I just thought of COMPULSION for some reason. Hard for me to say it was a great play, having never seen it, but it sure was a compelling movie when I first saw it.
Not often filmed, Shakespeare's TWELFTH NIGHT was brought to the screen in 1996 by Trevor Nunn, who worked for more than 30 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The gender-bending story of the play centers on the twins "Viola" and "Sebastian" (in the film, Imogen Stubbs and Steven Mackintosh), who are separated in a shipwreck. Viola (who is disguised as a boy) falls in love with "Duke Orsino" (Toby Stephens), who in turn is in love with the "Countess Olivia" (Helena Bonham Carter). Upon meeting Viola, Countess Olivia falls in love with her thinking she is a man.
Roger Ebert said that "Nunn's casting choices make for real chemistry between Imogen Stubbs and Helena Bonham Carter, [who] walks the thin line between love and comedy as she sighs for the fair youth who has come on behalf of the count. She wisely plays the role sincerely, leaving the winks to the other characters." And Stephen Holden of the New York Times wrote that "this TWELFTH NIGHT is deeper than most in the way it confronts the psychological forces seething behind the conventional facades of masculine and feminine. It fully recognizes the genius of the play as its comic understanding of the degree to which desire (the more frustrated the better), and not love, is what makes the world go around."
Shaun Davey's score for the film was released by Silva Screen.
Tennessee Williams’ SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH opened on March 10, 1959 at the Martin Beck Theatre, and ran for 375 performances. Elia Kazan directed, with Paul Newman as “Chance Wayne,” Geraldine Page as “Alexandra Del Lago,” Rip Torn as “Tom Junior,” and Madeleine Sherwood as “Miss Lucy,” all of whom recreated their roles from the play when the 1962 screen version was made. Geraldine Page was nominated for the 1960 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play. She lost to Anne Bancroft in “The Miracle Worker.”
The story follows drifter Chance Wayne, who returns to his hometown after many years of trying to make it in the movies. Arriving with him is a faded film star he picked up along the way, Alexandra Del Lago. Alexandra has taken to drinking vodka, smoking hashish, inhaling oxygen, and keeping young lovers. Because of its then-shocking subject matter, the film was given an advisory of “restricted” by the MPAA, prohibiting anyone under the age of 18 from attending. This was the pre-rating equivalent of an X (later NC-17) rating. By today's standards, the film is so tame that, when shown on Turner Classic Movies, it's rated TV-PG.
Richard Brooks adapted the play for the screen and directed the film, after successfully translating Tennessee Williams’ CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF to the screen. The film received three acting Oscar nominations. Ed Begley won as Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the corrupt and powerful politician, "‘Boss’ Finley” (played by Sidney Blackmer on the stage). Shirley Knight was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, losing to Patty Duke for THE MIRACLE WORKER. And Geraldine Page was nominated for Best Actress, losing again to Anne Bancroft for the film version of THE MIRACLE WORKER.
The film got mixed reviews. Bosley Crowther in the New York Times said that “SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH, for all its graphics and the vigorous performance of its top roles, has the taint of an engineered soap opera, wherein the soap is simply made of lye, that's all.” Leonard Maltin, on the other hand, gives the film 3 and a half stars, calling it “powerful drama” with a “glossy production” and a “cast on top of [its] material.” The film uses stock music from the MGM library--by Bronislau Kaper, Andre Previn, and others--newly conducted by Robert Armbruster. Here is the film’s trailer:
Robert Anderson’s play I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER opened on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre on January 25, 1968 and ran for 124 performances. The play starred Hal Holbrook as “Gene Garrison,” Alan Webb as his father “Tom Garrison,” Lillian Gish as his mother “Margaret Garrison,” and Teresa Wright as his sister “Alice.” The story concerns a man who wants to move on with his life by moving to California and marrying his girlfriend, but finds it difficult as he still lives in the towering shadow of his aging father.
Anderson--and the play’s director, Gilbert Cates--brought the play to the screen in 1970, with Gene Hackman as the son, Melvyn Douglas and Dorothy Stickney as his parents, and Estelle Parsons as the sister. (Richard Widmark was playwright Robert Anderson's first choice for the son role in both the theatrical and film versions of the play.) The film received a good set of notices. Roger Ebert wrote that “the writing, the direction, and the performances come together to create one of the most unforgettably human films I can remember." Tony Mastroianni of the Cleveland Press noted that Anderson’s “situations are genuine and his players get the most out of them.” Leonard Maltin gives the film three and a half stars, terming it a “sensitive adaptation” and a “fine job all around.”
Melvyn Douglas was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor, but lost to George C. Scott for PATTON. Gene Hackman was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, losing to John Mills for RYAN’S DAUGHTER. And playwright Robert Anderson was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, losing to Ring Lardner Jr. for M*A*S*H. The film’s score, by Barry Mann and Al Gorgoni, was released on a Bell Records LP, but has not had a CD re-issue. Here’s the “critics’ quotes” trailer:
PYGMALION, of course, is the George Bernard Shaw play upon which the musical MY FAIR LADY is based. Shaw wrote the play in early 1912 and read it to famed actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell in June. She came on board as “Eliza DooLittle” almost immediately, but her mild nervous breakdown contributed to the delay of a London production. So, the play premiered in a German translation at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on October 16, 1913. The English production opened at His Majesty's Theatre in London on April 11, 1914, starring Mrs. Campbell. The original Broadway production of “Pygmalion” opened at the Park Theater on October 12, 1914 and ran for only 72 performances.
Shaw rejected an offer from Samuel Goldwyn for the screen rights to his plays. He was more impressed with Gabriel Pascal's integrity as a producer, thus beginning a partnership that yielded adaptations of PYGMALION (1938), MAJOR BARBARA (1941), CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (1945) and ANDROCLES AND THE LION (1952). Shaw, a guest of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies at San Simeon when he was in California, reportedly wrote to Davies offering her the role of “Eliza DooLittle” in the film version, but Davies had retired from the screen by the time the offer was made. Shaw then personally chose Wendy Hiller for the role. Charles Laughton was Shaw's first choice to play “Professor Henry Higgins,” but Leslie Howard eventually got the role.
In the original play, Eliza's test is met at an ambassador's garden party, offstage. For the film, Shaw and his co-writers replaced that exposition with a scene at an embassy ball. “Nepomuck,” the blackmailing translator spoken about in the play, is finally seen, but his name is changed to “Aristid Karpathy” – named so by Gabriel Pascal, the film's Hungarian producer, who also made sure that Karpathy mistakes Eliza for a Hungarian princess. (In MY FAIR LADY, the character became “Zoltan Karpathy.”)
The film also introduced the famous pronunciation exercises "the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" and "In Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen". Neither of these appear in the original play. Shaw's screen version of the play as well as a new print version incorporating the new sequences he had added for the film script were published in 1941.
PYGMALION received great acclaim in the U.S., with Oscar nominations for the film, as well as lead actors Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. George Bernard Shaw and his co-writers (Cecil Lewis, Ian Dalrymple, and W.P. Lipscomb) won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Leonard Maltin gives the film four stars, calling it a “superlative filmization.” Arthur Honegger’s score has not had a release.
Some stage-to-film transfers are unable to match the scope and stylish scale of the original (even with ostensible ‘opening up’) and this is a prime example of a Broadway triumph and star-making vehicle whose celluoid version is generally impressive (the anti-“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, ya might say) if specifically unsatisfying (as Ms. Alexander sagely notes) …
Having Jane Alexander-James Earl Jones repeat their majestic Tony-Award winning Best Actress-Actor triumphs was the finest achievement forever on admirable view.
Which also includes the equally electrifying
Marlene Warfield.
And also Lou Gilbert (far right) as Jack Jefferson’s supportive agent.
There’s also a smashing cameo from an electrifying Moses Gunn
who absolutes provides a show-stopping stunner of a monologue.
Professionally-Personal Interlude Dept:
During our first late 70s Hollywood misadventure (meaning we don’t MISS it at all), one of the highlights was an evening spent with Bob Markell, a CBS executive whose friendship we’d earned. He phoned us during one of his visits from New York and invited us to dinner with him “and some friends”. We gladly obliged.
Little did we know his ‘friends’ were composer Charles Gross (“Country”, “The Dain Curse”) and the real stunner, playwright Howard Sackler himself.
Mr. Sackler’s recollection of the legendary trip his play had from Washington’s Arena Stage to Broadway and then Hollywood was chockful of penetrating (sometimes surprising) perceptions and preferences. Paramount (not the studio) among the latter is this:
Although he recognizes the definitive imprint of Mr. Jones, intriguing enough Mr. Sackler far preferred the former’s replacement – Yaphet Kotto – as being far more memorable in presenting the character bereft of Mr. Jones’s occasional penchant playing to the audience. This wasn’t a consideration in Mr. Kotto’s interpretation, thus delivering a performance with considerably more intensity.
As a certain Son of Vulcan would say: “Fascinating” …
Then again, we’ve still got these pearls for posterity:
ANOTHER COUNTRY is a play written by the English playwright Julian Mitchell. It premiered on 5 November 1981 at the Greenwich Theatre, London, and transferred to the West End in March 1982. There it won the Society of West End Theatre Awards Play of the Year title for 1982.
The play, and subsequent 1984 film, is loosely based on the life of the 1940s British spy Guy Burgess, renamed "Guy Bennett" in the play, and examines the effect that his homosexuality and exposure to Marxism has on his life, and the hypocrisy and snobbery of the English public school he attends. In the film, Bennett is played by Rupert Everett, who also created the character on stage. He was followed in the stage role by Colin Firth, who in the film, is Bennett's best friend, "Tommy Judd," an avowed communist.
Julian Mitchell adapted his own play for the screen. The film was helmed by Marek Kanievska, making his directorial debut. Michael Storey provided the score. The film was entered into the 1984 Cannes Film Festival where it won the award for Best Artistic Contribution. It was nominated for three 1984 BAFTA Awards: Editing (Gerry Hambling), Most Outstanding Newcomer to Film (Rupert Everett), and Adapted Screenplay (Julian Mitchell).
Indeed it is quite impressive and an essential appraisal of what’s rightfully called the “Raisin in the Sun” of gay films re being a seminal watershed depiction of personal slices of life more universal in its conflicts than the general category of its particular culture.
What’s particularly profound – and stands out even more courageously now than then – is the compelling observations from William Friedkin, who not only crafts a true stylish and moving FILM out of Mr. Crowley’s play but is a textbook case of approaching material solely on what it says about being H.U.M.A.N..
Here’s another viewpoint that needs to be included:
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