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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Broadway goes to the movies

November 16, 2017 by Terry Teachout

In my latest “Sightings” column, which appears in the online edition of today’s Wall Street Journal, I pay tribute to the American Film Theatre, twelve of whose original releases are now playing at a New York revival house. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Broadway and Hollywood have always had an uneasy long-distance relationship. From “The Front Page” to “Six Degrees of Separation,” most of the biggest stage hits of the 20th century have been adapted for the screen at one time or another—but far too many were mangled beyond recognition in the process. Among other notorious crimes against good taste, studio executives insisted on tacking happy endings onto Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” which is sort of like making a Lincoln biopic in which he doesn’t get shot.

It was in response to such outrages that Ely and Edie Landau launched the American Film Theatre. Starting in 1973, the Landaus released low-budget, high-quality screen versions of 14 important stage plays and musicals, all of them scrupulously faithful to the original scripts. The films featured big-name stars like Katharine Hepburn, Glenda Jackson and Laurence Olivier and top-tier directors like Arthur Hiller and Tony Richardson, all of whom agreed to work for chump change in return for the chance to be associated with such elevated fare. The films, which included Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance,” Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo” and Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming,” were then shown in 500-odd U.S. movie houses on a limited-run subscription-only basis, complete with fancy “Cinebill” souvenir programs.

So noble a venture was, needless to say, doomed to failure: The American Film Theatre went bust in 1975. Not until 2003 did its releases finally make it to home video, and even now they are known for the most part only to theater buffs with very long memories. That’s why it’s such good news that 12 of the AFT’s films are playing through Nov. 21 at New York’s Quad Cinema. For the first time in years, these remarkable films can now be viewed in a movie theater, the way they were meant to be seen.

The AFT made its debut with a four-hour version of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Fredric March and an up-and-coming youngster by the name of Jeff Bridges. Marvin, who had been propelled into name-above-the-title stardom by “Cat Ballou” and “The Dirty Dozen,” accepted a flat fee of $25,000, a tenth of his usual salary…

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

The original theatrical trailer for The Iceman Cometh:

The original theatrical trailer for Rhinoceros:

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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