The following interview transcript with Robert
Anderson has been carefully broken down into
segments involving a variety of topics. Below
each segment is a link to the corresponding
video clip. Please attribute research sources to
Mike Wood, Interviewer and the William
Inge Center for the Arts.
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A regionalist? |
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I was brought up in a little town
called New Rochelle which is 45 minutes outside
of New York, here. I had no particular feeling
about that community, so I have never had
any…and then I moved to Boston when I went to
college…so I've never had any locale. My
region…I used to kid about…somebody said I'm a
regional playwright…my region is the heart…which
is really corny. Not a Boston background.
Everybody thinks I'm a Brahman—a Boston
Brahman. I was in an airport in Vienna, or
someplace, and somebody came up to me—a
woman--and said, "Do you mind if I ask you a
question?" and I said, "No." She said, "What
New England college do you teach in?" I had a
blue jacket and so on and so forth; so I'm very
often labeled as a New Englander which I'm not.
New York has never…thinking back about my
plays…none of them ever took place in New York,
as far as I know. They're always suburbs
someplace. But they don't reflect the life of
the suburbs. They reflect the life of a family
within the suburbs but not the society of the
suburbs.
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Exeter |
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I enjoyed Exeter more than I
enjoyed Harvard. Exeter was where I really
learned to learn. I think it's a much more
interesting period in your life, from 14 to 18.
Harvard was lecture classes. You never saw a
teacher, except at 100 yards away, and papers,
and essays, and exams and so on. But Exeter
was…we sat around a big table which was called
the Harkness system. I very often say that a
very influential teacher was my senior teacher
in English—at Exeter. And he one day gave us a
free assignment to write for the next week or
two weeks anything we wanted to write, and I
wrote my first play, and he gave me an A+, and
this was rather important, and he kept in touch
with me for years and years and years, and when
he retired. When I had I Never Sang For My
Father on a road tour, and it ended up in
California on the television, American
Playhouse, he wrote me a postcard and said,
"Still A+." So he was a very important teacher.
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Harvard: “…my life and my wife” |
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But Harvard was very important in
that I met my first wife, and I really met my
career. I was in a music class. I was trying
to be a singer in those days; I was soloist with
various glee clubs and so on and so forth. And
the fellow sitting next to me said, "You know
there's a girls’ school over in Boston that's
having a play, having tryouts"…I thought I was
an actor too…such and such a date. I thought,
you know, well that's exciting. I'll go over—a
girl's school. I was very lonely my first year
at Harvard. The loneliness at Exeter went over
into my first year at Harvard. So I went over
and tried out, and I fell in love with the woman
who was directing the play. She was ten years
older than I was, and she was Yale drama school,
the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. She'd done
something with the Moscow Art Theater. This was
Phyllis, and I met my life and my wife at the
same time. And she persuaded me, even though I
played the lead in most of her plays for the
next four years—and they were marvelous
plays…sets done by Don Oenslager, and lighting
by Jean Rosenthal who was her roommate at Yale
and finally did the Ballet Theaters, and so on
and so forth. They were really first class
productions. But she persuaded me that I
shouldn't…that acting was a miserable life. My
second marriage is to an actress, and I know
what a tough life it is. So I became a
playwright. There was nothing else to do. I
wanted to be a singer. I had been a soloist
with various glee clubs. My parents took care
of that. They had a number of musicians in to
hear me sing one Sunday afternoon, and they
said, "It’s a very good voice, but it's not
worth giving your life to." So that took care
of the singing, and Phyllis took care of the
acting. So I stayed on at Harvard. We married
after I got my masters degree. I like to tell
the story about the school, you see…this girl's
school. They just thought it was fascinating
that one of their teachers was in love with a
boy ten years old…I was 18…18 or 19. I look
now…meaning no insult…but I look at 18 and 19
year old boys, and I wonder how a 29, 28 year
old woman could fall in love with one of them.
Harvard didn't care, as long as I got her out of
my room by 8:00. They assumed that we wouldn't
do before 8:00 what they thought we would do
after 8:00. She had a lovely apartment on
Beacon Hill, and so that was the beginning of my
switch to the theater. But I did stay on and
got my masters and took all of my courses for my
PhD, and the night before I went away to war, I
took my orals, and they passed me, I think on
the assumption, that I wouldn't be coming back.
But I did come back. I'd been in the Pacific,
and I did come back, but I came back a
playwright. I had written a play somewhere
between Iwo Jima and Okinawa on my battleship,
and I won a prize as the best play written by a
service man overseas. So I didn't go back and
write my thesis, so I never got my PhD.
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The Eden Rose |
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The second play, called The Eden
Rose, is about an officer coming back from the
war. Again, it's a very personal story, but he
happens to have been the aide to an admiral, and
he falls in love with the admiral's wife. The
admiral was killed during the war…so it's all
about younger/older love affairs again, but has
nothing to do with the war really. There must
have been something missing in that experience.
I mean, I was at some pretty big battles and
engagements, but again I, personalize the war
for myself. When I finally got on board a ship,
I became the captain's aide…or, actually, it was
called the ship's secretary. But that was very
involved with the captain because of all the
letters and everything else. After the war
ended…no, he became an admiral at Iwo Jima. He
took me with him. After the war, he went to be
with Admiral Nimitz at Sinkback(?), and he asked
me to come with him too. So, that was my war.
My war was a personal relationship with him.
There wasn't anything essentially dramatic about
it. We were both just very good friends. So
I've never written about it…four years of my
life.
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Teaching: The American Theatre Wing |
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I was asked, by the American
Theater Wing, which was run by the people who
run the Stage Door Canteens, the American
Theatre Wing. It was in keeping that after
World War II, they had these re-training
programs for painters, plumbers, carpenters, and
so the Theatre Wing had retraining programs for
playwrights, actors, directors, scenic
designers, and so on. Kazan was teaching the
acting…was teaching the directing; Alfred Lunt
was teaching the acting, and I was asked to
teach the play writing—never having had a play
on Broadway. And I said to them, "I've never
taken a course in play writing, and I've never
given a course in play writing." And they said,
"Well you've taught—which I had, up at Harvard,
in Boston—and you've written a play—which was
the play that won the prize—put them together
and teach." And I learned something very
important. If you want to learn something,
teach it. So that I had to keep about…so many
steps ahead of these 40 or 50 students which I
had, four nights a week, 30 or 40 every night.
A lot of returning playwrights…they're all
veterans, you see…men and women. So, I
learned a great deal about…I'd rush in and say,
"Guess what I found about first acts tonight?"
or about dialogue, or about progression in
stories. It was very exciting, and it was
exciting for them. And I think I had ten of my
students have plays on Broadway before I did.
Well, it was just a matter of chance.
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Teaching: A notable student: Arnold Schulman |
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And this playwright was very
skillful, extremely skillful, but I was not
going to move him onto the second year. He came
down to my house in the Village, apartment in
the Village, and he begged me. For some reason
or another—I may have had family pictures
around, I don’t know what it was—he began
talking about his father. At the end, he said,
"Are you going to let me stay on?" I said,
"Yes, if you write a play about your father."
He said, "My father? My father doesn't interest
you. What do you mean?" I said, "For 45
minutes you've talked about nothing except your
father." So, he wrote a play which was
enormously successful—not exactly that play, but
the play he led into the next play, which my
first wife produced at Westport Country
Playhouse. Then it was produced on Broadway.
It ran for God knows how long; it ran on the
road; Frank Sinatra made a movie of it; they
made a television series of it; and they finally
made a musical of it. It was a play called A
Hole in the Head. His name is Arnold Schulman;
and after that he basically went out and became
a movie writer. He's become a very good movie
writer.
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Writing for radio: Adaptations on schedule |
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I did all adaptations. One of my
regrets now is that I did very little original
work. I had no opportunity to do original
work. In those days, it was all almost always
adaptations, with the exception of my pal, Paddy
Chayefsky. Paddy Chayefsky got his first job…I
don't tell this story very often…he got his
first job on radio, because I…for the Theater
Guild on the Air, which I was writing for,
because I promised to rewrite the script if he
didn't do it well. He did it brilliantly, of
course. But, to write for Ingrid Bergman, to
write for Deborah Kerr, Rex Harrison, Richard
Burton, Cyril Ritchard, Boris Karloff, Gloria
Swanson. I mean, this is extraordinary. Helen
Hayes. You go on a Tuesday, and they look at
the script. You have to rewrite it by Thursday,
I think, and then rewrite it again by Sunday,
and then you may be ten minutes over and have an
hour to rewrite the script or cut it out before
they come back and do the performance. It was
marvelous to hear your lines read that way and
by those great actors. Since then, I've always
loved great actors. Pete Gurney has always…he's
a neighbor and a friend of mine at Roxbury, as
you know, and a playwright. He's always kidding
me, saying, "You don't need stars, Bob." I
said, "I've had them all my life. I can't do
without them."
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Writing for radio: Adapting dialogue |
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I did A Farewell to Arms by
Humphrey Bogart on the Theater Guild on the
Air. I couldn't use a word of dialogue from A
Farewell to Arms. It's not dramatic. There's a
total different thing of what dramatic dialogue
and what narrative dialogue is. Very often, in
a novel, the voice that talks only to give you a
sound of their voices, cause you get their
personalities, but not to carry the story
forward. I learned that…going to these movies.
I did David Copperfield, I did Oliver Twist, I
did Vanity Fair, I did all of these great
classics. And you suddenly realize, “I can't
use much of the dialogue.” You've got to invent
your own pseudo-Hemingway dialogue.
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Writing
for different mediums |
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I was a
playwright, coming back. Then I wanted to get a
job writing for radio, and they said, "Well,
radio is a totally different medium. You're a
playwright, but you're…" So I listened to radio
for about a month, with a pad and a pencil, and
I became a radio writer. So then television
came in, and they said, "Well, you're a fine
radio writer, really excellent, but television's
a totally different medium." I did the same
thing. I watched television for a month. I
became a television writer. Then Tea and
Sympathy was done on Broadway in 1953, and I
wanted to do the movie. They said, "Well,
you're a playwright…it's a wonderful play, but
not a movie writer." Well, they had some
censorship problems with Tea and Sympathy,
obviously. And they said, "Well, would you help
us. Would you write a script to try to get over
some of these problems?" I became a movie
writer. So I say, "If you know something about
dramatic structure, which is what a play, a
movie, a television, radio…all is, you can find
out the different ways of doing it."
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Plays prior to Tea & Sympathy |
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I had a play
called The Eden Rose, which is the play about
the admiral and his wife and the younger/older
love affair. That was done up in the regional
theater. Then, All Summer Long, which was my
second play done on Broadway. It was done
originally down at the Arena Stage, which is in
Washington, which is one of the great regional
theaters. And then a play called Love
Revisited, Lover Come Back to Me, it had various
titles. It was done at Westport Country
Playhouse. So I had three plays done. And,
Come Marching Home, which was the play which won
the prize overseas, was done. So I had lots of
experience. I've been writing for…I came back
in '46, and Tea and Sympathy was '53. That's
seven years. John Van Druten, who was a
playwright back in those days, wrote the famous
play, The Voice of the Turtle. And he said,
"It's usually 10 years between the time a person
shows promise and gets a play done." Someone
else said, "Young poets are 18, young novelists
are 25, and young playwrights are 36." I was
36 when Tea and Sympathy was done.
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Tea & Sympathy: Getting produced |
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The story of Tea and Sympathy is
fascinating to me. I love to tell it to young
playwrights. I have never had a play that
anybody read and said, "I want to do." Tea and
Sympathy, my agent didn't even like it. That
was Audrey Wood who was a great, great agent and
my agent for 35 years. She did not like this
play. Fortunately, my wife, Phyllis, who was
with the Theatre Guild at that time, said,
"Listen, it's the best play you've ever
written." And Kazan, Mrs. Kazan, liked it, who
had been reading my stuff right along. So, I
just said to Audrey, "Listen. It's got to be
sent out." In those days, we mimeographed five
copies. And one day she took me out to lunch,
and she said, "Here's four copies. There's one
out, but I told you, nobody wanted to do it."
It went to every producer in New York City.
Finally, it was Roger Stevens at the
Playwright’s Company who liked it, and the
Playwright’s Company did it.
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Tea & Sympathy: Casting Deborah Kerr |
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I met Deborah Kerr during one of
those radio shows. Tea and Sympathy would have
been a completely different play. Ingrid did
it; many famous people did it; but Debra set the
mark on that play; and this was really
serendipity, because I lived in the garden
apartment of the people who owned the Theatre
Guild. Phyllis, my first wife, and I lived
there. And I, as I said, used to write about
eight shows. And I was working on a play, and I
didn't want to write the next show that they
wanted me to write. It was a show called,
Remember the Day, a play by Philip…I've
forgotten. I didn't like the play
particularly. And Armina Marshall, who was Mrs.
Langer, came down and begged me to do it. And I
said, "Oh, Armina, I really don't like the play
and I'm busy on something else." She said,
"Well, we'll have the apartment painted for you
if you'll do it." You know. And I said, "Oh
Armina, please, please don't bribe me like
that." Then we had a garden outside; being a
garden apartment, we had the garden. She went
out and looked at it, and she said, "You know,
the walls all need painting." I said, "Oh,
Armina, I really just don't like the play." I
finally did it, and I met Deborah Kerr on that
show. Just accident. I said to her at the
end—she was on her way to Hollywood; she hadn't
even been to Hollywood yet. She'd been in
London, all of the theaters and movies out of
there. Wonderful early movies. And I said,
"You know, Deborah, I hope I get to do a play
for you sometime." And she said, "Well, I'm
off to Hollywood, and you know what that
means." But, we'd had a lovely time, and she
was lovely in this play, so when I wrote Tea and
Sympathy—that’s a very good story-- I didn't
really know that you didn't send plays to actors
without a producer, and I had no producer. So,
I sent it to Deborah, and she said, "It's a
lovely play, but it's not the play I want to
come to Broadway in." She said, "It's the boy's
play." I said, "Well, that's up for grabs."
But I said, "You'd be lovely in it." Alright,
fade in, fade out, as they say. Kazan came into
the picture after everybody turned it down—the
Playwright’s Company--and so I said, "I'd like
Deborah to play it…Deborah Kerr." He said, "I
don't know her acting at all. I haven't really
seen the movies, but he said, "I don't want…I
want this to be discovery of you." Which was
very generous. He said, "I don't want this to
be the discovery of a glamorous movie star, no
matter how well she can act." So, here I sat,
my first play on Broadway. My director didn't
want Deborah to do it, and Deborah didn't want
to do the play. So, I kept writing to Deborah
saying, "You know, I think you're wrong about
this," and so forth. We saw everybody.
We saw Kim Hunter, Julie Harris, Patricia Neal,
everybody that Kazan wanted to work with; and
they were fine. Of course they were fine. But
Deborah, I knew from working that one week with
her had a special quality. So, we came down to
the wire, and he said, "What are we gonna do?"
Well it is in the contract, in the Dramatists
Guild contract, that the playwright shall have
approval. Now, he could have said, "Okay,
forget it; I'm leaving." But we'd become
friends by this time. My first wife had gone to
Yale Drama School with him…very good friends.
So, I said, "Will you go out and meet her?" Of
course, he had to; he would; he was a very nice
man. And I said to Deborah…I obviously hadn't
told him that she didn't want to do the play,
nor did I tell Deborah that he didn't want her.
So, they met…and he sent me a telegram, saying,
"Deborah and I had tea together. You're
absolutely right, and she's going to do the
play.” That whole play would have been totally
different. Joan Fontaine was okay. As I said,
Ingrid was lovely; many other people have played
it. But, Debra put the stamp. And he used to
come…I used to go see the show once a week. And
I would sit on the stairs in the Barrymore
Theater, and he would come sit with me…usually a
matinee…and he would come in and he would say,
"Were we lucky?"
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Tea & Sympathy: Autobiographical? |
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Everybody says, "Is Tea and
Sympathy autobiographical?" and it's not. It's
autobiographical in spirit, but not in fact. I
was presumably a big man at Exeter. I was on
the Senior Council; I was president of the
musical clubs; I was a letterman in basketball.
In other words there was no reason for me to
feel harassed in any way. My first wife used to
have a lovely phrase about Tea and Sympathy.
She said, "Ah youth…that happy time when I was
so sad." So many people related to that play
who had none of the same experiences…except of
misery at a Prep school. It is reflected, less
of course, in Silent Night, Lonely Night,
because it takes place in an inn…but it's two
people who came up to see various people. But
Tea and Sympathy, yes, I knew some of those
masters that I wrote about. I got only one
thing wrong apparently. There's a famous line.
It says, "Manliness is not just swagger and
swearing and mountain climbing. Manliness is
also tenderness and gentleness and
consideration." Well, I had labeled a mountain
climber a man who led mountain…I knew very
little about him…I just picked him. I've been
told so many times after that, by Fred Zinnemann,
who was a mountain climber and directed The
Nun’s Story, "That's the wrong man. You picked
mountain climbers. They're not macho. Far, far
from being macho." So I got something wrong
there.
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Tea &
Sympathy: A gay play? |
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Tea and
Sympathy was one of the first plays to have to
do with homosexuality. It has nothing to do
with homosexuality. It's about a false charge
of homosexuality. It's about manliness. It's
not about virility. I get letters all of the
time from people saying, "Wasn't he at least
bisexual?" I said, "The whole point of the play
was a false charge. It was the McCarthy period,
you know." You couldn't write the same play.
No false charges involved. I lived
that….sometimes included in gay anthologies; not
with my permission. Nothing against it being
included in a gay plays…some of them are
marvelous…but that is not a gay play.
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Tea
& Sympathy: A hand gesture |
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So there's a
scene at the end of Tea and Sympathy in which
the boy is accused of being gay and he's going
to the town prostitute to try to prove that he
isn't, and it doesn't work, and he tries to kill
himself with a knife out of her kitchen drawer.
Anyway, he is back in his room, and he is
destitute, despairing and so on. The Deborah
Kerr character, the housemaster's wife, comes up
to his room to return his raincoat which he left
the night before. And he goes through this
whole thing about, "I'm no man, and everybody
knew it, and now I know it, and so on and so
forth." It's a very nice scene between the two
of them. She gets up to leave, and he is lying
on his bed. And she looks in at him and feels,
"I can't leave him." She shuts the door and she
bolts it. And then she holds out her hand, and
he turns around, not expecting her to still be
in the room and sees this hand, and then he
gradually brings his hand up, and she takes it
and brings it to her breast and so on. When
Joan Fontaine took over for Deborah—Deborah went
on the road for a year and Joan came in. She
did the same scene, but she held her hand up,
palm did. I was in the theatre alone with Kazan—we
were having a rehearsal. And, in much too loud
a voice, I said, "It looks like Queen
Victoria." And Joan Fontaine heard it, and she
left the theater and didn't come back for a day
or so. She was absolutely right, because I had
no business talking out loud. I should simply
have said to Kazan, "Palm up, not palm down,"
or, "Don't you agree?" or whatever. Because
this is, "Let me help you." This is, "Kiss my
hand." I mean I feel it's that way. I don't
know. Maybe other people don't feel that way,
but that is, "Give me your hand, let me help
you." This is…what, I don't know. But that is
an example—a perfect example of a playwright
speaking so that the actor could hear, and he
shouldn't have, and it caused great trouble.
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Tea & Sympathy: Elia Kazan: Part 1 |
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I've been very lucky to work with
some very good directors. I had one director
that wasn't that good. The first thing that the
writer has to find out is: is the director doing
the same play that he wrote? You always think,
"Well, of course he is." But he's not,
necessarily. And, in Boston you find out that
he's directing another play, that he's trying to
get other values…completely different values.
Fortunately, Kazan and I worked marvelously
together on Tea and Sympathy. He had me read
the play aloud to him. And I'm no actor, but he
would stop me and say, "Why did you read it this
way? Why did you take that pause?" It was
meaningful to him. So that he understood that
play much better than I did, when he finally
went into rehearsal. And, from then on…I
remember he said something very meaningful the
first two or three days. He said, "Would you
stay away for the first couple of days?" He
said, "I didn't watch you make your mistakes, so
I'd rather not have you watch me make my
mistakes." It saved a lot of agony, because I
would have rushed over and said, "Do you think
she should do that, and so on?" I remember one
thing that he corrected me on. I came in on the
end of several days, and I started doing just
exactly that…"Is she going to do that?" He
said, "Bob, they are discovering your play. You
know what you want. They are learning it."
After that I learned to keep still for a long,
long time before I really felt that they were
setting it.
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Tea & Sympathy: Elia Kazan: Part 2 |
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First of all, of course, he's a
marvelous actor. He always got up, unlike some
other directors, and he would show the actors
something, but he'd always mess it up in some
way. So that the actor would not have to feel,
"Oh my God, do I have to do exactly what he
did?" He would always finish and say, "Don't do
it that way, but you know what I mean." Debra
used to say, "Son of a bitch!" She said, "He
could do it better than any of us." There was
one episode….The playwright never talks to the
actor, except to say, "I love you. Everything's
wonderful, and everything's marvelous, and I
love you." You talk to the director. People
often ask me to direct my own plays. I don't
want to direct my own plays. I know what I
want; I don't know how to get it. Kazan, having
been a director, having been an actor, knows the
process that an actor goes through. I didn't.
I just say, "I want you to be cheerful. I want
you to be charming, or I want you to love him"
or something that helps nobody…So if you tell
the director…Now often actors, right in the
middle of a play or even in the movies have come
up to me and said, "Listen, tell me what to
do." I'll say, "I'll tell the director; you
tell him."
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I
Never Sang for My Father: Getting produced |
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I wrote it
first as a movie. I was sick of the theatre at
that particular time, in the early '60s. I
wrote a movie called, The Tiger, because I
always thought of my father as a tiger. Nobody
wanted to do it. Kazan read it. I sent it to
Kazan. He was doing a movie at that time, and
he said, "Would you turn it into a play for
Lincoln Center?" which was just getting going in
New York. And I said, "I'd be excited to."
When he came back, he finally said, "We have
nobody who will play that part." They were just
opening Lincoln Center in their company. But he
and Bob Whitehead were crazy about the movie,
but they said, "We have nobody to play it." I
sent it to John Frankenheimer, who was a very
distinguished director, movie director and he
called me from the set of Seven Days in May, and
he said, "It's going to be my next picture, and
Freddie March is going to play the father," and
I said, "That's exciting." He said, "I can't
sign contracts, because I'm out here in the
desert." And Seven Days in May takes
place—parts of it—somewhere in the desert.
Finally, he dropped it. He said, "No, I'm not
going ahead…" This went on and on and on and
on. So I turned it into a play myself. I was
dined and wined. There's a legend in theater:
if you're taken to lunch, they're not going to
do your play. So, I was taken to many, many
luncheons. Hal Prince cried in his martinis.
He said, "I love this play, but I can't do it.
My father is in the same situation. I can't do
it." So finally, that one was on its way back
into the drawer, until these people who had made
great success of Water's Running…that's my most
successful play…did I Never Sang For My Father.
And just before we were about to do it…about to
go into production…we weren't that far
along…Martin Manulis, who did the famous
Playhouse 90 television shows in the '50s—and
I'm the godfather to his children—and he called
up and he said, "I've been asked to come back
and do a show for CBS, and I want to do The
Tiger." And I said, "The Tiger is no longer The
Tiger. The Tiger is I Never Sang for My Father,
and we're about to go into production.” I forgot
to tell you an earlier part of the story…ruined
it. Anyway, Fred Zinnemann wanted to do it.
We'd done The Nun's Story together, and he read
it and said, "I want to do it, and I want
Spencer Tracy to play it." So Fred went to
London, and we sent this script to Spencer
Tracy, and Spencer said, "No…" He'd just
finished doing Jerry and Bob's Inherit the
Wind. I guess he didn't want to play another
old man. So there we were…no place. So Martin
Manulis said, "Wait till you hear the cast.
They've all read it, and they all want to do
it. Spencer Tracy will play the father;
Katharine Hepburn will play the mother; Richard
Widmark will play the son,” and they assumed
that my wife, Teresa Wright, would want to play
the daughter. So I turned to Gil Cates, and Gill
said, "Listen, with a cast like that it's going
to be a very tough show to do, so give it to
them." Martin called back in two weeks, and
said, "CBS turned it down. It's too
shattering." Everybody had said right along,
"It's shattering, shattering. Nobody wants to
see shattering." I only want to see a
shattering play. I want to be shattered by
laughter or by excitement or by emotion. You
don't go to the theater to be interested. You
go to the theatre to be “poof”….you know…really
swept up. So that's the history of my three
most successful plays is that nobody wanted to
do them. It was just by luck that each of them
got done.
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I
Never Sang for My Father: Reviews |
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We opened in Philadelphia. We
were successful there. We went to Boston. We
were panicky up there. We were sold out to the
rafters. People were paying fortunes for
tickets for I Never Sang For My Father. Barbara
Walters, who used to be in the morning CBS or
NBC show, whichever one it was, called me up
there and said, "I hear you have the new
Pulitzer Prize play, and would you be on my show
the morning after you open?" And I said,
"Barbara, that's asking an awful lot…it's taking
a big, big chance." "Yes, well I hear it's a
shoo-in,” so on and so forth… So, we all came
into New York, and we got extraordinary reviews
from everybody except the New York Times, and
that was Clive Barnes, who was doing his very
early stint as American critic. And his first
sentence was, "A soap opera is a soap opera."
Well, I went on the Barbara Walters show, and it
was great, and she defended me enormously,
because she loved it. Every other critic did.
Television said, "The best play of the
season…the best production of the season." All
the way up and down the line…The Daily News.
One reviewer, and that does it…and I don't care
whether it's Frank Rich or Brooks Atkinson or
Clive Barnes or whoever it is. If The Times
says, "No," you're in trouble. They deny that.
The Times denies that. They don't feel they
have that power, but it's…They can't make a play
alone. If they are the only paper that raves
about a play, that's not going to do anything
for a play. But they can destroy a play.
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Parents React |
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I must tell you a story--two
stories talking about family and opening
nights. One is an opening night, and one is not
opening night. My mother, my dear mother, who
had not read Tea and Sympathy, knew nothing
about the play at all, because I don't really,
generally let family or anybody read the play.
When it was announced in the paper that Deborah
Kerr was going do the play, she said, "It must
be a much better play than I thought it was."
That's really confidence from the family. But
the story that made me remember it is my father,
on the opening night of Silent Night, Lonely
Night, with Fonda and Bel Geddes. And he was
sitting with Teresa, third row and he was
getting quite deaf. And the early critics all
around. And, just at that magic moment when the
lights dimmed, and the lights are coming up, he
turned to her in a very loud voice and said, "No
matter how bad this is, I'm going to tell the
poor boy I like it." That can be a great start
for the evening, right?
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