Authors: Boze Hadleigh
Broadway Babylon (21 page)
“Tallulah was practically the only woman star she ever had in any of her ole plays.”
It was after ex-witch-hunter Richard Nixon’s Watergate downfall that Hellman’s fame and admiration reached their peak. “Creating her memoirs was a master stroke,” said David Lewis. “But a thing you need to remember about Hellman is that once public opinion shifted in her favor, what really made her look good [were] her enemies. Lillian the monster had to be compared to worse monsters like McCarthy, Nixon, and Roy Cohn to come out smelling like a rose. She really was damn lucky … great timing.”
Time and her books elevated playwright Lillian Hellman from a Broadway figure to a national icon and supposed role model. But more time and one too many lies, plus her unquenchable egotism, tumbled down the carefully constructed edifice of her brave and daring, freedom-loving persona in her final years and after. Ironically, after her assorted memoirs were largely discredited, it was Hellman’s plays—largely undistinguished but mostly untarnished—that formed the backbone of her remaining reputation.
G
EOKGE
K
ELLY IS AN EXAMPLE
of a playwright who achieved big but quite brief and specific success. Better remembered today as Grace Kelly’s gay but very closeted and deeply conservative uncle (1887–1974), he had three hit plays between 1922 and ’25:
The Torch-Bearers, The Show-Off
, and
Craig’s Wife
. The latter is the most widely known due to its third screen version,
Harriet Craig
(1950), which starred Joan Crawford in an eerily self-parodying performance. (Daughter Christina said she had virtually played herself, clean-freak and all.)
In the mid-1930s Kelly experienced a successful run with his previously unproduced 1929 play
Reflected Glory
, because it starred Tallulah Bankhead,
playing an actress married more to the stage than to any man. Kelly’s fourth play,
Daisy Mayme
, without a star to carry it, had flopped in 1926. A critic said it had too much manner and too little matter. Kelly plays typically featured three types: freeloaders, silly women, and haughty women.
Craig’s Wife
concerns a woman who cherishes her house more than her husband. Rosalind Russell, who starred in the 1936 movie version directed by Dorothy Arzner, later offered, “I had little to play. She’s written as an iceberg.… The story’s main point is the horror of a woman trying to rule the home.” Kelly, of course, advocated a patriarchal dictatorship, not a marriage of equals. In his play the ending is sad: the woman is abandoned by hubby and everyone else, left frightfully alone in a big house (hers to keep). In the significantly revamped Crawford version, the ending is happier: Harriet, never much of a people person, is left with the meticulous mansion she craved for herself all along.
Kelly began as an actor and worked in vaudeville. He wrote sketches. Older brother Walter was a successful monologist—also a bigot who refused to share the stage with a black act. Even after he took up writing plays, the younger brother admittedly attended the theater very seldom, movies virtually not at all, and he never owned a television set.
After his fourth and subsequent plays failed on Broadway, George blamed it on “the New York Jews” and moved to Hollywood in 1931 to work at conservative MGM. (Even post-Watergate, he was staunchly pro-Nixon.) George Kelly, who destroyed all his personal papers before he died, later turned to directing revivals of his plays once he decided he couldn’t and wouldn’t compete with the Broadway-bound “filth” written by the likes of Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, etc.
Between 1946 and his 1974 death in Pennsylvania, where he had been born, Kelly yielded no more plays. Today his output reads mostly as stilted and repetitive. He tended to write situations more than active scenes, and has been cited for an excessive amount of stage directions and attention to sets, especially portieres. Actor Alfred Lunt once opined to critic Alexander Woollcott, “Mr. Kelly’s characters could talk you to death before intermission.”
By the 1950s the publicity-shy “bachelor” was a near recluse, living out West because he loved the sun, hated “frigid weather and frigid women”—the latter featured often in his plays. He did speak to a few reporters in praise of political witch-hunter Joseph McCarthy and penned a teleplay for Broadway star Shirley Booth. By then he’d long since given up writing for the movies. His sole screen credit was a 1935 Wallace Beery vehicle titled
Old Hutch
. Kelly’s failure at screenwriting he attributed to “those Hollywood Jews.”
P.S. George Kelly, successful so long ago, has for the most part only rated a chapter or subchapter in books about his family or niece. Predictably, academic
studies of him and his work have denied or elided his gayness. A 1977 book,
Those Philadelphia Kellys—With a Touch of Grace
, admitted his homosexuality, focusing on his primary or perhaps only same-sex relationship and how most of the Kelly clan treated his “companion” shabbily, if at all. A 1999 volume of
Three Plays by George Kelly
, a co-publication of the Princess Grace Foundation—USA, included an introductory essay by a retired academic who not only denied the increasingly available evidence but misrepresented it: referring to the material in
Those Philadelphia Kellys
as “speculation,” he reduced the evidence to a mere friendly “gesture” that George Kelly had made toward a young (nine years younger) hotel employee whom he met in New York City. What the Foundation-sponsored retiree from reality didn’t declare was the fact that George’s “gesture” was to live almost inseparably with the ex-bellhop for possibly as long as fifty-five years—a longer union than hardly any other Kelly ever experienced.
“You know, Thespis is the god of acting. But he was a real person. And that’s what we of the stage are—we’re all too human, yet at our histrionic peak, and in what we give to audiences, we sometimes achieve divinity.”—J
OHN
B
ARRYMORE
“Actors are like other people, only more so.”—Broadway producer C
HERYL
C
RAWFORD
on the desire for masks
“Actors on camera are shadows, at best two-dimensional. In theatre, actors are flesh … alive … in the round. The performance is being created and lived out before you. It’s the next thing to life, but more thrilling.”—Y
UL
B
RYNNER
(
The King and I
)
“I love the live performance of the theatre, of building a character and taking her from the beginning to the end of the play. Theatre is so full and rich. I feel so
high
when I come off stage, and you get that immediate response [from the audience].”—singer-actress L
AINIE
K
AZAN
“And then there’s something I very seldom talk about. Within all of us we have a secret place filled with sulfuric acid and bile and the most horrible thoughts.… And that’s what you often have to call on, and it’s hard to do. Because you don’t want anybody to know about it. Nobody in the cast has to know about this, and even the audience doesn’t know about it. But you know. And it’s hard.”—film and stage actor C
HARLES
D
URNING
“Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.”—K
ATHARINE
H
EPBURN
“Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It’s a bum’s life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.”—M
ARLON
B
RANDO
“Only actors and prostitutes have to perform nightly. Without extra inspiration, it can get pretty mechanical.”—S
ARAH
J
ESSICA
P
ARKER
, Broadway and
Sex and the City
star
“Doing [H
ELLO
, D
OLLY
!] on Broadway was the biggest thrill. At first it felt like a command performance … I finally got used to the idea that New York audiences are not royalty—but it took time!”—P
HYLLIS
D
ILLER
“On Broadway, you act just as you would act in any play. The only extra ingredient is glamour.”—M
ATTHEW
B
RODERICK
(
The Producers
)
“The difference between stage acting and acting for the camera isn’t talking louder. It’s making what you say on the stage seem more important.”—E
ILEEN
H
ECKART
“ ‘My boy,’ she said to me, ‘act in your pauses.’ At those moments, you are a creator, not a servant of playwrights.”—S
IR
C
EDRIC
H
ARDWICKE
, recalling stage legend Ellen Terry’s advice
“A strong bit of advice which I received long ago and have never forgotten on or off the stage: In acting, never underline. Anything one underlines is bad art.”—S
IR
M
ICHAEL
R
EDGRAVE
“I recall a Broadway actor giving me belated advice about Shakespeare. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘If you’re not playing a king, you never get to sit down.’ ”—S
IR
N
IGEL
H
AWTHORNE
, Tony-winner for
Shadowlands
“Shakespeare died when he was 52. If
I
had, I’d never have been in
The Matchmaker
or met Mia [Farrow, her
Rosemary’s Baby
costar] or been on the Joey Bishop Show or flown 67 times across the country or won an Oscar or eaten papaya or been robbed of all my jewelry or seen
M*A*S*H
or
Where’s Poppa?
or Don Rickles.”—writer-actress R
UTH
G
ORDON
“Come on, man, do you want the sad face, the glad face, the fast face, or the slow face?”—J
ASON
R
OBARDS
J
R
. to a director
“It’s like cramming, don’t you know. Only with more heart and passion involved.”—C
AROL
C
HANNING
, on staying up all night re-reading every line before opening a show
“Theatre actors have the luxury of being fanatics. You can, for several hours, become a character, live and breathe it. As Miss Channing does. We repeat nightly, we do it in sequence, and if lucky we do it month after month.… When you’re not in a hit, you don’t wish to be an actor every minute of the day; when you are, you do. The true Broadway actor dreams of dying in harness.”—D
AVID
B
URNS
, Carol Channing’s leading man in
Hello, Dolly!
, who suffered a heart attack while performing in Kander and Ebb’s
70, Girls, 70
(1971) and died soon after
“Actors.… The most modest of them … matches the conceit of the solitary pretty girl on a slow ship.”—writer H.L. M
ENCKEN
“It is best in the theatre to act with confidence no matter how little right you have to it.”—playwright L
ILLIAN
H
ELLMAN
“In the theatre lying is looked upon as an occupational disease.”—T
ALLULAH
B
ANKHEAD
“Temperament is something that is an integral part of the artist. Not temper, temperament. There is a vast difference.”—B
ETTE
D
AVIS
in
The Lonely Life
“The next actor may be the completion of your best scene. I
run
to actors.”—Tony winner T
ED
R
OSS
(the Cowardly Lion in
The Wiz
)
“I have to laugh when certain politicians and preachers say actors are ‘too liberal.’ Actors deal with art and emotions. We see all sides of life. We come from everywhere and we mix with others and we accept. We work with and are indebted to a large percentage of gays and Jews. So what are we supposed to do? Regress and become narrow again, intolerant and bigoted?”—stage and screen actor D
AVID
D
UKES
, responding to a comment by then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
“I don’t much care for bad actors. I don’t understand them and could never make a friend of one. I adore good actors, who are the sensitive sort of people one would like for friends.”—D
AME
E
DITH
E
VANS
“People think actors are smarter than comedians, but we write our own material. Actors don’t. If they did, they’d be playwrights.… A daughter of a friend of mine was considering it. She said, ‘I have half a mind to go into
acting.’ I told her, ‘Honey, that’s one of the requirements.’ Fortunately, she chose veterinary medicine.”—B
UDDY
H
ACKETT
“I always wanted to play Juliet. Somehow. It took me a long time to accept what was obvious to everyone else, and myself really—that physically I could never play her. It took even longer for me to accept that if I continued to act, it would not be in drama—my strong preference—but in comedy, to which I inevitably became accustomed with time.”—D
AME
M
ARGARET
R
UTHERFORD
“In a Broadway musical, you act
up
. Even if you don’t smile, you constantly seem capable [of it]. In a drama, you sound big but keep still—let the audience zero in on you.… In a comedy, play it straight and be very, very alert to your fellow players. React with your eyes, not your body.”—B
OB
H
OPE
in the 1980s (in the 1930s he left the stage for Hollywood)
“Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.”—non-theater UK actor R
OGER
M
OORE
on his technique
“Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.”—S
IR
R
ALPH
R
ICHARDSON
“I remember reading that Sir Laurence Olivier was asked what part of the body was most effective for acting on the stage and on camera. He said, for the stage, the arms, and for the screen, the eyes. I’ve never forgotten that.”—L
UCILLE
B
ALL
“On the stage, an actress needs bigger hair and more eye makeup. That’s half the battle.”—M
ARISSA
J
ARET
W
INOKUR
(
Hairspray
)
“Bright colors and big features help [on stage].… Bernadette Peters conquered Broadway with her Kewpie-doll look, and Carol Channing also has big, startled features—that helped too.”—makeup expert W
AY
B
ANDY
“[What the character should look like] is never me! I never get that out of my head. I can think back on every role I’ve done and picture who should have played it instead.”—R
OBERT
S
EAN
L
EONARD
(
The Invention of Love, Arcadia
)
“When I’m hired for anything new, I usually get the feeling the director or producer is soon going to take me aside and inform me that he’s sorry but it’s not working out. This happens in the medium I’m most associated with, television, it happens in film, and it certainly has happened on the stage.”—M
ARY
T
YLER
M
OORE
“I’ve had a lot of terrible moments. Once I was doing
The Master Builder
… and Sam Waterston and I were involved in this very passionate [scene] … and in the middle of it, I farted. The audience didn’t hear it but he did. Our eyes just locked, and I didn’t even say my next line. It just stopped me dead.”—C
YNTHIA
N
IXON
“You know, if I were an acting teacher, I would have young actors learn ballroom dancing as opposed to tap or modern or ballet, because that’s all solo. In ballroom, you have to consider the other person. I’d have men dance with women and with men, and vice-versa. I’d have men lead, and I’d have women lead. And the purpose would be to get used to depending on someone else. Many actors act alone because they don’t know how to interact.”—C
HARLES
D
URNING
“The youngest generation of actors now, the ones that hardly know what the stage is, are so into themselves, they’d prefer a monologue to a scene for two. I am not kidding. It’s about stardom, bucks, and instant glory—and to hell with craft, paying your dues, with other people. In fact, all
other people
mean to most aspiring young actors—excuse me,
stars
—is a word:
networking
”—Tony winner R
ODDY
M
C
D
OWALL
“I taught acting for 45 years. I don’t teach it anymore, because they don’t want to learn. They want six weeks, then their own showcase, then [TV producer] Aaron Spelling.”—actor-director C
HARLES
N
ELSON
R
EILLY
(
Skyscraper, Hello, Dolly!
)
“There’s no better incentive to learning to do something well than criticism from somebody you admire tremendously—if it’s well-intended.… I dreamed of someday being half as good on the stage as my idol John Gielgud.… I was new, I knew that I wasn’t very good at all, and after one excruciating rehearsal I asked if I’d been fired, and he said no, not really. Rather, he suggested I go away, then return in a week, ‘after you get someone to teach you how to act.’ ”—S
IR
A
LEC
G
UINNESS
“People think I’m powerful and intimidating. It’s due entirely to the roles they’ve seen me perform. I don’t mind. I’m not an actress who particularly sought to be loved by total strangers.… Long ago I realized that the only time I’m in control is when I am acting.”—D
AME
J
UDITH
A
NDERSON
, star of stage (
Medea
) and screen (Mrs. Danvers in
Rebecca
)
“When an audience remains indifferent, you either seek frantically to convert them, which can result in overacting, or you feel the coldest contempt for them, which may inspire you to act brilliantly, at least for yourself and your fellow thespians.”—C
LIFF
G
ORMAN
(
The Boys in the Band
)
“On stage, an actor is entirely responsible for his performance. With a camera, there are shortcuts galore and a lot of the final performance is in the hands of the director, cinematographer, and editor.”—A
LBERT
H
AGUE
, who won a Tony for the score of
Redhead
(1959) and acted on TV in
Fame
“Some actors are too conscious of audiences … more into approval, I guess. Overall, an audience should be ignored, unless you’re doing comedy; then, their laughter can really feed you. In drama, you ignore them.”—Tony and Emmy winner M
ICHAEL
J
ETER
“You have to guide [audiences], rather like children. They must be kept interested, but when they become too eager they must be taken in hand and made more patient.”—G
LENDA
J
ACKSON
, actress turned member of Parliament
“Audiences? No, the plural is impossible. Whether it be in Butte, Montana, or Broadway, it’s an audience. The same great hulking monster with 4,000 eyes and 40,000 teeth.”—J
OHN
B
ARRYMORE
in 1906
“Coughing in the theatre is not a respiratory ailment. It’s a criticism.”—A
LAN
J
AY
L
ERNER
in his memoirs
“It doesn’t take much talent to wear a pair of shoes with three heels to it!”—K
ATHARINE
H
EPBURN
during a rehearsal for
The West Side Waltz
to a talkative spectator
“Let’s play horse. I’ll be the front end and you just be yourself.”—J
ACK
W
ALDRON
to a heckler