theater | dual personalities

Tag: theater

The other night I watched the old movie Our Town (1940), starring a stellar cast which included William Holden, Martha Scott, Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, and Frank Craven as the Stage Manager. He originated the role on Broadway.

I don’t know what it is about this movie but it just destroys me every time I see it. Once again I cried through the whole last act. Part of it is that Aaron Copland score. But most of it is the plain truth of it.

Wilder explained in his preface to the play that “‘Our Town’ is not offered as a picture of life in a New Hampshire village or as a speculation about the condition of life after death. . . .It is an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our life.” Well, I get that. The movie plays up the romance angle and it changes the ending, but for Hollywood, it does a pretty good job of conveying the message of the play.

I was in the play once–in eighth grade. I played Howie Newsome, the milkman. I saw it performed in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in a production by the Peterborough Players that included James Whitmore as the Stage Manager. (Wilder wrote some of Our Town at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, as well as in Zurich and on Long Island and all over.) And I’ve seen several versions on TV. But I do like the black and white movie, sets and all.

Here’s “The birth and life of an American classic: ‘Our Town’” from the Pulitzer files. Some people just don’t get it and write it off as folksy and sentimental. How wrong they are!

Reading the play is good, but seeing it is better. After all, it’s a play. For convenience sake, I recommend the movie.

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September 6, 2013

Friday movie pick: such untamed emotion!

by chuckofish

Lucky Julie Harris. Laughing it up with these guys:

Julie Harris with Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando and James Dean in 1955

Julie Harris died last month. She was, of course, an American stage, screen, and television actress of the first rank. She won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994 she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She was a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame and received the 2002 Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.

I remember watching my mother watch Julie play Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst on television back in the 1976. My mother wept pretty much uncontrollably, which was quite unnerving to me. But Julie Harris was one of those actresses that loses herself in the part–she became Emily Dickinson. Awesome.

I haven’t had a Friday movie pick in some time, so I suggest we all watch Julie Harris in East of Eden, which introduced James Dean to the world. It was Julie’s second film. It only covers a small part of Steinbeck’s great novel, but it is a good movie taken on its own. James Dean’s performance is spectacular and he is ably supported by Raymond Massey, Jo Van FLeet, Burl Ives, and–of course–Julie Harris.

Today is also the birthday of Elia Kazan (September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003)–American director, producer, writer, actor, founder of the Actors Studio, and Williams College graduate. The New York Times described him as “one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history”. He was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for East of Eden, but lost to Delbert Mann, who won that year for Marty. C’est la vie.