The Glass Menagerie | |
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Directed by | Paul Newman |
Written by | Tennessee Williams |
Based on | The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams |
Produced by | Burtt Harris |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Michael Ballhaus |
Edited by | David Ray |
Music by | Henry Mancini |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Cineplex Odeon Films |
Release date |
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Running time | 134 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $3.3 million [1] |
Box office | $895,904 [2] |
The Glass Menagerie is a 1987 American drama film directed by Paul Newman. It is a replication of a production of Tennessee Williams' 1944 play of the same title that originated at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and then transferred to the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. [3] The film is the fourth adaptation of the Williams play, following a 1950 feature film and television movies made in 1966 and 1973. It was shown at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival [4] and the Toronto International Film Festival before opening in New York City on October 23, 1987. It is also the last film directed by Newman before his death in 2008.
Introduced by Tom Wingfield as a memory play, it is based on his recollection of his disillusioned and delusional mother Amanda and her shy, crippled daughter Laura. Amanda's husband abandoned the family long ago, and her memory of her days as a genteel Southern belle surrounded by devoted beaux may be more romanticized than real. Tom is an aspiring writer who works in a warehouse to support his family, and the banality and boredom of everyday life leads him to spend most of his spare time watching movies in local cinemas at all hours of the night. Amanda is obsessed with finding a proper "gentleman caller" for Laura, who spends most of her time with her collection of glass animal figurines. To appease his mother, Tom eventually brings Jim O'Connor home for dinner, but complications arise when Laura realizes he is the man she loved in high school and has thought of ever since. He dashes her hopes of a future together when he announces he is engaged. Infuriated, Amanda lashes out at her son for raising his sister's hopes and Tom leaves, never to return to his family.
Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the film "a serious and respectful adaptation, but never an incendiary one, perhaps because the odds against its capturing the play's real genius are simply too great. In any case, this Glass Menagerie catches more of the drama's closeness and narrowness than its fire ... [It] starts out stiffly and gets better as it goes along But quiet reverence is its prevailing tone, and in the end that seems thoroughly at odds with anything Williams ever intended." [3]
Desson Howe of The Washington Post observed, "Acting is definitely the trouble in Menagerie. There's an awful lot of it here." He praised Karen Allen's performance and criticized Joanne Woodward's. On Paul Newman's direction, he wrote, "by filming this play in straightforward manner ... Newman emphasizes the artificiality of theater and distances you from the play". [5]
Variety called it "a reverent record" of the Williams play "one watches with a kind of distant dreaminess rather than an intense emotional involvement" and cited the "brilliant performances ... well defined by Newman's direction." [6]
As of December 2022, it holds a 75% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 12 reviews. [7]
Thomas Lanier Williams III, known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, race car driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Silver Bear, a Cannes Film Festival Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward is an American actress. A star since the Golden Age of Hollywood, Woodward made her career breakthrough in the 1950s and earned esteem and respect playing complex women with a characteristic nuance and depth of character. She is one of the first film stars to have an equal presence in television. Her accolades include an Academy Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema and the oldest living Best Actress Oscar-winner.
Mary Elizabeth Hartman was an American actress of the stage and screen. She debuted in the popular 1965 film A Patch of Blue, playing a blind girl named Selina D'Arcy, opposite Sidney Poitier, a role for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, and won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year.
The Glass Menagerie is a memory play by Tennessee Williams that premiered in 1944 and catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame. The play has strong autobiographical elements, featuring characters based on its author, his histrionic mother, and his mentally fragile sister. In writing the play, Williams drew on an earlier short story, as well as a screenplay he had written under the title of The Gentleman Caller.
Martin Ritt was an American director and actor who worked in both film and theater, noted for his socially conscious films.
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is a play written by Paul Zindel, a playwright and science teacher. Zindel received the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for the work.
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Julie Haydon was an American Broadway, film and television actress who received second billing as the female lead in the Ben Hecht–Charles MacArthur 1935 film vehicle for Noël Coward, The Scoundrel. After her Hollywood career ended in 1937, she turned to the theatre, originating the roles of Kitty Duval in The Time of Your Life (1939) and Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie (1945).
Nuts is a 1987 American drama film directed by Martin Ritt, starring Barbra Streisand and Richard Dreyfuss. The screenplay by Tom Topor, Darryl Ponicsan and Alvin Sargent is based on Topor's 1979 play of the same title. It was both Karl Malden and Robert Webber's final feature film, and also included Leslie Nielsen's last non-comedic role.
The Long, Hot Summer is a 1958 American drama film starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Franciosa, and Orson Welles. It was directed by Martin Ritt, with a screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., based in part on three works by William Faulkner: the 1931 novella "Spotted Horses", the 1939 short story "Barn Burning" and the 1940 novel The Hamlet. The title is taken from The Hamlet, as Book Three is called "The Long Summer". Some characters, as well as tone, were inspired by Tennessee Williams' 1955 play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a film adaptation of which – also starring Newman – was released five months later.
Naked in New York is a 1993 American romantic comedy film directed by Daniel Algrant and starring Eric Stoltz, Mary-Louise Parker, Ralph Macchio, Jill Clayburgh, Tony Curtis, Timothy Dalton, and Kathleen Turner, and featuring multiple celebrity cameos, including William Styron listing all of his authored, penned and film work, Whoopi Goldberg as a bas-relief mask, and former New York Dolls singer David Johansen as a talking monkey, which were arranged by executive producer Martin Scorsese.
Joanna Miles is an American actress. She received two Emmy Awards for her portrayal of Laura Wingfield in the 1973 film production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie.
Amanda Hale is a British actress.
The Glass Menagerie is a 1950 American drama film directed by Irving Rapper. The screenplay by Tennessee Williams and Peter Berneis is based on the 1944 Williams play of the same title. It was the first of his plays to be adapted for the screen.
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is a 1972 American drama film produced and directed by Paul Newman. The screenplay by Alvin Sargent is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1964 play of the same title by Paul Zindel. Newman cast his wife, Joanne Woodward, and one of their daughters, Nell Potts, in two of the lead roles. Roberta Wallach, daughter of Eli Wallach, played the third lead.
The Glass Menagerie is a 1973 American made-for-television drama film based on the 1944 play of the same name by Tennessee Williams. It is directed by Anthony Harvey and stars Katharine Hepburn, Sam Waterston, Joanna Miles and Michael Moriarty. It marked the third screen adaptation of the play.
A memory play is a play in which a lead character narrates the events of the play, which are drawn from the character's memory. The term was coined by playwright Tennessee Williams, describing his work The Glass Menagerie. In his production notes, Williams says, "Being a 'memory play', The Glass Menagerie can be presented with unusual freedom of convention." In a widening of the definition, it has been argued that Harold Pinter's plays Old Times, No Man's Land and Betrayal are memory plays, where "memory becomes a weapon". Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa is a late 20th-century example of the genre.
The Glass Menagerie is a 1966 American made-for-television drama film based on the 1944 play of the same name by Tennessee Williams. It is directed by Michael Elliott and stars Shirley Booth, Hal Holbrook, Barbara Loden and Pat Hingle. Sponsored by Xerox, it originally aired on December 8, 1966 as an installment of CBS Playhouse. The adaptation received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Dramatic Program and Outstanding Actress (Booth).
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