Hamlet 1936

Hamlet 1936

Producer /Director: Guthrie McClintic Starring: Sir John Gielgud - Hamlet Miss Lillian Gish as Ophelia Dame Judith Anderson as Queen Gertrude John Emery Malcolm Kean Mary Lee Logan Evelyn Abbott "The first time I stepped on a Shakespearean stage was to play Ophelia with the world's finest Hamlet. It was also Judith Anderson's first, as well as the first time Guthrie McClintic had staged Shakespeare. None of us knew how terrified the other was. I looked at "do" and wondered how to pronounce it. Judith told me later she didn't know how to say "good". Then Guthrie asked how we thought he felt directing the man who had staged and played it many times. The Hamlet himself, John Gielgud acted as if he had never ever heard the name and took direction as a child. His behaviour during our six-month run won him the adoration of our crew and the entire company. When I complained to Arthur Hopkins that we were closing while playing to standing room after the longest run on any Hamlet, he said: My dear, don't you know that Hamlet exhausts its Hamlet long before it does its audience." (Miss Lillian Gish - "Dorothy and Lillian Gish")



















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

D.W. Griffith – An American Life (By Richard Schickel – 1984)

Image
D.W. Griffith – An American Life (By Richard Schickel – 1984) D.W. Griffith – An American Life By Richard Schickel – 1984 Griffith! Before him, the movies were a nickelodeon novelty, after him, they were an international art form and a powerful, glamorous American industry He was the first to codify the rules and techniques of screen storytelling, the first to establish the conventions by which the unique capacities of the movies for both sweeping spectacle and profound intimacy could be employed in long, complex narratives, the first to assert the director’s claim to primary authorship of a film Above all, it was Griffith who imagined the future of his medium, and with his driving energy, his taste for the grandiose and his flair for publicity, propelled that medium toward that future—only to be crushed by the very forces he had unleashed. D.w. Griffith (1875-1948) Painting; D.w. Griffith (1875-1948) Art Print for sale His story is, in huge measure, the story of how the
Read more

Lillian Gish and Jeanne Moreau – Vanity Fair 1983

Image
Lillian Gish and Jeanne Moreau – Vanity Fair 1983 Vanity Fair – October 1983 Lillian Gish Jeanne Moreau This is a summit meeting: a queen paying homage to an empress. Of course, Lillian Gish, far right, is no truer a blueblood than any other homespun midwesterner. But wherever she goes now, she is treated like a monarch, acknowledging standing ovations in allAmerican palaces like Radio City Music Hall. Her admirers aren’t really applauding her 101 films (she has just completed the 102nd, about a sweet old lady and her sweet old dog). They may never have seen her slim but supernally intense performances in the D. W. Griffith masterpieces or in the Victor Sjostrom classics she made in the late ’20s at MGM. Lillian-Gish-Jeanne-Moreau 60s But they sense in her the grace, the purity, the wealth of symbolism that royalty sustains. Gish’s companion here, Jeanne Moreau, radiates a similar authority; what Gish was to the cinema of the ’20s, Moreau was to the cinema of the ’60s. “The
Read more