DVDs: Broadway Drama from '50s Hollywood

Recently released on DVD are three black-and-white, 1950s Paramount film versions of successful American plays. William Inge was one of the foremost Broadway dramatists of the 1950s, scoring hits with Picnic, Bus Stop, and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, all of them made into feature films.

Inge's first Broadway success was Come Back, Little Sheba, which played 190 performances at the Booth Theatre beginning February 15, 1950. It's the poignant saga of chiropractor Doc Delaney, a recovering alcoholic disappointed in his career and in his marriage to Lola, the now-slovenly wife he was forced to marry. Tony Awards were won by the pair of actors who embodied these characters on Broadway, Sidney Blackmer and Shirley Booth.

Film producer Hal Wallis would like to have retained both Booth and Blackmer for the Paramount film version. But it was felt that at least one box-office name was necessary to sell such a bleak picture. Wallis offered the part of Lola to Bette Davis, who correctly maintained that no one would believe her as a wistful dreamer. We should be grateful to Davis for turning the role down, for when Wallis was able to attract Burt Lancaster to the part of Doc, the producer was able to hire Booth to preserve on screen her almost painfully moving performance.

Directing the 1952 film was Daniel Mann, who had staged the Broadway production of Sheba. For the screen, Inge's play, which took place entirely in the Delaney home, was opened up minimally, to include scenes at an A.A. meeting, an alcoholic ward, and a teen nightspot. But Ketti Frings' Broadway's Look Homeward, Angel screenplay sticks close to the stage script, and viewing the film's DVD premiere, one can only echo New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson, who reacted to the stage version by stating, "Miss Booth is superb....Inge writes with a kind of relentless frankness and compassion that are deeply affecting."

While one is glad that Lancaster's presence allowed Booth to appear in the film, the actor is somewhat too young and robust to be fully believable as Doc. But Booth, whose other Broadway hits included My Sister Eileen and The Philadelphia Story, was a major darling of the drama critics, and the film of Come Back Little Sheba is the finest record we have of her stage work.

In the '60s, Booth would come to be best known for a TV series called "Hazel," on which she played a family maid. But Booth's Lola is an unforgettable creation, earning the star a Best Actress Academy Award to place next to her Tony.

Come Back, Little Sheba was remade in the form of a television taping in 1977, with Joanne Woodward, Laurence Olivier, and Carrie Fisher. And perhaps we should also mention that the play was made into a poor musical, first seen in Chicago in 1974, when it starred Kaye Ballard and was called Sheba. More recently, the musical, written by Clint Ballard, Jr. and Lee Goldsmith, was revived at Lucille Lortel's White Barn and recorded, using the play's full title and with Donna McKechnie as Lola.

THE COUNTRY GIRL Paramount Home Video

Two years after Sheba, Paramount released another adaptation of a hit Broadway drama. Once again, there was an alcoholic male protagonist. And once again, the leading female role that had taken a Tony on Broadway would take an Oscar on screen.

Clifford Odets' The Country Girl concerns an alcoholic actor attempting a comeback, and the wife who becomes a scapegoat for her husband's emotional problems. It played 236 performances at the Lyceum Theatre beginning in November, 1950. Paul Kelly was the actor, Steven Hill was the director, and Uta Hagen won a Best Actress Tony as the wife.

The film version boasts three movie stars. Bing Crosby played the actor, and because of his particular talents, the role became that of a musical performer, the comeback vehicle became an Oklahoma!-style musical, and Crosby got to sing some new songs by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin. William Holden played the director, and Grace Kelly took on the role of the wife, a relatively drab part for the glamorous star.

By far the best received of today's trio of films, The Country Girl was nominated for Best Picture, and Crosby and director George Seaton were also nominated. Seaton won an Oscar for his screenplay, and Kelly took the Best Actress Oscar. The latter fact has caused The Country Girl to be resented by Judy Garland fans, as Kelly won her Oscar over Garland's bravura performance in A Star Is Born also with Arlen-Gershwin songs.

Kelly impressed everyone by demonstrating her ability to handle a complex, dramatic role. But Crosby and Kelly were both challenging themselves in The Country Girl. Viewed today, Crosby is the more impressive, adeptly maintaining the character's veneer of confident charm that masks profound insecurities. Holden is ideal as the director who clashes with the wife until he learns the truth.

On screen, The Country Girl makes for entertaining backstage drama. The play has had two major New York returns. In 1966, it was mounted at City Center with screen star Jennifer Jones in a rare stage appearance, joined by Joseph Anthony, Rip Torn, and Richard Beymer. Jones had originally been set to star in The Country Girl film. In 1972 at the Billy Rose Theatre, Jason Robards, Maureen Stapleton, and George Grizzard were the central trio, under the direction of John Houseman.

The Country Girl has also had two TV remakes, the first a Hallmark Hall of Fame taping 1974 with Robards, Grizzard, Shirley Knight, and John Lithgow. In 1982, a cable TV taping of the play co-starred Dick Van Dyke, Faye Dunaway, and Ken Howard.

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS Paramount Home Video

First seen at the Greenwich Village Theatre in 1924, Eugene O'Neill's melodrama Desire Under the Elms is about a New England septuagenarian who brings home to his sons and his farm a young, third wife, to whom the youngest son is drawn.

With Walter Huston as the father, the original production played 208 performances. A 1952 Broadway revival with Karl Malden lasted only forty-six performances. With the outlines of a Greek tragedy, Desire Under the Elms is a major O'Neill play likely for a revival; the last major New York production was off-Broadway, in 1963 at Circle in the Square, with George C. Scott, Colleen Dewhurst, and Rip Torn.

Like Sheba, Desire Under the Elms has been musicalized, in the form of an opera by Edward Thomas Mata Hari and Joe Masteroff Cabaret, She Loves Me that was performed in 1989 at City Center, with Judy Kaye as the new wife.

Paramount's 1958 screen version was directed by Delbert Mann, and Irwin Shaw's screenplay is fairly faithful to the play, with virtually the entire film taking place on the mid-nineteenth-century New England farm, depicted with sets that have an artificial staginess about them.

To accommodate the film's top-billed star, the role of New England wife Abbie has become Anna, an Italian waitress from Naples. That's because the actress taking the female lead is Sophia Loren, whose casting throws off the entire picture. There's little chemistry between Loren and Anthony Perkins, who otherwise smolders persuasively as the youngest son. Coming off best is Burl Ives as the father, but even he isn't entirely believable. Desire Under the Elms is a difficult work to pull off, and this sincere attempt is ultimately unconvincing. Still, it may be worth a look until a good stage revival comes along.