They didn’t all come from the movies of Bette Davis.
To answer the charge of being undisciplined in academic skills to be totally in character, she counters with the additional card of entitlement, having earned the right to give it a go, to use the untapped thrust of her outsized celebrity, irreversibly embedded in our cultural and social consciousness, to unleash a seasoned debauchery as sensational entertainment.į or years there was a story floating around the party circuits that Albee wanted Lucille Ball to play the Olympian role of Martha and while it sounds like and probably was gay gossip gone viral, if you watch episodes of I Love Lucy, especially those from the middle and end years when Ball and Desi Arnaz were engaged in real martial wars that occasionally came through the box, it’s possible to see where Albee might have picked up ideas for the play’s gamesmanship and Martha’s gesticulations. Nichols’ concerns about deficiencies in her transmission that he thought she could be showing while watching her do takes dissolved when he saw what she was achieving on celluloid, a heightened sensorial experience. As Martha, that expertise remains unmatched there’s alchemy in what she delivers and what Wexler captures. If her detractors say she maturated into the essence of those mechanics, and they do, the intended slam is nevertheless praise-formidable professionalism as second nature. Of course, that’s assumed in reality, like most of the other contract players and beauties, she was a working class student of the MGM school of acting that stressed, at the expense of the “art” of acting, the mechanics of continuity in hitting the marks and reciting dialogue consistently for editing of multiple takes and camera angles, careful to ignore the camera’s intrusiveness while at the same time playing to it. One powerful card is her ability to interact with Haskell Wexler’s invasive camera instinctually. The weight of fame, however, was never going to be fully negated by Taylor who, as the eye-glued center of interest, had few cards to play in order to thwart it. In the last fourth of the picture, starting with her “sad, sad, sad” monologue at the kitchen screen door, the mesmerizing mini colossus at five feet two inches manages to rise up to humanize Martha the monster.
Rejecting Ernest Lehmann’s original adaptation, Nichols stuck to Albee’s basic neurotic rot and verbal assaults and refused to provide any protection shots, though a dub accommodated the L of D’s objection of “Screw you!” to, inexplicably, “God damn you!” Mindful of the double gamble, Taylor accepted his guidance, found excitement in creating her own bitch, willing to fatten up and look blowsy, helping add touches of humor and incidental busywork (like munching chicken from the frig and returning the bare bones to it shoving scattered ashtrays in drawers, throwing soiled undies under bedspreads or behind furniture).
#WHOS AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF SCRIPT SANDY DENNIS MOVIE#
He also knew she was the star power to get the movie beyond the upcoming battles with the censors and the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, aka the Legion of Decency. Having the clout to tell Taylor she needed much more work than the others, she reportedly bristled, though the criticism he delivered was private. (“Dirty words” had been heard before but never so frequently in one movie now they sound PG-13.) Nichols’s successful track record on Broadway aside, his close relationships with the Burtons, George Segal and Sandy Dennis would be crucial in getting the kinds of performances he needed. Jack Warner was anxious about having a novice bring to the screen the controversial Edward Albee stinger top-heavy with, at the time, taboo language.
Established movie directors were first choice-names like Fred Zinnemann and John Frankenheimer-but in signing Taylor, studios usually gave her what she wanted and she, and Burton too, wanted Nichols. He had two good friends who made sure it happened when, to his and everyone else’s surprise, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton signed on to play Martha and George. Mike Nichols wanted to helm ever since he saw the original Broadway production. Of Virginia Woolf? marks the 50th anniversary of what remains an example of fearless movie making by a first time director.