Marie Dressler on the set of her penultimate film, Dinner at Eight, with Lionel Barrymore and below on the set of her last film, Christopher Bean, again with Lionel Barrymore. In Dinner with Eight she plays a high society dame, in Christopher Bean a maid. The latter is unavailable on DVD. It was based on the play The Late Christopher Bean by Sidney Howard who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925 for They Knew What they Wanted and would become the first person awarded an Oscar posthumously when he received the 1939 Oscar for Best Screenplay for Gone With the Wind. He was only 48 when he was killed three and a half months before GWTW's premiere in an accident on his farm. His tractor had been left in gear and when he went to the front to crank it, it drove him into the wall and crushed him.
Click on the above pics for very large versions, from the archives.
26 comments:
A Pulitzer Prize-winning writer killed in a farming accident. That's a new one.
Not to kick the dead (but hey it's been 70 years) but if you click the links I gave to read about Chris Bean and They Knew What they Wanted they just sound awful. Utterly contrived and filled with "meaning" like Clifford Odets but without the overt politics.
There's a reason why Williams and O'Neil are remembered and Howard's plays are forgotten.
Yeah, well, O'Neill should probably be forgotten, too. Yeah, that's right, I just took down Eugene O'Neill!! I don't care whose fingers I step on!
But whether Howard was any good or not, really: he died in a farming accident. You have to admire that.
Yeah, that's right, I just took down Eugene O'Neill!!
Stand back everybody, there's a rebel on the loose!
Anyway, I like O'Neil fine, even if he's a little old-fashioned and stagy nowadays. But yeah, being crushed to death by a tractor. No other playwright can ever beat that one.
I'm not even a big fan of Williams, to be honest with you. Sometimes, I think I don't like plays very much, with a few notable exceptions. You know another play I don't like? Death of a Salesman. I love The Crucible, but no Salesman. The staginess and purpleness of the language in O'Neill and Williams, in particular, drives me up the wall.
Now, as far as O'Neill goes, I've never read or scene The Iceman Cometh, and I really want to see the version with Lee Marvin (did Lumet direct that?), but if that one doesn't pay off, I think my opinion of him is set in stone.
"Twas John Frankenheimer who directed Lee Marvin in The Iceman Cometh. Jason Robards, Jr. was pissed because he had made a name for himself in the stage production.
More fun, and much shorter, is the Hong Kong adventure comedy, The Iceman Cometh, with an early film performance by Maggie Cheung.
Bill, I love Tennessee Williams' prose, I really do. I think his plays are beautiful and not intended to be taken as gritty realist dramas. Because of the subject matter they are often viewed that way but there is a poetry in Glass Menagerie, Streetcar and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in particular that I find exhilerating and absent in most other drama.
As for Arthur Miller I never liked him much because his prose is so flat in my opinion. But I do think plays are very much different animals than movies and too many people rooted only in film discuss which plays are good and bad without any real understanding of the difference. I'm not saying you do that but for instance, going to a public board just now on the subject and seeing a discussion of good and bad plays from people who keep equating things in film terms makes it clear most people in this day and age don't get the difference between the two.
What may seem purple and overstated on the page or in closeup on the screen often plays at a perfect pitch on the stage. I have a long list of plays I have seen that were phenomenal and then the film versions, following the play almost exactly, stunk.
Peter, I've never seen either one of those although I've heard really good things about the Lee Marvin version. And I understand Robards being peeved. He made a name for himself as the foremost O'Neil actor in America in the fifties and sixties. Even if Marvin was great, I bet Robards would have been better.
You're probably right, Jonathan. My theater-going experience is extremely limited, and most of what I'm familiar with is either from reading plays or seeing film adaptations. And I know Williams isn't supposed to be gritty realism, but I still don't like it much. I've always found his writing to be "beautiful" in a very self-concious way that I don't click with.
It works better on stage. One of the biggest differences I've ever come across was a production of 1776. I had already seen the movie and thought it was so-so at best, a little on the lifeless side. Then I saw a stage production in DC and Wow! It was incredible! Same damn script and yet it was really vibrant on the stage and even suspenseful. It was quite a difference from the movie.
I agree with you about "1776" - I was watching the movie on TCM last week, and - while I enjoy the songs - it wasn't that great. But I've always loved seeing it on stage.
"Amadeus" was one of the most successful transitions from stage to film that I recall. The scene where Salieri declares himself and God to be enemies was played very loud and histrionically onstage with Salieri shouting to the heavens; in the film it was just a quiet, devastating moment with Salieri taking a crucifix off the wall and placing it into the fire, accompanied by some low-key voiceover commentary. It was really effective in both cases.
Pat, I too have seen Amadeus both on the stage and screen (envy us Bill). I agree and that's a great point. If you had read the play where it is written big to be performed that way on stage and then saw the film and it was done the same way the movie wouldn't work. But in this case they actually adapted it! Not often done.
I think if you're going to adapt a modern play for the screen you should just take the characters and plot and rewrite the whole thing according to cinematic structure.
Many older plays by comparison (like the obvious case of Shakespeare) aren't locked into single set/three act structures like most post-Ibsen drama and thus work great on film just as they are.
I actually do you and Pat. My theater experience, as far as the professional stuff goes, is limited to seeing a play called Faulkner's Bicycle performed at my college (it was a lousy play, and Faulkner was a character, portrayed as a kindly old man, which is absurd); a production of Showboat; and, my most glamorous, big city experience, a revival of Lenny starring Eddie Izzard(!) and Elizabeth Berkley (!!). That was...interesting.
A buddy of mine who lives in New York City got to see that big revival of Glengarry Glen Ross starring Alan Alda and Liev Schreiber, which he said was brilliant, and the recent production of Speed the Plow (with Macy as a replacement for the mortally ill Jeremy Piven). Now him I really envy.
I actually do you and Pat
You do? When? I didn't feel a thing. You're gentle, I admire that.
I didn't know about Piven's illness until you just brought it up so I looked him up and it's ... mercury poisoning! What the...? It's undisclosed how he got it. Weird.
And both of those productions you mention are ones I'd love to see. They sound great. I remember you bringing up the Lenny production before and how Izzard just did his own thing for the stand up and how that was the only enjoyable part, or something like that.
Yes, I did you both. And you're welcome.
Piven's mercury poisoning WAS disclosed! It's because he ate too much sushi. I'm not even kidding. And he was sued, or something, through various unions, which deadlocked because the actor's union supported him. Either way, everyone thinks he's a liar, and he probably won't see Broadway again, other than as a member of the audience.
I wondered if I'd brought up Lenny before. Yeah, that was quite a day. Good memory!
Well I know it was disclosed or I wouldn't have known about it. The article I read said the source of the poisoning was undisclosed. But you say he said it was eating too much sushi. Oh lordy. I love Mamet's line that he was leaving the play to ""pursue a career as a thermometer."
I just read up on the Piven thing a bit more, and apparently he's saying now that the mercury poisoning didn't come from eating sushi, specifically, but from eating fish in general, two times a day for 20 years. At his hearing, he quoted Martin Luther King.
When I hear mercury poisoning, I think of Bilderberg & vaccine conspiracies. And When I think of Bilderberg I think of Bill. So why didn't Bill think of that?
I like Arthur Miller and rode the subway once with him in New York. Giant of a man. And plays, like movies, really have to be considered in the context of their times. Fashions change and while O'Neill and Miller may seem dated, what's so great about what's being done now? David Mamet hasn't written a word that's been any goddamn good in 20 years. Give me the florid, old fashioned stuff any day.
"What is the cure? Who can be innocent again on this mountain of skulls?"
Arbo, I may not like Miller very much (although I don't dislike him, his characters didn't have the poetry of Williams' to me and it's the florid stuff I like from those days) but I do like After the Fall which you quote and I actually really liked The American Clock when I saw it on TNT several years ago.
And plays, like movies, really have to be considered in the context of their times.
I think that would be a necessary understanding along with the two having different structures and styles as Pat and I discussed. But surprisingly, many don't get it. That board I quickly visited was ghastly. Things were being typed like, "Yeah, Streetcar isn't very good" or "Is Arthur Miller the most overrated playwright ever? Uh, yeah!" Not wanting to start lobbing bombs I quickly left but I really wanted to ask those jerkwads what plays they had written, or even just read, that matched the (in my opinion) beautiful discovery of character contained in that "not very good" play Streetcar.
Bill, it sounds like Piven actually has dangerous amounts of bullshit in his system. He should get that looked into.
Fox, I am a secret chief of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. We control the mercury supply in the world. I assure you, Piven is lying.
David Mamet hasn't written a word that's been any goddamn good in 20 years.
Arbo, why do you persist in this attack on all I hold dear?
I admit that Mamet hasn't had a truly great play in a while (although The Old Neighborhood sure has its moments), but by my reckoning, he's written more than a few major, classic plays. So credit where credit is due, and all that. And acknowledging that plays should be considered in the context of their times isn't the same thing as saying they've aged well. Jonathan mentioned Odets earlier, who is very much a product of his times, and is unbearable to read or hear now.
Also, I don't like florid. For the most part, anyway. Or not when it comes from the pen of Williams or, to a lesser extent, Miller. The Crucible is florid, obviously, but also gorgeous and ageless.
Bill, it's true, Odets hasn't aged well. Although, from what I've read (archived reviews and such I mean) he wasn't that well liked at the time either. It was the hard left actors, directors and political types that liked Odets. The critics never latched onto him. Either way, I think he's pretty mediocre, then or now.
Anyway, I think you should give Williams another chance. The Glass Menagerie is really beautiful I think.
I'll give you face another chance!!
I...I'm sorry. That was brutally mean and uncalled for. I don't know about giving The Glass Menagerie another chance, as that's the one that really turned me off of him (although that was many, many years ago). Although you know what I would like to check out? Williams's short fiction. I don't know how much he wrote, but florid works better for me in a story/novel than it does in a play. That's the angle I'd like to take when coming back to him, and if I like that, see where it leads me.
Well I certainly hope you will give my face another chance.
It's the kind of face you love.
Just wuv. Wuvvy, wuvvy, wuv, wuv!
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