Tuesday, March 29, 2011
A Very Safe Bet
By Squish
I firmly believe that criticism, whether print media, television or the works of an online hobbyist such as myself, creates a better appreciation of the art one is writing about. The simple math of it makes a critic doubly involved in the same movie — watching followed by analyzing. And the fact that I've had to spend another two hours or more revisiting Dangerous Liaisons makes this task one of the most pleasant I've had in recent months.
What makes Dangerous Liaisons so exceptional is not the beautiful cinematography and attention to visual detail, it's not the spectacular performance of John Malkovich and Glenn Close...OK, wait, it is a lot of that, but what I'm trying to emphasize is this: Dangerous Liaisons is one of the most perfectly written scripts I've heard in my life, particularly as it relates to the relationship between Valmont and de Merteuil.
Their true relationship is one that must always remain a secret. In this still sexually strict age of 18th century France, these two bored aristocrats have the stern judgment of their peers to consider whenever they engage in the task of defiling others. This means that the option of gloating proud upon their successes in seduction
Their victories only come from sexually debasing others, and it quite obviously makes for a lonely existence, and both of them maintain their games because they only have each other. The script is one of the best examples of how to properly provide exposition to the audience as there's ever been.
Still, no matter what I write, it's nothing compared to the multi-layered guise-within-a-guise that is Dangerous Liaisons. My praise goes out to Choderlos de Laclos for having written the original novel, to Christopher Hampton for the screenplay. It's rare that I go out of my way to see more of a writer's scripts, but I'm looking forward to exploring his other works, such as Atonement and The Quiet American.
One final thing: I was impressed with how some of the casting choices helped create a very satisfying nigh fourth-wall-breaking subtext. Close, here as the immoral and seductive Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil, has had previous important roles that included the freaky mom from The World According To Garp and the year just before Dangerous Liaisons, she showed how psychotic she could be with Fatal Attraction. Keanu Reeves and Uma Thurman, both in roles of true neophytes, when they themselves were relatively unknown actors, predating even Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, though his character in Dangerous Liaisons is made even better today by Keanu's stereotypical goof-off "whoa. I know Kung-Fu" persona that he still hasn't completely shaken off. A neat undercurrent if I do say so myself.
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Labels: 80s, Glenn Close, Malkovich, Movie Tributes, Pfeiffer
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Monday, March 28, 2011
The Best High School Movie You've Never Heard Of
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By John Cochrane
When Corey Haim died suddenly of pneumonia and cardiovascular complications on March 10 last year at the age of 38, a lot of people probably thought of him as a reality TV star — the latest Hollywood casualty of childhood fame, a career derailed by a lifetime of drug addiction and unreliable behavior. Other people possibly thought of his most famous film role as Sam, an adolescent vampire-killer in the movie The Lost Boys (1987). I immediately thought his unforgettable starring performance in the film Lucas (1986), a buried gem that I saw when it was released 25 years ago today. It remains one of the best movies I’ve ever seen about being a teenager and trying to navigate the often-painful processes of attending high school and falling into unrequited love.
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The story begins with Corey Haim as Lucas Bly, a 14-year-old accelerated high school student spending a late summer day wandering around town with a bike and a butterfly net, looking at insects. He comes across a new girl in town, Maggie — played by Kerri Green — who is hitting balls on a tennis court. Once they begin talking, we realize that we’re not watching a typical '80s movie about hip high school students in improbable circumstances, but a film about genuinely interesting people. Lucas is obviously very bright and articulate, but he’s also socially awkward and by the looks of his clothes and big glasses, an
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On campus, Lucas is not the confident master of his domain that he was during the summer, but a small and easy target for jocks and would be tormentors. The film’s depiction of high school and its inherent stress and social anxiety is timeless, and if you don’t experience some hint of recognition from your own high school past, maybe you weren’t really there. We meet some of his classmates, including Ben — a chubby tuba player and video camera enthusiast who’s not afraid to stand up to bullies, Cappie — a varsity
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If you think this sounds like a typical teenager movie with a predictable ending, it’s not. First-time director David Seltzer doesn’t use flashy filmmaking techniques or cheap jokes, but instead smartly places his emphasis on his own screenplay with its nature motifs of transformation and fragility. In doing so, he delicately captures situations, dialogue and emotions that are sometimes funny, sometimes embarrassing or sad, but always real. In his original 4-star review, film critic Roger Ebert praised the film as one of the five best of the year, saying that “half-a-dozen of the film’s scenes are done so well, they could make short films on their own,” and compared its portrait of adolescence to Francois Truffaut’s new wave classic The 400 Blows (1959). If you know both films, it’s a credible comparison. I would also add that you could watch Lucas with the sound down, and still understand the story. The visuals and performances are so strong, that it would still work as a silent movie.
The characters in Lucas are people that you know and recognize — sometimes clumsy, insecure or awkward, but likable and always trying to do the right thing. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the character of Lucas himself. Ebert said about Corey Haim’s performance:
“He does not give one of those cute little boy performances that get on your nerves. He creates one of the most three-dimensional, complicated, interesting characters of any age in any recent movie. If he can continue to act this well, he will never become a half-forgotten child star, but will continue to grow into an important actor. He is that good.”
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The other actors also seem not to perform their parts, as much as embody them. High praise should be given to Kerri Green, who first appeared in Richard Donner’s The Goonies (1985), but really shines here. Lucas would not work nearly as well if we didn’t think Maggie was worthy of Lucas’ total affection, and Green comes across as a genuine beauty both inside and out. (Truth be told, I had a teenage crush on her when I saw this movie, and it’s been reported that Haim did too during the film’s production — a believable possibility that only enhances their chemistry on screen.) Also memorable are Charlie Sheen as Cappie and Winona Ryder in her first on-screen role as Rina — both creating earnest, believable characters — free of clichés and before tabloid hysteria overtook their careers.
Both Lucas and The 400 Blows end with freeze frames of their lead characters. The last shot of The 400 Blows is one of the most famous endings in film — with Antoine Doinel escaping reform school, ending up at the beach and enigmatically regarding the camera with the ocean behind him. Lucas concludes with a shot of Lucas at his locker — the climax of a moving finale, which shows Lucas returning to school after an extended absence. Both characters are yearning for parental love and social acceptance. Both act out desperately to achieve it. Corey Haim’s life and career ended tragically and prematurely — sadly never fulfilling the promise that Ebert mentioned, but Lucas and Haim’s performance will be remembered by anyone who values great films and characters. The lasting image I have of Haim is not from The Two Coreys, but of the freeze frame of Lucas Bly — in his oversize jacket, smiling with his arms in the air.
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Labels: 80s, C. Sheen, Ebert, Movie Tributes, Television, Truffaut, Winona
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Mildred Pierce Parts One and Two
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This recap contains spoilers, so if you haven't seen Parts One and Two yet, move along.
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By Edward Copeland
Todd Haynes' miniseries adaptation of Mildred Pierce doesn't play the way you usually think of miniseries of old with two hour long or more parts airing over several nights on the same week. Haynes' miniseries plays more like a limited series, with five episodes, each about an hour long or 10 or 20 minutes over and playing on consecutive Sundays. It premiered tonight with both Parts One and Two. Both will be recapped in a single post after Part Two has aired.
We meet Mildred Pierce (Kate Winslet) as she's busily making pies and finishing up a cake as well in her Glendale, Calif., kitchen in 1931. Her cheating husband Bert (Brian F. O'Byrne) was forced out of the home-building company that he started and still bears his name by his partner and presumed best friend Wally
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Soon after Bert's departure, Mildred's neighbor and closest friend Lucy Kessler (Melissa Leo) drops by as Mildred busies herself washing dishes. "He took the car," Mildred mutters, much to Lucy's confusion. She asks what Mildred means and she tells her that Bert has left. "He walked on you?" Lucy queries with surprise, though
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After hearing another arrival, Lucy excuses herself after leaving Mildred some chicken she'd prepared but that she feared would spoil because her husband Ike, a truck driver, got a sudden call for a job down to Long Beach and she was going to go with her. Mrs. Gessler exits as 11-year-old Veda (the phenomenal Morgan
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Mildred visits an employment agency run by a Mrs. Turner (a really good performance by Brenda Wehle) who practically laughs Mildred out of her office because all she's put on her card is receptionist, when she has no experience for such a job. She points to the filing cabinet behind her filled with cards bearing names of qualified applicants for all sorts of jobs, some with doctorates. Mrs. Turner apologizes, but there's nothing out
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"Wally Bergan!" Lucy exclaims with surprise when Mildred tells her of his sudden interest in her and their impending date. Lucy apologizes for forgetting to tell her of that aspect of being a grass widow — men suddenly assume the newly single women are red hot mommas with corresponding loose morals. She warns Mildred not to let him take her out to dinner because then he'll get a drink and figure he's earned it when something happens. Mildred assures Lucy that nothing will happen, though Lucy is skeptical and suggests a better idea is for her to fix him something there and ply him with the still illegal-in-1931 liquor, which Lucy gladly provides, a sideline of her husband's work as a truck driver, producing gin, scotch and wine. That way, Lucy tells her, you don't owe him anything and if something happens, "That's just Mother Nature and you know she's no bum...Within a month, he'll be taking you shopping for a divorce." Mildred still isn't certain that this should be a road that she should be traveling on and asks Lucy if she really wants to be a kept woman. "Yes," Lucy replies. We've seen signs so far, but we will really see as the story develops that Mildred Pierce isn't that type of person who gets kept — she does the keeping.
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The weather helps Mildred with her plan to change Wally's date intentions by bringing on a driving rainstorm which helps her convince him to stay in and let her fix something instead of going out in this inclement weather, though for a few moments Wally seems pretty determined that he has to be the one buying her dinner before he caves. Not only does Mildred's great cooking soothe the savage beast, he welcomes the taste of her liquor, saying it's been ages since he's had real gin like that because all the speakeasies offer weaker stuff. With dinner complete, Mildred gathers the dishes to head
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Mildred hits the streets, determined to find a job for herself since the employment agency was of no use. In a nicely assembled montage, Mildred walks in to high end store after high end store only to be greeted with a series of heads shaking no. After she's been walking for a long time, dressed in the best outfit she owns, her feet really begin to hurt. She leans down to loosen one of her shoes and you can see that the wear-and-tear has taken its toll and her heel has started to bleed
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The bus ride to the mansion for the interview with the wealthy bride-to-be is a long way and Winslet perfectly conveys all the thoughts Mildred must be contemplating before she even gets to the meeting. When she finally arrives and rings the doorbell, an African-American servant answers and asks if she's help. When Mildred
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Back on a bus after that incident, Mildred stops at a diner to get a bite to eat when a fight breaks out between two waitresses because one catches the other stealing other waitress's tips. Because of the commotion the Greek owner (Mark Margolis) of the diner comes out and fires them both for turning his restaurant into a boxing ring. All the waitresses end up in the kitchen arguing, feeling it's unfair to fire the one who caught the thief since she didn't do anything wrong. The diners are getting restless with no one serving. Mildred quietly finishes her lunch and pays and meekly makes her
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Mildred gets home to find Veda and Ray on the stoop and asks Lucy to come in. She asks if she can borrow $3. Lucy says more if she needs it. Mildred whispers that she got a job as a waitress at a hash house. Lucy says she always wondered when she was looking for jobs as a salesperson why she didn't try that sooner. In
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As we meet up with Mildred Pierce again in Part Two, the opening seems similar to the way we were introduced to her in Part One, only we're in the bedroom instead of her kitchen and instead of filling her pie tins with usual ingredients, she's spreading rocks around in them and practicing carrying them at once without dropping them so she'll perform better at her new job as a waitress at Cristofor's Cafe in Hollywood. She has to practice in the privacy of her bedroom out of fear that her daughters, especially 11-year-old Veda, will learn she's lowered herself by taking a job that requires the wearing of a uniform and earning the bulk of her wages off tips. Mildred doesn't get to practice long when she hears a commotion in the living room. Bert has
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Mildred's finding her groove at the diner, but she's starting to notice the customers complaining about the qualities of the pies and Ida bringing up the issue with Mr. Chris. As they are finishing work for the day, Mildred asks Ida how much Chris pays for the pies, but she's not positive. Mildred tells Ida about her piemaking and that she could bring in samples. Ida realizes she's serious. Mildred asks her if she'd like a ride home. "You've got a car?" "It runs," Mildred replies. Ida tells her that she should bring in three: an apple, a pumpkin and something else, but no cherry or strawberry because they fall apart too easily. She'll make certain they get served and bring it up with Mr. Chris. Mildred won't have to do a thing. "Ida, you're a real pal," Mildred tells her. The next day, Mr. Chris happily laughs as he sees how well Mildred's pies go over. After work, Mildred, Ida and two of the other waitresses go out for drinks to celebrate. Mildred worries that since Mr. Chris has hired her for 35 pies a week, she may have to hire help. "At 35 cents a pie, you can almost afford it," Ida tells her as Mildred thanks Ida again and the woman clasp glasses. Setting up her operation at home, Mildred hires a woman named Letty (Marin Ireland), who also doubles as baby sitter when Mildred can't be there.
That turns into a shock when Mildred returns from shopping and calls for Letty, but she doesn't answer. She makes a call with the news that another restaurant pie contract has come her way when Letty appears — wearing her uniform from the diner. Mildred quickly gets off the phone. "I told her you wouldn't like it," Letty says," but she hollered and carried on until I put it on." Mildred asks who she's referring to — as if she didn't already know the answer — "Miss Veda, ma'am." "Miss Veda?" "That's what she says I should call her," Letty tells Mildred. Mildred goes on the warpath. In another room, cute and innocent little Ray is playing shoot-'em-up, saying she's the public enemy, while Veda sit calmly on the couch. Mildred says that once again she was
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With the restaurant idea now firmly established in her head, Mildred starts keeping a notebook of ideas both at her diner and elsewhere. After another roll in the hay with Wally, she asks if he'd help her come up with some estimated costs for opening a restaurant that she wants to present to this one regular customer at the diner. Wally asks her to slow down and start over from the beginning and she tells him her idea is to open a chicken restaurant. People would either get chicken and waffles or maybe chicken and vegetables with carryout pies still on the side, eliminating a la carte pricing and need for menus. Wally says he might be able to do it by giving her the model home. It could be used for a restaurant, give the receivers a loss they need for their 1931 taxes and give Mildred a title that would open a line of credit. Then Wally remembers the hitch — Bert was one of the original incorporators of the property and she's married to him. It won't work unless she and Bert get divorced. When Mildred talks to Bert, he thinks it sounds like a bunch of hooey or possibly collusion. Bert says he would give her and the kids the house and then calms down when he decides there's no way Mildred would have an affair with Wally so he agrees to divorce her so she can get the place for the restaurant. Mildred cries and gives Bert a big hug as he leaves.
Mildred packs the girls' luggage to take to school with them as they are spending the weekend with their grandparents again and they are picking them up immediately after school. Mildred makes a quick stop to see how the restaurant is coming and to show off the new range to Wally before heading to the diner for her last
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He shows up later at Mildred's house in Glendale in a nice convertible. He notes again that she's smiling. "I can't quite believe I'm doing this," Mildred laughs. He asks since her name is Mrs. Pierce if she's any relation to Pierce Homes. "Bravo," she commends him on his guesswork and tells him she was once married to him. He
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A neighbor comes running across the yard as soon as Mildred returns asking where she has been — they've been trying to reach her since last night. Ray got the flu. and since she wasn't home, they had to take her to the hospital. Mildred makes tracks for the hospital and hooks up with Bert while little Ray lies in bed with a bandage over her lip. This portion of the story to me one of the most fascinating in the different ways it is
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As for the miniseries, after seeing her daughter die, Mildred calls Mrs. Biederhof looking for Bert and leaves a message about Ray. She then goes home, wakes Veda up and crawls in bed next to her and cries.
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Labels: Books, Curtiz, Fiction, HBO, Hitchcock, J. Stewart, Melissa Leo, Nicole Kidman, Pearce, TV Recap, Winslet
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Saturday, March 26, 2011
Centennial Tributes: Tennessee Williams
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By Sheila O'Malley
An interviewer once asked Tennessee Williams, “What is the definition of happiness?” Williams thought a bit and then replied, “Insensitivity, I guess.”
The great female characters of the Williams canon — Laura and Amanda Wingfield (Glass Menagerie), Blanche DuBois (Streetcar Named Desire), Alma Winemiller (Summer and Smoke), Maggie the Cat (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Catherine Holly (Suddenly, Last Summer), to name just a few — are the “sensitives” of the world, predisposed to unhappy lives because of their sensitivity, but in Williams’ view, the sensitives are the strongest of all of us. This psychological standpoint is still his most radical contribution. The more obviously hearty people will not understand, and would wish Blanche to “buck up” a little bit, or Alma to stop mooning around about John Buchanan…but to wish that is to wish away Williams’ drama, of course, and to wish away the best part of ourselves, which is our vulnerability. Williams spoke to that vulnerability and gave it a voice in a way no other 20th century playwright did. His only rival was Eugene O’Neill. In a 1948 essay in The New York Times, Williams wrote about the questions that people would ask him about his plays and his characters:
On this particular occasion the question that floored me was, “Why do you always write about frustrated women?”
To say that floored me is to put it mildly, because I would say that frustrated is almost exactly what the women I write about are not. What was frustrated about Amanda Wingfield? Circumstances, yes! But spirit? See Helen Hayes in London’s Glass Menagerie if you still think Amanda was a frustrated spirit! No, there is nothing interesting about frustration, per se. I could not write a line about it for the simple reason that I can’t write a line about anything that bores me. Was Blanche of A Streetcar Named Desire frustrated? About as frustrated as a beast of the jungle! And Alma Winemiller? What is frustrated about loving with such white hot intensity that it alters the whole direction of your life, and removes you from the parlor of the Episcopal rectory to a secret room above Moon Lake Casino?
Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams III on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Miss., to parents Cornelius and Edwina Williams. He had a brother, Dakin, and a sister, Rose. He was very close to his maternal grandfather, Walter Dakin, an Episcopal priest who, later in life, traveled extensively with his grandson, and set up house with him in Key West on occasion. Cornelius Williams was often absent due to his job as a traveling salesman (Tennessee would utilize this experience in his first hit play, Glass Menagerie, where Mr. Wingfield, never seen in the play, was described as “a telephone man — who fell in love with long-distance!”), and so the three children were raised primarily by Edwina. His father thought “Tom” was effeminate and gave him a hard time about it.
The family moved to St. Louis, where Tennessee attended high school and began writing in earnest. He tried his hand at poetry, short stories, essays. His interest in drama would come a bit later.
In 1937, he was accepted into the University of Iowa (after dabbling in journalism at the University of Missouri). He transferred eventually to Washington University in St. Louis where we start to see the playwright Tennessee Williams being born. He worked on the campus literary journal, whose members are pictured here (Williams is second from the left). He became involved with a local theater group called the Mummers of St.
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Tom’s sister Rose was always thought to be neurotic, too “nervous,” and once she hit her teenage years and became boy-crazy (like most teenage girls), the cracks in her psyche began to open. A failed “debut” seems to have been particularly traumatic, and Rose had a series of breakdowns (one psychiatrist told her that her problem was that she needed to get married), was hospitalized, given insulin treatments, shock treatments, and finally, in 1943, a prefrontal lobotomy. By that point, Williams had left town and was living in New York, struggling to get by on writing grants and odd jobs. On March 24, 1943, he wrote in his journal, after receiving a letter from his mother about Rose’s “operation”:
1000 miles away.
Rose.
Her head cut open. A knife thrust in her brain.
Me. Here. Smoking.
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This was the defining event in his life, even more so than being a gay man in the 1930s and '40s, even more so than being a writer from the South. Rose’s inability to either heal the cracks within her, or live with those cracks, haunted Tennessee Williams to his dying day, and play after play deals with madness, fear of madness, and also, in one case specifically (Suddenly, Last Summer) lobotomies. There is a danger in assigning too much autobiographical meaning to Williams’ works, as though there should be a literal A to B correlation. To read the plays as glorified journal entries is a huge disservice to the universality of his work (the recent failed production of Glass Menagerie at The Long Wharf, reviewed here by John Lahr, is evidence of that.) Williams turned what had happened to his sister Rose into art. As Tom Wingfield says, in his final monologue in The Glass Menagerie:
I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass. Perhaps I am walking along a street at night, in some strange city, before I have found companions. I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of a shattered rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes. Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger — anything that can blow your candles out! For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura — and so goodbye...
In 1939, Williams moved to New Orleans, and it was there that he began to emerge as an individual voice. It also was when he formally changed his name to “Tennessee,” the state where his father was born. In his journals and letters, it is apparent that during this fertile time in his life he already was percolating the ideas that would become Glass Menagerie and Streetcar Named Desire: There are early one-acts that are rehearsals for those later plays. His first major full-length play was Battle of Angels (1940), about a virile young drifter named Val who strolls into a dressmaker’s shop in a small town after his car breaks down, looking for help. The dressmaker’s shop is run by a woman named Myra who is trapped in a loveless marriage. Battle of Angels would eventually be rewritten by Williams in 1957 as Orpheus Descending. Battle of Angels was produced in Boston and was a resounding flop. It would be his first (but not his last) experience of controversy and calls for censorship, due to the explicit sexual subtexts in his plays. Although Battle of Angels was not a success, it brought him into contact with powerful people, producers and agents (Margo Jones, Audrey Wood and others), who would become lifelong supporters of Williams and his work. Around this time, he wrote in his journal:
My next play will be simple, direct and terrible — a picture of my own heart — there will be no artifice in it — I will speak truth as I see it — distort as I see distortion — be wild as I am wild — tender as I am tender — mad as I am mad — passionate as I am passionate — It will be myself without concealment or evasion and with a fearless unashamed frontal assault upon life that will leave no room for trepidation. I believe that the way to write a good play is to convince yourself that it is easy to do — then go ahead and do it with ease. Don’t maul, don’t suffer, don’t groan — till the first draft is finished. Then Calvary — but not till then. Doubt — and be lost — until the first draft is finished.
It was out of this attitude that The Glass Menagerie was born. Williams had written a short story called “Portrait of a Girl in Glass” (1943) and began to turn it into a play (he often worked this way, backing into the play format). Margo Jones, one of the pioneers of the American regional theater movement, had hitched herself to Tennessee Williams early on, and was tireless in promoting him. She and Eddie Dowling produced The Glass Menagerie (Dowling also directed and played Tom Wingfield) and a production was planned to open in Chicago in 1944. Casting was a challenge and getting the once-great and now-washed-up Laurette Taylor (who had been a star of vaudeville) to play Amanda Wingfield was a big coup. Taylor had been famous as a young actress, but now was known mainly for her drinking problem. Rehearsals for Glass Menagerie were difficult sometimes. Lyle Leverich wrote in Tom, his magnificent biography of Tennessee Williams:
Tennessee remembered that Laurette appeared to know only a fraction of her lines, and these she was delivering in “a Southern accent which she had acquired from some long-ago black domestic.” He was even more disconcerted when she said she was modeling her accent after his! Tom wrote to Donald Windham, complaining that Laurette was ad-libbing many of her speeches and that the play was beginning to sound more like the Aunt Jemima Pancake hour.
To him, Laurette’s “bright-eyed attentiveness to the other performances seemed a symptom of lunacy, and so did the rapturous manner of dear Julie.” He was witnessing a characteristic of many of the theater’s great actors who were quick studies but painfully deliberate in their approach to a role. As Laurette’s daughter explained, “She seemed blandly unconscious of the discomfort of the others…Amanda [the role] fascinated her. She could see whole facets of the woman’s life before the action of the play and after it was over.” This is what her husband had taught her was the test of a good part. “The outer aspect of this inner search concerned her not at all.”
Paul Bowles, a friend of Williams who composed the music that played throughout the play, came to Chicago for the dress rehearsal, and described the atmosphere:
“I flew out to Chicago [and] arrived in a terrible blizzard, I remember. It was horrible. A traumatic experience. And the auditorium was cold. Laurette Taylor was on the bottle, unfortunately. Back on it, really. She had got off it with the first part of the rehearsals but suddenly the dress rehearsal coming up was too much. [Laurette was discovered] unconscious, down behind the furnace in the basement. And there was gloom, I can tell you, all over the theater because no one thought she would be able to go on the next night.”
But she did go on, and by all accounts it was one of the greatest performances ever given by an American actress in the history of our theatrical tradition. The praise runs far and wide, and while Williams’ play, with its delicate heartbreak, and keening sense of loss and memory, was definitely something “new” (nobody was writing like he was at the time), it was Laurette Taylor’s magnificent performance that helped launch Williams into the stratosphere. His life would never be the same again. Leverich wrote:
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Laurette Taylor never lost an opportunity to divert the praise that was being heaped upon her to that “nice little guy,” Tennessee Williams. She was always quick to remind her admirers that it was he, not she, who had written the lines that gave The Glass Menagerie its special power and beauty. And she told Tennessee, “It’s a beautiful — a wonderful — a great play!”
For his part, Tennessee Williams always said that, as much as he regarded Laurette Taylor a personal friend, he never ceased to be in awe of her. “She had such a creative mind,” he once remarked. “Something magical happened with Laurette. I used to stand backstage. There was a little peephole in the scenery, and I could be just about three feet from her, and when the lights hit her face, suddenly twenty years would drop off. An incandescent thing would happen in her face; it was really supernatural.”
The Glass Menagerie moved to Broadway in 1945, and was a smash hit, Laurette Taylor becoming the toast of the town once again (she would die in 1946), and Williams becoming a star. In 1947, Williams wrote a letter to his friend (poet and publisher Jay Laughlin):
I have done a lot of work, finished two long plays. One of them, laid in New Orleans, A STREETCAR CALLED DESIRE, turned out quite well. It is a strong play, closer to Battle of Angels than any of my other work, but is not what critics call “pleasant.” In fact it is pretty unpleasant.
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This “unpleasant” play would bring him into contact for the first time with one of his most important collaborators, Elia Kazan. It may seem like an odd combination: the lyrical openly gay Southern writer paired up with the virile manipulative ambitious Greek immigrant, but it turned out to be a perfect fit. Kazan’s genius with theatrical language, with turning “psychology into behavior” (his definition of good acting), his strong basis in production values and practical matters (there was a reason why his nickname was “Gadg” — short for “Gadget”, a fix-it man) helped ground Williams’ work in a living-and-breathing reality. If a “lyrical” director had taken Williams’ plays on, it could have been disastrous, but Kazan’s gritty sense of truth often saved Williams from himself. Williams recognized this, recognized what Kazan provided. It was an intense, combative (at times) and very fruitful working relationship, and Kazan would go on to direct some of Williams’ biggest successes. A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Jessica Tandy as Blanche DuBois and a young relatively unknown Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski, opened on Broadway in 1947. Glass Menagerie had launched him, A Streetcar Named Desire solidified his position. It also made Marlon Brando a star. Brando described, years later, his experience of that time:
You can’t always be a failure. Not and survive. Van Gogh! There’s an example of what can happen when a person never receives any recognition. You stop relating: it puts you outside. But I guess success does that, too. You know, it took me a long time before I was aware that that’s what I was — a big success. I was so absorbed in myself, my own problems, I never looked around, took account. I used to walk in New York, miles and miles, walk in the streets late at night, and never see anything. I was never sure about acting, whether that was what I really wanted to do; I’m still not. Then, when I was in Streetcar, and it had been running a couple of months, one night — dimly, dimly — I began to hear this roar.
On opening night, Williams sent Brando a telegram:
RIDE OUT BOY AND SEND IT SOLID. FROM THE GREASY POLACK YOU WILL SOME DAY ARRIVE AT THE GLOOMY DANE FOR YOU HAVE SOMETHING THAT MAKES THE THEATRE A WORLD OF GREAT POSSIBILITIES.
Streetcar won the Pulitzer Prize. Williams, now financially successful and famous, traveled, moved about (New Orleans, to Key West, to Provincetown, to Italy, and back), worked on the screenplay adaptations for
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The 1960s were rough on Williams. His audience disappeared. His new plays were not successful, although Streetcar, Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and all the others were now staples in repertory companies across the nation. And yet he kept on. Some of those “lesser” plays from later on, in the '60s and '70s, glow with a kind of eerie fire, and I still wait for some of them to be revived properly. It is a mind-boggling body of work when looked at it as a whole, and it continues to grow in stature, making the more commercial playwrights of the same era look trite.
And the later plays? The ones that were flop after flop after flop? At the time, they suffered by comparison to Williams’ earlier successes and most people gave up on him. He no longer found a home on Broadway and the experimental downtown scene that was burgeoning in New York was also not available to him. His plays were orphans, but now, with perspective and distance, they don't suffer at all in comparison to Menagerie or Streetcar. They stand on their own as excellent plays, difficult, challenging, moving, and recognizably Williams. Plays such as The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, Kingdom of Earth, Small Craft Warnings are worthy of serious reconsideration. I wouldn't call these "major" plays, but saying that feels ungenerous to a great and enduring talent. If a playwright could write just ONE play as great as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Williams considered it his best), then that should be enough for one lifetime, but Williams was in it for the long haul, as heartbreaking as that was for him. He had guts.
He wrote in his published memoirs:
Work!! — the loveliest of all four-letter words, surpassing even the importance of love, most times.
In 1981, the influential Jean Cocteau Repertory Company (they are still around) in New York did a production of what would be Williams’ last full-length play, Something Cloudy Something Clear. Williams was present at rehearsals, showing up with rewrites, coming up onstage to “act out” how a moment should be played. Something Cloudy Something Clear is his most blatantly autobiographical play: An elderly playwright looks back on an important love affair he had in 1940 during a summer in Provincetown. The boundary between the past and the present is porous and people from the playwright’s earlier years stroll through the action, unbidden memories rising up from out of the unconscious. It’s a beautiful play. Of course, it was not a success. Williams was interviewed at the time, and he said:
I’m very conscious of my decline in popularity, but I don’t permit it to stop me because I have the example of so many playwrights before me. I know the dreadful notices Ibsen got. And O’Neill — he had to die to make Moon successful. And to me it has been providential to be an artist, a great act of providence that I was able to turn my borderline psychosis into creativity — my sister Rose did not manage this. So I keep writing. I am sometimes pleased with what I do — for me, that’s enough.
It’s enough for me, too. For all of us.
Tennessee Williams died in 1983.
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Sheila O'Malley writes about actors and film for Capital New York and Fandor, as well as contributing occasional pieces to The House Next Door and Noir of the Week. Her personal blog is The Sheila Variations where she gets to be as obsessive as she wants about everything.
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Labels: Books, Brando, Kazan, Nonfiction, O'Neill, Tandy, Tennessee Williams, Theater
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