and enlisted prominent supporters. Among them was Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who had fought against the court’s rejection of the Long Island pesticide spraying case and had provided information on herbicides to Carson.

Serialization of the book in the New Yorker in the summer prior to its September 27, 1962 publication by Houghton Mifflin provoked the expected attacks from pesticide manufacturers, including DuPont and the Velsicol Chemical Company. The latter threatened legal action against Houghton Mifflin, the New Yorker, and Audubon Magazine, which had excerpted the book.

In her 1997 biography “Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature,” Linda Lear reports the aggressive response of the biochemist Robert White-Stevens: "If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.” He further described her as “a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature.”

Inevitably, the attacks on Carson became personal – and hysterical. According to Lear, former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson allegedly wrote in a letter to Dwight D. Eisenhower that because Carson was unmarried despite being attractive, she was "probably a Communist.”

Carson’s ability to defend her findings were hampered by the effects of the radiation treatment she was receiving for breast cancer. However, she read excerpts from the book on the CBS Reports special “The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson,” broadcast on April 3, 1963. White-Stevens also contributed to the program.

"In juxtaposition to the wild-eyed, loud-voiced Dr. Robert White-Stevens in white lab coat,” Lear wrote, “Carson appeared anything but the hysterical alarmist that her critics contended.” Seen by an estimated 10-15 million, the program – which could potentially provide Chartoff with the climax for his film – brought Carson widespread support. It also instigated a congressional review of pesticide dangers and the public release of a pesticide report by the President’s Science Advisory Committee.

“Within a year or so of publication,” the detailed Wikipedia entry on Carson reports, “the attacks on the book and on Carson had largely lost momentum.”

Carson died of a heart attack in Silver Spring, Maryland, on April 14, 1964. Her other books are “Under the Sea-wind” (1941), “The Sea Around Us” (1951), “The Edge of the Sea” (1955), and “The Sense of Wonder” (based on a magazine article and published posthumously in 1998).