James Grissom

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on February 06, 2014

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Tennessee Williams: Women Who Influenced THE GLASS MENAGERIE

I’m amused when I’m sent things that purport to analyze and explain my plays, and they are almost always centered on theatrical antecedents. It is assumed, by a number of smart people, that Brecht was my primary influence in the writing of Menagerie. I was more influenced by Clarence Brown than by Brecht, but this type of analysis gives people something to do. I think this scholarly research is a variant on my mother, my sister, and me revising movies in the house and the backyard. I told this to Gore [Vidal] and he said “Yes, but you and your mother were only disturbing the squirrels, some nosy neighbors, and your psyche. Academics disturb everything.” Do you agree? I don’t think about it. Miriam Hopkins What are some of the films that influenced Menagerie? Well, Amanda is certainly a repository of mannerisms and methods belonging to my mother—Edwina—but I was thinking of a number of women—actresses—when I cobbled ...

Katharine Hepburn on Cary Grant: He Was A Dream

Interview with Katharine Hepburn Conducted by James Grissom NYC 1990 He was a dream, as all works of art are. All works of art are the physical manifestation of a desire, a hope, and you can't hope for something more beautiful and entertaining and nice than Cary Grant. No one moved like he did--smooth, off the ground. He was a good size, but he moved like the wind. And that laugh, that silly laugh. And impeccable manners. He was better at making me giddy than Champagne. He was a great and powerful drug--in person and on the screen. I sat next to John Gielgud at a party once. Great actor, great gentleman. I thought he might even speak in couplets. What the hell did I know? John Gielgud wanted to talk about movie stars. Cary Grant. Bette Davis. Barbara Stanwyck. Humphrey Bogart. James Cagney. Me! I always hated that I couldn't be a great stage actress, and here was John Gielgud wishing he could breathe the same air as a Hollywood film star and learn how ...

The Violation of Marian Seldes

Marian Seldes, captured by Dan Winters Marian Seldes waltzed through the world to a composition only she could hear and only she could transcribe. Proudly not of this world, she was regal and positive and ready to worship talent and people in need and people who wanted the world to work. Marian was also an intelligent woman, and fully aware of the performances she was giving both on and off the stage, and she made no apologies, even as she confessed that she was frequently teased, parodied, ridiculed. She told me once, “I guess they can make fun of me. I’m in my own world, but my world works, and I want everyone to be in this world, to be their best, to reach toward their dreams.” In Rick Rodgers’ grisly, scabrous documentary marian (the title perhaps made so small, uncapped, because the goal of the film is to diminish its subject), Marian is abused for nearly half an hour, and we watch in horror as dementia overtakes her and as her avaricious d...

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