The Glass Menagerie (1966)
I love Shirley Booth, and I love The Glass Menagerie, but this version of Tennessee Williams’s play just isn’t very good. It’s one of my favorite plays, with both the male and female leads highly coveted as fantastic parts in the theater. When the chemistry between the mother and son is realistic, it’s magical. Shirley Booth and Hal Holbrook acted like they’d just met, which is not the chemistry required for this play.
In The Glass Menagerie, an overbearing mother with good intentions wishes her shy, crippled daughter to have male attention, or as she calls it, “gentlemen callers” as she had when she was a debutante. The son works himself raw at the factory to support the family ever since his father left, but he hates wasting his life and is already at his breaking point when the play starts. If the mother and son don’t have simmering tension in-between the emotionally high arguments, the play falls flat. For some reason, Hal’s timing was incredibly slow. Shirley, who you would think would play the part perfectly, just isn’t believable. The mother is written to be a former belle of the ball; she used to have class and live in beautiful surroundings, which is why she wants that experience so much for her daughter. With Shirley, it isn’t believable she came from class. She looks at home in her disheveled environment, and she comes across as a nag rather than as a loving mother to her children.
Pat Hingle and Barbara Loden are the bright parts of the televised play. Barbara plays the daughter, a part that’s easy to dismiss. She has hardly any lines and instead has to communicate her thoughts using her facial expressions as she practically hides and cowers in the background. Barbara has an incredibly expressive face, and she communicates everything she needs to in order to make her character memorable, understandable, and sympathetic. Pat, who ironically played Barbara’s father in Splendor in the Grass in 1961, plays the Gentleman Caller, which is also a difficult part to play. The Gentleman Caller has to be incredibly nice without being flirtatious, and he has to bolster the daughter’s confidence without seeming romantically interested in her. Pat masters the lines. He really seems like that guy in high school that’s nice to everyone and enjoyed the mandatory leadership workshop so much he continues to spout off the phrases weeks later. If either of these two characters are your favorite in the show, you can rent this version, but I prefer the 1973 adaptation instead.
Want to watch it? Click here to see in on YouTube. And thanks "Chris Johnson" for posting!
More Shirley Booth movies here!
In The Glass Menagerie, an overbearing mother with good intentions wishes her shy, crippled daughter to have male attention, or as she calls it, “gentlemen callers” as she had when she was a debutante. The son works himself raw at the factory to support the family ever since his father left, but he hates wasting his life and is already at his breaking point when the play starts. If the mother and son don’t have simmering tension in-between the emotionally high arguments, the play falls flat. For some reason, Hal’s timing was incredibly slow. Shirley, who you would think would play the part perfectly, just isn’t believable. The mother is written to be a former belle of the ball; she used to have class and live in beautiful surroundings, which is why she wants that experience so much for her daughter. With Shirley, it isn’t believable she came from class. She looks at home in her disheveled environment, and she comes across as a nag rather than as a loving mother to her children.
Pat Hingle and Barbara Loden are the bright parts of the televised play. Barbara plays the daughter, a part that’s easy to dismiss. She has hardly any lines and instead has to communicate her thoughts using her facial expressions as she practically hides and cowers in the background. Barbara has an incredibly expressive face, and she communicates everything she needs to in order to make her character memorable, understandable, and sympathetic. Pat, who ironically played Barbara’s father in Splendor in the Grass in 1961, plays the Gentleman Caller, which is also a difficult part to play. The Gentleman Caller has to be incredibly nice without being flirtatious, and he has to bolster the daughter’s confidence without seeming romantically interested in her. Pat masters the lines. He really seems like that guy in high school that’s nice to everyone and enjoyed the mandatory leadership workshop so much he continues to spout off the phrases weeks later. If either of these two characters are your favorite in the show, you can rent this version, but I prefer the 1973 adaptation instead.
Want to watch it? Click here to see in on YouTube. And thanks "Chris Johnson" for posting!
More Shirley Booth movies here!