Tennesse Williams' Ode to Geraldine Page

Unrelenting standards schema is the feeling of pressure that comes from perfectionism, the feeling that nothing is ever good enough, with the constant demand to do more making you feel flawed. A June 2022 study appearing in Personality and Social Psychology compared perfectionism to just working with set goals for excellence, and found surprising results: Perfectionism leads to worse outcomes, not better. In fact, other studies reveal that, not only does perfectionism bring worse results, it also can make you miserable and that your life is lacking in creativity and less fulfilling (Brown and Beck, 2002). Perfectionism means being stuck with standards that are always too high, and anxiously focusing on them. Autism with co-occurring exceptional cognitive ability is often accompanied by severe internalizing symptoms and feelings of inadequacy. There is evidence that suicide risk is partly genetic in nature, with heritability estimates ranging from 17 to 55% Some evidence for potential mechanistic overlap between the biology of suicide and of autism comes from a study that identified mutations in a well-known autism risk gene, NRXN1, as increasing risk for suicide (William et al., 2021). In a general population study (which included autistic individuals) increased polygenic risk for autism was found to be positively associated with suicidal thoughts. Furthermore, autistic children with suicidal thoughts inherit more genetic risk factors for self-harm ideation than expected (Warrier & Baron-Cohen, 2021), lending further evidence to potential shared biological mechanisms between suicide and autism. Unrelenting standards schema begins at the pre-verbal level, as you take in the non-verbal case of attachment, before you are fully comfortable with expressing yourself through talking. This means that perfectionism is felt in the body, as much as it goes along with perfectionist thinking. Source: www.sciencedirect.com

Tennessee Williams admitted: "I write out of love for the South. It once had a way of life that I am just old enough to remember—a culture that had grace, elegance, an inbred culture, not a society based on money. I write out of regret for that. I write about the South because I think the war between romanticism and the hostility to it is very sharp there."  Williams, wrote Gore Vidal, "could not possess his own life until he had written about it." Although he was rarely forthcoming about his sexuality, homosexual love was “spiritual champagne” for Williams, and a way to short-circuit depression. About his drinking Williams lied routinely that he was on the wagon when it was clear that liquor had got him licked. The tragedy was that Williams was a liability to anyone who cared about him; ultimately only his writing mattered. Williams was both the protective/destructive Stanley Kowalski, and also the gentle, spiritual but manipulative sensualist Blanche Dubois. As Elia Kazan well understood, "Blanche DuBois is Williams. I saw Blanche as Williams, an ambivalent figure who is attracted to the harshness and vulgarity around him at the same time that he fears it, because it threatens his life." By 1969, his brother Dakin had him committed to a mental institution, a decision which quite clearly saved the playwright’s life; to show his thanks, Williams wrote Dakin out of his will.

Williams never failed to ask Geraldine Page how things were operating on the stage, both with plays in which she starred and with those he would beg her to read. Page, in a fashion similar to that employed by Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie, had an ability to shift the focus of a play toward its leading female character. “She recognized that the women I had written into my plays, and which I had asked her to play, were the center of the play, the scaffolding of the building I had constructed,” Williams said. "She has the mind of a writer, which is the highest compliment I could pay her. She was also unafraid of honesty or silence, two things I always think of when I think of her. She didn’t need approval or find comfort in empty conversations that bond people together. She had an understanding of why we were all gathered together to create theater that I have only found in perhaps two or three other people. I didn’t think of leaning on Gerry’s shoulder or calling her up in the middle of the night for comfort and a few laughs. But I would call her—and I have called her—to remind me of why we do this, why we matter, why we have to get it right. She lives the poetry she cannot write. I write the poetry I cannot live.” 

“I’m a dreamer, I anticipate events, emotions, and I am often disappointed. I could learn so much from her. She took my writer’s dream and melded it with images and feelings of her life. I think of Geraldine Page as the finest, sharpest needle, capable of piercing any dream fabric and creating any number of patterns. She had no patience or sympathy for unintelligent, unexamined people or situations, and in that first encounter with her in 1952, she let me know that Summer and Smoke, on Broadway, had been two of her least favorite things: thoughtless and unclear. And I agreed with her. Her emotional intensity has been compared to a singer capable of holding a particular note for an astonishingly long time, leaving an audience on edge, wondering if the artist can survive such a commitment, then marveling when the note ends and a new note is pursued, held, conquered.”

Williams expounded: "We destroy ourselves every day, and then we rebuild. Some of us can survive this damage and use it to good effect—through work or sympathy or charity or awareness. I do not have this ability, and my failure to be a good steward of my talent led to some clashes with Geraldine, who is a fearsome guardian of her mental theater, from which emerge her characters, which are crafted from something I can only call majestic. Hers is a titanic talent; her vision is frightening. She has an incredible intellect, and it is attached to a talent that is something like a ton of dynamite bearing a one-inch wick. It explodes frequently and beautifully, and it is lethal to be stupid in its path.” Writers, Williams explained, “create scratches on pieces of paper. We hope and we dream. We try to locate those moments in our life when things happened and we were left stranded and stunned and wondering and asking ‘Why?’ Geraldine Page poured blood and flesh into my pages—and the pages of others—and left me wondering ‘Why?’ 

Although Williams was also an admirer of Joanne Woodward, “a beautiful Southern belle, equally gifted for stage and film,” none, however, in his estimation, brought the process of thought and intention to the stage as Geraldine Page did, not even Marlon Brando. “I have never doubted the existence of God,” Williams asserted soberly. “I’ve been told that all straight lines in the universe are eventually curved and a curving line may eventually curve back to its beginning, which might be something in the nature of rebirth. After all, high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.” Williams had once described to Luchino Visconti the effect of watching a young and pliant James Dean dancing and swaying, clad in a robe and bearing scissors, taunting an unyielding yet clearly amused Geraldine Page, her back hard but her eyes eagerly taking in Dean’s allure. Clearly, Williams was jealous of Dean, a paradox due to his homosexuality. But maybe Williams was in love with Page. The play was The Immoralist, based on the novel by André Gide; and to the play’s director, Daniel Mann, Page described, from her reading of Gide’s work, a religion of male beauty to which she nightly converted and submitted. When she looked at James Dean on that stage, he was her God, his body her Eucharist, and her soul empty and ready to be filled with his gifts. Offstage she found Dean to be gifted but undisciplined and spoiled. —Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog (2015) by James Grissom

James Dean may not have had the career he had -- he certainly would not have made the pictures he did -- if it had not been for one woman, Geraldine Page. They were both members of the Actors Studio, but they became close in late 1953, when they were cast in The Immoralist, Ruth and Augustus Goetz's adaptation of Andre Gide's novel. From the first day of rehearsal, December 18, 1953, there was trouble. Page and Jourdan clashed, while Dean was rattled by insecurity and fear. "Jimmy was very nervous and frightened," recalled Salem Ludwig, an understudy and the show's Actors Equity Association representative. "He overcame his fear by pretending to be a tough guy. He was young, and this show was a big step in his career." The new director was Daniel Mann, who fixed the staging but failed to recognize Dean's paralyzing terror. The young actor's lack of confidence caused him to act out, demanding attention from those around him. The situation reached a breaking point one day, until Dean finally spun around, retrieved his jacket, and stalked out of the theatre. Rose, who watched the episode unfold from the empty auditorium, decided to fire Dean. There was only one problem. Page wouldn't stand for it. "My mother," Angelica Page said, "told the director and the producer, 'You're letting pure gold walk out of that door. If he's not in this show, I'm not in this show.' She meant what she said, too. If Jimmy was not going to be there on opening night, she wasn't either."

Rose must have believed her: Dean was not fired. But Page still had to make sure Dean didn't quit. "I got a call from Geraldine that Jimmy was in her room," Ludwig recalled. "I went up and there was Jimmy sitting there, furious, ready to kill someone. 'Jimmy, what happened?' I said. 'I didn't want to get in a fight,' he said, 'so now I'm packed and ready to go.' I said, 'You can't do that. Nobody will hire you in the future.' He said, 'I don't care. I'm leaving.' "Then I said, 'Jimmy, there are six blacklisted actors in this show who haven't worked in a long time. If you walk out and the show closes, they're out of a job,'" Ludwig said. "There was a pause. Soon tears started to flow down Jimmy's cheeks and he said, 'I'll do it.'" Dean did well in the Philadelphia tryouts, but he hit his stride in New York previews. Elia Kazan saw the last preview and sought out Dean after the show to offer him a lead role in East of Eden, complete with a Warner Bros. contract. So, on opening night, after turning in a stunning performance, Dean handed Rose his two-week notice. None of this would have happened, of course, if Page had not put her professional reputation on the line and threatened to quit the show if Rose fired Dean. When the conflict with Dean developed, Rose may not have realized the situation had both professional and personal implications for Page. Starting around the time of the first rehearsal and continuing into the play's New York run, she and Dean had been having an affair. The attraction was obvious. Beautiful and captivating, Dean projected a powerful sexual appeal, while, with her classic leading-lady looks, Page radiated her own allure.

As if to create mementos of the affair, Dean made freehand drawings for Page, which he did only for those people about whom he cared deeply. A talented amateur artist, Dean enjoyed drawing informal sketches on the backs of napkins and sheets of paper. Page cherished the drawings, putting them for safe keeping in a small, white envelope on which she wrote: "Please save these masterpieces for me by Mr. James Dean." "According to my mother, their affair went on for three-and-a-half months," Angelica Page said. "In many ways my mother never really got over Jimmy. It was not unusual for me to go to her dressing room through the years, obviously many years after Dean was gone, and find pictures of him taped up on her mirror. My mother never forgot about Jimmy -- never. I believe they were artistic soul mates." In Being James Dean, I note the affair ended when Dean went to California to shoot East of Eden. Dean's talent might have taken him to Hollywood anyway, but if Page had not kept him in The Immoralist he would not have gone there when it did by landing the part in East of Eden. As it happened, not quite 18 months later, he would be dead, having created a small but memorable body of work that has made him an enduring icon. —"The Woman Who Made James Dean a Star" (2016) by Paul Alexander

An Evening With Marilyn, Myth of Support

An Evening With Marilyn is a new novel in German, from actress turned author Maxine Wildner, reimagining the night of Marilyn’s last birthday. Maxine’s prior subjects include Hilde Knef, the German actress who began her Hollywood career alongside Marilyn in 1946. The cover art features a 1953 photo by Gene Kornman. “Marilyn Monroe, the sex symbol of a generation, the abandoned child, the underrated actress who drove her directors mad – two months before her death, Marilyn celebrates her 36th birthday in a New York restaurant. Everyone is there: Billy Wilder, the comedy legend who helped Marilyn achieve her greatest successes; Laurence Olivier, who was voted the greatest actor of the 20th century and with whom she had the worst professional experiences; Paula Strasberg, Marilyn’s method acting teacher; Baseball-icon Joe DiMaggio; her schizophrenic mother and even guest of honour JFK might attend. Only Marilyn is late, as usual. As drinks are served, this illustrious group makes the tragic and inexplicable life of Norma Jeane Baker a.k.a. Marilyn Monroe come to life before our eyes. It takes us from the orphanage to a forced marriage and up to the stars in the Hollywood sky. The last birthday of her life turns into an unforgettable night.” 

Marilyn is also the subject of another recent novel by German authors Nadja and Claudia Beinert, part of ‘Inspiring Women,’ a 23-volume series by various authors, with other subjects including Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn and Maria Callas. Focusing on the origins of her remarkable career, Marilyn and the Hollywood Stars is also available in Spanish and Italian. (The Italian cover features another Gene Kornman photo of Marilyn in her gold lamé dress.) “Los Angeles, 1942: Norma’s childhood is lonely, her refuge in the cinema, where Hollywood actresses are so much more self-confident than she is. In front of the camera, Norma sparkles with vitality, all self-doubt is forgotten. And suddenly she knows: she wants to be in the limelight, that’s the only thing that makes her happy. But first she has to emancipate herself from the prudish rules of her time in order to become who she is today: Marilyn Monroe, the greatest icon in film history.” Source: themarilynreport.com

Tennessee Williams about Marilyn Monroe at the Actors Studio: “Marilyn was an example of the weak children who seek a guru. Having no proper balance in her life, having no available family, having no understanding of the give-and-take that is daily life, she was drawn toward Mary Baker Eddy, Buddha, Jung, Freud, and finally, the gnomish Lee Strasberg, who specialized in adopting sexually confused women and becoming the seemingly gentle father figure they desired. Strasberg lied to her and told her she was the new Duse; he told her she should play Nina; he told her to investigate O’Neill and Shakespeare. This was all folly, because Marilyn had no understanding of her talent, and it was folly because Strasberg only wanted access to privileges from her fame. Strasberg got what he wanted. At one point the Times headlines read “The bitter battle is over—Marilyn Monroe, a five-foot-five-and-a-half-inch blonde weighing 118 alluringly distributed pounds, has brought Twentieth Century Fox to its knees. It was during Marilyn’s tenure at the Studio, and particularly after her death, that the exodus of the talented began from the Studio." 

Marilyn was also remote, cloying and demanding. She knew her power and she abused it, but in the demonstration of it, the spiral of destruction deepened and intensified. Do not think for a moment that I do not see this in my own behavior and that of others: I am only offering a sobering lesson. When we can’t imagine understanding or loving a God or some other myth of support, we attach ourselves to artistic symbols: the lost soul; the waif; the abused artist. I spoke to Arthur Miller only once about Marilyn, and it was during his exhumation of her [After the Fall, 1964]. I wondered if he was satisfied; I wondered if he had exorcised himself of her spirit, and I wondered if he had expiated his own sins. He told me he thought he could help her, yes, but he also wanted to buck the odds and be the homely, cerebral Jew who got the beauty queen; he wanted to be the bookish, pedantic, shy boy who introduced the beautiful girl to books and plays and ideas. Arthur wanted to be her savior, but he also wanted to be envied; he wanted attention; he wanted to be noticed. It’s fine to cry for Marilyn Monroe. I did, and I still do.” —Follies of God : Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog (2015) by James Grissom

Paul Newman: "Joanne Woodward looked like sixty or seventy million bucks"

Joanne Woodward knew that Newman was the right guy for her, but if he refused to divorce his wife, then she'd come to terms that he was definitely wrong for her. So Joanne threw herself into her work, ignoring Newman's pleas for keeping on waiting for his big decision. Joanne gave him a six-month ultimatum, and her absence during this probing time would prove to be the catalyst needed to Newman's divorce from Jackie Witte. If Somebody Up There Likes Me  had made Paul a star, Until They Sail  turned him into a matinee idol. His role as Larry Maddox in The Helen Morgan Story was somewhere between the two. Larry could love up the women as well as the army officer in Until They Sail, but he was an amoral heel. Newman and Ann Blyth play well together and have a particularly good scene when Larry confronts Helen when she comes home drunk. Newman must have felt certain frissons of recognition as the story played out, as Helen drank at first to deal with sorrow and disappointment, then became undeniably addicted to alcohol. Newman was not ready to admit to himself that there were times he relied on liquor for hope and happiness a little too much to be healthy. 

Despite its glossy, melodramatic surface, the picture works as a study of loneliness in the show-business of the 1940s against which even money and success are no barriers. Newman, who by now knew that often the worst kind of loneliness could afflict someone trapped in an unhappy marriage and separated from the one they truly loved, identified more with Helen's character than with Larry's. At least he knew Joanne was too controlled a person to turn to drink the way he and Helen Morgan did. Michael Curtiz was never a man to praise actors unduly; while getting the best out of them, he could give them a hard time in the process. He remembered Newman as thoroughly professional and attentive: “But he wouldn’t take any sass from me or anyone else.” Curtiz recalled Newman saying something along the lines of “if criticism is honest, I’m all for it. But if it’s done just out of meanness, I’ll walk away from it.” Although Larry has romantic feelings for Helen, at the film’s conclusion he seems to undergo a complete character change, picking Helen up at the nuthouse, taking her to her old nightclub where he’s assembled hundreds of her friends, and implying that he’ll never leave her again. Earlier it’s revealed that he even sent dozens of bouquets to her and signed other people’s names to the cards so that she wouldn’t feel forgotten.

Filming another Twentieth Century-Fox loan-out, From the Terrace, Newman had to battle to get Fox to cast Joanne as his wife, just as he’d had to battle to get her the spousal assignment in Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys! but at least this was a more dramatic, juicier part. In fact, Woodward as the snobby wife made Newman's ex-wife Jackie at her worst seem sylphlike by comparison. Joanne told reporters that she and Paul could get out all their own frustrations with each other by screaming at each other in character on the set. Once that was done, they could go home and make like turtledoves. Myrna Loy was appearing in a supporting role as Newman’s mother. She recalled returning to Twentieth Century-Fox, where she had made some earlier films, and discovering that her dressing room was bare. “Noticing the tributes stacked in Paul Newman’s dressing room, I realized that I was yesterday news.” But when she walked out on the set, the crew all gave her a standing ovation. They then proceeded to subject Paul to merciless teasing, asking Myrna who that “kid” she was working with was and if she was giving acting lessons on the side now. Paul took all the teasing good-naturedly. Myrna Loy told her biographer, James Kotsilibas-Davis, that “Paul Newman was very sweet about it, displaying none of the cockiness of so many young stars. He gave me a lot to work from as his dissolute mother, a real departure for me. One scene—I’m sitting in front of a mirror telling him to go for his own good—is a stunner. Paul was already a pro.” 

After the artistically bankrupt experience of Exodus (Newman couldn't convince Otto Preminger to sign Joanne on board over Eva Marie Saint), Newman was ready for the stimulating challenge of The Hustler. Eddie Felson, the pool hustler, was maybe his most memorable role. The picture was filmed mostly on location in New York City, to good advantage. The director, Robert Rossen, had a terminal illness and knew that The Hustler  would be his one of his last films. “We had three weeks of rehearsals, using television technique,” Newman said, “where you lay out tape on the floor to mark the sets.” The Hustler emerged as a very suffocating and artistic film, though pool is not exactly the most cinematic of subjects. The atmospheric, moody photography of the film illuminates the bleak, depressing vistas of poolrooms, gin joints, crummy hotel rooms, and seedy bus terminals with startling clarity. Newman is completely convincing as Eddie Felson, a character nothing like Tony Lawrence of The Young Philadelphians. Newman was a winner in his role, and Eddie despite a major moral victory at the film’s conclusion, is pretty much a loser all of the way. In an early scene, after he beats the great Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason), he’s so afraid people will think it was a fluke that he self-destructively plays Fats again and again until he’s sick from fatigue and has lost all of the $10,000 he’d won. 

Newman’s acting hides clues to Eddie’s character instead of laying it all out on the line as other actors might do. That’s why the picture is nearly over before we’re sure if Eddie Felson is a good guy or a bad guy or something in between; Newman keeps us guessing about him, never playing it heroically or like Eddie was nothing more than a sleaze. Paul is very convincing when he takes the girl (Piper Laurie) to a fancy restaurant for dinner and looks awkward as hell. Newman’s climactic speech after the girl’s suicide, when in disgust he parts company with Gordon, is also excellent. Actor Don Koll worked on The Hustler and recalled: “There’s a kind of caste system in Hollywood, where stars don’t mingle with bit players,” Koll said. “It just isn’t done. But when we were on location Newman told me that it was a relief to be free of the caste system, that he could mingle with everyone and be his friendly self, because basically he’s a very down-to-earth guy.” Newman received an Academy Award nomination for his work in The Hustler. When Maximilian Schell won for Judgment at Nuremburg, Joanne’s behavior backstage was for some shockingly childish. She refused to congratulate or even speak to Schell and, in her own words, “made a spectacle of myself,” cursing and rudely denouncing the Academy and the voters. When Joan Crawford heard about it, she thought the woman who had been named after her had more serious problems than just bad fashion sense. “The impression was that Paul was a basically nice guy who was run around by the nose by his wife,” Jack Garfein, a television director that Newman had met at the Actors Studio, commented. “Did Paul ever really ask or demand that she sublimate her career or needs in favor of his? Paul was just as disappointed, more so, when he lost the award to Schell, but he was gracious. I think Joanne embarrassed him terribly that night.” 

A. E. Hotchner, novelist and long-time friend of the Newmans, thinks Garfein was wrong. “Paul really was proud, if a bit startled, by her wife's support. Their marriage was one of the few authentic in Hollywood and that stirred envy and much tongue lashing. Paul laughed about Joan Crawford thinking she was more beautiful than Joanne. Geez, Joanne was a truly beautiful woman, she was gorgeous. Paul thought Crawford was a blabbermouth and not so beautiful even in her prime.” As Paul recounted to Stewart Stern: "Joanne gave birth to our first child together, Nell, in 1959, in California. The first time as an adult I remember crying—including when my father died—was when I saw Joanne in the hospital that day, ashen, with a dry mouth and lying on a gurney, headed into an elevator on her way to the delivery room. I was so staggered. Joanne came back from the hospital wearing this bellhop hat and a very stylish dress; she looked like sixty or seventy million bucks. When Lissy was born a couple of years later, I had my camera out and took billions of pictures of her. When I think of those pictures, it reminds me how Joanne handled our babies’ introduction into our home with such class and foresight." 

Newman’s next 1961 film project was Paris Blues, in which he was again teamed with his wife Joanne. Newman and Sidney Poitier played expatriate jazz musicians in Paris who become involved with tourists Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll. In Harold Flender’s novel, there was only the black couple, but Hollywood had to add a couple of whites or it was no sailing. The Newmans were attracted by the social consciousness of the piece, although the film is a bit dated about gender politics. Paris Blues was under the auspices of a production company, Pennebaker, set up by the one and only Marlon Brando, who was too occupied with other matters to push his—at that time, not too  considerable—weight around. Newman contemptuosly named him "Don Brando". Brando never took to other actors whom he considered professional rivals, like James Dean, Monty Clift or Paul Newman. 

Newman began filming the adaptation of Sweet Bird of Youth a short while afterward Paris Blues. His involvement with the project had begun back in 1959 when he starred in the stage play at Tennessee Williams’s request. Richard Anderson, who’d appeared with Newman in Long Hot Summer, was appearing in The Highest Tree on Broadway at the same time and compared notes with Newman on occasion. “He revealed acting wasn’t his first choice,” Anderson said. “He was really an organization man. Explaining further, he wanted to be attached to the nuts and bolts of the game. It surprised me . . . most actors didn't have other plans.” Apparently even as early as 1959, Newman was thinking of branching out into directing and even other non-acting business pursuits, although it would be some time before any of his plans came to fruition. In the film, Newman comes off as too theatrical and self-aware and, at thirty-six, too old for the part. 

Although he does have his moments, Newman clung for dear life to the guidance Elia Kazan and Geraldine Page gave him and was too afraid to play Chance on the screen. Elia Kazan recounted to James Grissom: "Paul Newman was often unsure of his performance in the play. He never fully trusted himself as Chance Wayne. He gave some rocky performances, and I noticed that when he felt confident about his work, he ran from the theatre and hopped on his motorcycle and was gone. On the nights when he felt he hadn't done so well, he would linger at the stage door. Gerry noticed this and began to bolster him from the stage, through the performance." Tennessee Williams praised his favorite actress, saying to Grissom: "Geraldine Page is a great actress. It wasn't that she simply had talent, she had a genius, a maddening intellect that came with a supernatural vision of people. She pushed me. She made me a better writer and she made my plays better plays. Geraldine Page is all about getting it right, and just above that goal is getting it brilliant, which she does. She's a solitary genius."

The Newmans bought a house in Connecticut not far from A. E. Hotchner and his wife; Newman had become professional friends with Hotchner after he’d appeared on television in The Battler, for which Hotchner wrote the script. Hotchner did not waste time using the proximity to bring further ideas to his famous neighbor. The two men bought a boat and went fishing together, although they drank more beer than they caught fish. Ernest Lehman, who had written the fine scripts for Somebody Up There Likes Me and From the Terrace, had a new story he thought Paul would be interested in, a comedy-thriller entitled The Prize, with German bombshell Elke Sommer. 

Adapting from the novel The Prize by Irving Wallace, Lehman was hoping to create another North by Northwest, the brilliant thriller he had penned for Hitchcock. He even fashioned a scene that was to go one better than the sequence in North by Northwest in which Cary Grant evades pursuers by causing a scene at a fancy auction house. In the new scene, Newman, clad only in a towel, would heckle a speaker at a nudist colony. Edward G. Robinson plays a dual role as Dr. Max Stratman / Prof. Walter Stratman. Director Mark Robson, also of From the Terrace, gave Hitchcock's game a run for his money.

The first film Newman directed, Rachel, Rachel (1968) was inspired by a Margaret Laurence's novel entitled A Jest of God, which won the distinguished Canadian Governor-General’s Award. Joanne’s agent at the time, John Foreman, who had worked at MCA with Newman’s agent Myron McCormack, passed a copy of the book along to Joanne thinking she might be perfect for the role of the heroine, a woman in a small town who longs for love and excitement. Although this was not exactly typecasting, Woodward was often at her best playing characters with which she had nothing in common—something that was also true of Paul Newman. Paul wouldn’t read the novel at first—which was fine as far as Joanne was concerned, because she didn’t think he’d like it—but he agreed to go in with her and buy the film rights. Newman did his best to please Joanne when she got that certain look in her eye that meant she felt passionately about something. By now he often spoke of her “impeccable judgment.” To facilitate matters Newman started a new production company entitled Kayos Productions. Apparently Jodell Productions had met all its commitments, and Ritt’s and Newman’s film interests had gone in different directions. Considering the critical reaction to some of his movies, Newman figured he could probably direct as well as anyone. Besides, he’d gone to Yale to study stage direction, so at least he knew he’d be good with actors. 

The Newmans had been friends with the writer Stewart Stern since he’d written a teleplay Paul had starred in and particularly admired, Thundering Silence. Stern also did the screenplay for The Rack, as well as such notable films as Rebel without a Cause and The Ugly American. He was their first choice to turn A Jest of God into a screenplay. They got in touch with him, and he agreed to take on the project, although there were times when he nearly came to regret it. Stern would meet with Joanne and Paul at their home for story conferences by committee. Stern found that Joanne had her ideas and Paul had his, and what he had to say made little impact. Soon their story conferences metamorphosed into polite disagreements, then arguments, then finally screaming matches. One afternoon the three of them had a quarrel about whether the heroine would “pleasure” herself in bed in the prone position or face-up. Stern told them that, in essence, too many cooks were spoiling the broth and that he would work on the script with Paul or Joanne but not both of them. He stormed out of the house and went home. Now came the difficult part of finding a studio that would be willing to finance the picture. Newman was a megastar at this point, and he could probably have gotten financing for just about anything he starred in, but his wife just wasn’t as bankable. To his amazement and disillusionment, this major movie star found certain executives failing to return his phone calls. 

Newman was told by studio executives that the story was too downbeat, that it wasn’t commercial enough (which it wasn’t), that Joanne Woodward wasn’t a big enough name by then. “How about using another actress?” some inquired, gaining Newman's wrath. Newman knew that his wife’s heart was set on making this picture, and by now he wanted it for her as much as she did. She may have pressured him into getting interested initially, but he loved her and didn’t want her to be disappointed. As Stewart Stern put it with consummate insight born from years of friendship: “He is constantly trying to provide a setting where the world can see what he sees in her.” Also, Kayos Productions was going to wind up with egg on its face if it didn’t get the money to make the picture somewhere. Newman claimed that he decided to direct Rachel, Rachel because he couldn’t get anyone else to do it. Although Rachel, Rachel  is never as devastating as it could have been, it remains a picture of depth and meaning. The best line comes after surgery when the nurse tells her she’s out of danger. “How can I be out of danger if I’m not dead?” Rachel asks her.

Newman’s instincts were right in revising the screenplay and putting together so many rough cuts until it was perfect, for Rachel, Rachel is often poignant and never descends into soap opera as he was afraid it would. It was one portrait of alienation that would flourish in the next decade, with films like Five Easy Pieces or Taxi Driver. Estelle Parsons enjoyed working with Newman and was impressed by the self-effacing attention he gave to Joanne and the other actors. “He wanted to showcase his wife’s talent to maximum advantage, and he succeeded,” she said. Newman and Joanne won Golden Globes and the New York Film Critics’ Award as Best Actress and Best Director. Shortly after Rachel, Rachel was released, Newman got a strange phone call. A woman’s voice said, “You did it beautifully—what is  your name?” The woman was apparently struggling to remember who she had phoned, even though she had placed the call. When a bemused Newman told her his name, she said, “Yes, yes,” and told him it was Patricia Neal, his old co-star from Hud, calling to tell him how much she had loved Rachel, Rachel. Neal had suffered a massive stroke three years earlier and even then still had trouble remembering names of people she knew well. Newman was touched she had taken the trouble to phone him, even if he had as much difficulty expressing it as she did. 

Following the apocalyptical WUSA (1970) with low-brow fanfare like Pocket Money (1972) by Stuart Rosenberg, however, may not have been as screwy as it seemed. It may well have been a calculated attempt to win back those members of the audience—the Moral Majority and Heartland USA types who saw Newman as some kind of commie pinko. No matter how many times Newman was asked, he never gave a satisfactory answer about his reasons to make WUSA or exactly what message he was trying to get across. Robert Stone (the writer of WUSA) didn't get along with director Rosenberg. "My role was cut", explained actress Cloris Leachman, "a lot of stuff was left in the cutting room floor. The studio wasn't interested and Rosenberg gave in." —Sources: "Paul Newman: A Life" (2009) by Lawrence J. Quirk and "Paul Newman: Blue-Eyed Cool" (2022) by James Clarke

The Misfits: The Film That Ended a Marriage

The Misfits (1961) will be screened in the Ted Mann Theatre at the Academy Museum on Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles this Saturday, December 3 at 7 pm, in a North American premiere for the 4K restoration completed from the original 35 mm negative in 2018. The film’s initial release was eclipsed by the death of leading man Clark Gable, and would also prove to be Marilyn’s cinematic swansong – but it’s now considered a minor classic, bridging the gap between Hollywood’s golden age and the 1960s New Wave. The Misfits is followed at 9 pm by another hidden gem of film preservation, Call It Murder (1934). Source: themarilynreport.com

Even though the Monroe/Miller marriage was in crisis, Marilyn was surrounded by people she liked and got on with – Gable, Clift, Wallach and Ritter, a special friend of hers from the Actors Studio. She also had her masseur Ralph Roberts, her press secretary May Reis, her makeup man Allan “Whitey” Snyder, her stand-in Evelyn Moriarty, her limo driver Rudy Kausky, her publicist Rupert Allan and the two people who did her hair, Sidney Guilaroff and Agnes Flanagan. Reis had worked for Miller in the past. Huston gave Roberts a small part as an ambulance driver in the film. The only person John Huston was concerned about was Paula Strasberg, who replaced Natasha Lytess as Monroe’s acting coach and who threatened to derail any production with her imperiousness. Slowly but surely, Miller’s script had begun to infiltrate her life. Where did one end and the other begin? Nobody knew for sure. He was getting ideas from her daily behavior. Mood changes that depressed both of them enriched his work. Monroe’s demons became Roslyn’s by proxy. Miller didn’t know why she was offended. He thought he was portraying some of her most endearing qualities – “spontaneous joy and sympathy.” 

Lee Strasberg had seen something in Marilyn that most other acting coaches missed. “What was going on inside was not what was going on outside,” he said. “That always means there may be something there to work with.” Of all the stars he'd worked with, he said, Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando were the two who stood out for him. One of the reasons Strasberg took such an interest in Monroe was to rebuild his reputation. It suffered some damage from Brando’s renunciation of him in favor of Stella Adler. Marilyn performed many interesting pieces at the Actors Studio, from Golden Boy to A Streetcar Named Desire to Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses. No doubt this was the biggest stretch for her. 

The Hollywood Studio Club, a building near the Paramount Studios that housed hundreds of young hopefuls, had opened in 1926 and it would close definitely its doors in 1975. Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Malone, Kim Novak, Donna Reed, Barbara Hale, Barbara Rush and Sharon Tate had lived in the Hollywood Club for a while (the tops was 3 years). “I heard there was this place for girls in show business who hadn’t made it yet and you got two meals a day for $15 a week,” said Rita Moreno, so she and her friend Louise Martinson moved in. After “playing a lot of Indian maidens,” Moreno signed a contract with Fox. Sparks flashed when Moreno met Brando on the Fox lot. Soon, she was taking his calls on the hallway phone, grabbing her nail polish on the way because, she says, “he was on the phone for hours at a time.” Curled up on the floor with the receiver on her shoulder and the cord stretched as far as it would go, she gave herself a mani-pedi. “All the girls wanted to know what happened on my dates with him, so Louise said, 'Let’s write down your whole experience and read it out loud'.”

One night their bedroom was packed as Rita Moreno recounted accompanying Brando to an Actors Studio party in San Fernando Valley—where she met Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (whose romance was blossoming) and also James Dean. While Dean seemed fixated on Marilyn, and since Brando was busy dancing with Moreno, Marilyn seemed intrigued by Newman, although it was evident that Marilyn was not Newman's type. Actually, Newman was not enthused with the occasional antics of Woodward as glamour queen, that he called "Joanne's fantasy of being like Marilyn Monroe." 

John Huston hated the way Monroe treated Miller while shooting The Misfits. She insulted him in front of others. He’d act like he didn’t care: “He would pretend he wasn’t listening.” Her hangers-on carried on the humiliation: “I think they hoped to demonstrate their loyalty to Marilyn by being impertinent to Arthur. On these occasions Arthur never changed his expression.” In his book Conversations with Marilyn (1976), journalist WJ Weatherby gives voice to Marilyn's intimate thoughts about her failed marriage with Miller: "I had asked why she had yelled at the film crew of The Misfits, in particular a shy, well meaning man who had taken it badly. 'I can be a monster,' she replied seriously. 'Some of my friends want me to be innocent. If they saw the monster in me, they'd probably never talk to me. Sometimes I think that's what happened in my marriage to Arthur. He saw me as so beautiful and innocent between the wolves of Hollywood, I tried to be that person. When the monster showed up, Arthur couldn't believe it. But I felt he knew and loved all of me. I put Arthur through a lot, I know. It would've been easier with a more party-going kind of man. But I want someone different from me. A challenge." 

Monroe always looked out for Clift. When his jeans sagged, she told the makeup people to moisten them so they became tight. Though the overt romantic relationship in the film is between Gable and Monroe, the one between Clift and Monroe is in some ways deeper. Clift patted Monroe’s bottom on the set one day and she was amused. At other times she tantalized him with her body, rubbing her breasts across his nose. It was said that she was “determined to get him into bed for the hell of it,” thinking of his affair with Liz Taylor. Clift tried to make love to her once but they were both too drunk at the time for anything to happen. Instead they just “fooled around.” —The Misfits: The Film That Ended a Marriage (2022) by Aubrey Malone

Hollywood: The Oral Story, Sweet Bird of Youth

RIDGEWAY CALLOW: This is the true story of Hollywood. The most ruthless town in the world. RICHARD SCHICKEL: Or at least that’s the way people like to picture it. GEORGE CUKOR: . . . there are all sorts of stories . . . usually untrue . . . STANLEY DONEN: . . . because it was simply a group of people who kept working there in those pictures, going from one job to another . . . HOWARD STRICKLING: Everything was done carefully, thoughtfully, and in real detail. Everybody working together. We got on the same page, film by film. It was a business made up of creative, intelligent, hardworking people. RAOUL WALSH: Work. That’s the true story of Hollywood. But who wants to hear it? They’re looking for something else. Who took off whose panties behind the piano while the director shot the producer in the head? People want to know stuff like that, even if it isn’t true. BRONISLAU KAPER: Hollywood drew envy. All that money and power. People liked to ridicule Hollywood. “Oh, that’s Hollywood.” Everything is “typical Hollywood.” “Oh, he’s going Hollywood.” Nobody says “He’s going San Francisco.” No. “He’s going Hollywood,” where everyone really secretly wanted to go. GEORGE CUKOR: Hollywood throughout the years was always a real stop on the bus. People were very interested in everything that went on in Hollywood. It was exciting. It had all the glamorous people. Everybody wanted to come to Hollywood. 

FRANK CAPRA: Hollywood! What the hell good could come out of a Hollywood? Three thousand miles west of the Hudson River, where nothing west of the Hudson was any good anyhow? A little town way out in the west, a little bit of a dusty burg called Hollywood? Ah, but here film was being made, being sold, being canned, being shipped. We invented it. We created it . . . this enormous thing that has the tremendous power to move and influence. An art form and a business. Hollywood! VINCENT SHERMAN: What started out as a nickel-and-dime, honky-tonk business grew to be a great industry. It gave employment to many people doing all kinds of jobs, all of which had to be coordinated and put together. Some great films were turned out during this period. A town was created as a result of the picture business: Hollywood. I would say that the films that Hollywood made stood at the forefront of the entire world. Hollywood became a legend. ALLAN DWAN: In the beginning, of course, it wasn’t Hollywood. Films were being made all over the country: New York City, New Jersey, Florida, Chicago, St. Louis, Arizona and New Mexico, Oregon, San Francisco, and San Diego. Everywhere. And nobody knew they were going to work in the movies because there was no such thing, really, when they were born. TAY GARNETT: As a matter of fact, I don’t think it ever occurred to anybody that the movies would ever be a business. 

LEO MCCAREY: I planned to be a lawyer. I even practiced. I started out very young, and they mistook me for the office boy. I was a very poor lawyer. A discouraging factor in my legal career is that I lost every case. JEANINE BASINGER: A movie maker had to be ready to pull up stakes and run! The patent wars are a complicated story—but very colorful. In 1908, after months of negotiations, the two biggest companies, Edison and Biograph, former enemies, got together and became The Motion Picture Patents Company. These big guys licensed successful smaller companies to “legally make films”: Vitagraph, Essanay, Lubin, Selig, Kalem, Kleine, and Méliès and Pathé. It was an attempt for MPPC to own it all. By 1912, this controlling and threatening company was weakening, and in 1917, it was dissolved by court order. The motion picture game was afoot! And it was anybody’s game. ALLAN DWAN: I started directing early. I know I directed in 1909. I know that for sure. When I say 1909, it could have been down to almost Christmastime. In California, you don’t remember—there’s no snow, so we don’t remember there’s a winter. 

PAUL NEWMAN: My time in California didn’t have an auspicious start. I drove there from New York, alone, and literally didn’t know where I was going. I was booked for a room in Hollywood, at the Roosevelt Hotel, but I got off at the wrong exit on one of the freeways—I’m not even sure whether it was the Ventura or the Pasadena; I must have cut all the way through Kansas. Anyway, I don’t really remember ever coming into Los Angeles itself, but I ended up exiting at Santa Monica Boulevard. I later, of course, found out there was a much easier way to get where I was headed, but I had to drive a long way on local roads along Sunset. It took forever until I found the Roosevelt. [...] My vacillations about divorcing Jackie went on for years, despite I knew I had fallen in love with Joanne. —Hollywood: The Oral History (2022) by Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson 

In The Hustler (1961), Paul Newman delivers what easily might be his best performance (and it's probably the best film he ever made), a literate and psychologically probing drama set in the grubby world of pool halls. Robert Rossen directed with a conspicuous anti-Hollywood grit and maturity (and he couldn’t resist a heartbreaking ending). As “Fast Eddie” Felson, a born loser with the pool-shooting talent to become a winner, Newman excellently delivers the cocky bravado, the sexy charm, and the self-destructive tendencies, a believable combination of drive and defeatism, finally fulfilling his mission of the Method with ostensibly “personal” acting. Newman often appears semi-paralyzed in his early films, not yet free enough to be great, unable to give of himself fully. In The Hustler, he is somewhat shown up by the superb work around him, from George C. Scott’s electrifying portrait of cool malevolence, and Piper Laurie’s aching, unadorned work as Newman’s sad girlfriend. Laurie and Newman had previously shared one brief scene together in Until They Sail (1957). The Hustler is about mind games, in and out of the poolroom, and it's self-consciously reaching for profundity while also providing a satisfying conclusion. Newman deserved his Oscar nomination and was favored to win the gold-plated prize, but Maximilian Schell (Judgment at Nuremburg) was the victor for a far less intricate, though showy, role. 

Despite the steady stream of film work, Newman had opted to spend the bulk of 1959 starring on Broadway in Tennessee Williams’ new play Sweet Bird of Youth, which opened just after Newman received his Oscar nomination for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, making him very much the Williams actor of the moment. It was only a matter of time before Sweet Bird of Youth made it to the screen, and there was no need to look for a bigger movie star than Newman to play Chance Wayne. With four major cast members from the Broadway production (Newman, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, and Madeleine Sherwood), Sweet Bird of Youth has more heavyweight original-cast members on hand than any Williams film since A Streetcar Named Desire. 

Chance Wayne would appear to be an ideal Newman role, a virile and ambitious operator out to climb the Hollywood ladder. About a decade ago, he was a good-looking star athlete (a swimming diver) who fell for Heavenly Finley (Shirley Knight). Her father, Tom “Boss” Finley (Ed Begley), a former governor on the Gulf Coast, wanted Chance out of the way, and so he disingenuously encouraged Chance to leave St. Cloud and seek his fortune in New York. Chance found minor success in show business, including a cover of Life magazine as one of three chorus boys in a Broadway show (identified as Oklahoma! in the play, but nameless in the movie). Though he continued to believe in his potential for film stardom, Chance scored bigger as a sexual companion to wealthy ladies. As a beach boy in Palm Beach, he had latched on to Alexandra Del Lago (Geraldine Page), an apparently washed-up movie queen who is afraid to face the press and the public.

Like The Fugitive Kind, Sweet Bird of Youth is concentrated on a male character but utterly dominated by female forces. Geraldine Page’s Alexandra has about half the screen time allotted to Newman’s Chance, but the person you remember is Page's Alexandra, just as in The Fugitive Kind it’s Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward's characters who overshadow Marlon Brando's. Chance is a fairly naïve young man, never quite sharp enough to be the equal of the monsters he will encounter throughout this Easter weekend. (The play takes place entirely on Easter Sunday.) Chance, in the movie more than the play, seems surprisingly innocent despite his past, and his and Heavenly’s unwavering love is treated as something eternally pure, no matter what, all of which seems intended to provide balance with the film’s more sordid elements. Chance is presented as a love-struck man trying hard to be a shameless conniver, though conniving doesn’t come as naturally to him as it does to most of the characters around him. 

The Hollywoodized version by Richard Brooks is quite faithful to Tennessee Williams' play, where Chance, however sleazy his actions have been in the past, will be redeemed by his lost love. The only problem presented to the viewer is that Newman is simply too good-looking to be totally convincing as loser Chance Wayne. We suspect any Hollywood studio would sign this guy about five seconds after looking at him. Years ago, Chance, content to remain in St. Cloud and marry Heavenly, was swayed by Boss Finley into following the go-getting hordes destined for New York's show-business, staked with a train ticket and a hundred dollars. Newman is convincingly guileless as a starry-eyed hopeful, but this scene stresses the point that Chance’s dreams were not his own. In the play, in the Act Two, Chance's tactics to show the town of St Cloud that he is now somebody are obvious. After popping pills and drinking vodka, he brags to Scotty and Bud that Alexandra Del Lago has signed a contract, giving him the lead role in a film called ‘Youth’. Immediately, Scotty and Bud point out the ridiculousness of the title, seeing through Chance’s transparent lies. 

However, Chance’s fantastical schemes reveal that he still buys into the Hollywood dream of glamour and youth. He even keeps in his wallet the snapshots that Chance took of Heavenly on the beach, capturing and immortalising her young body when they were dating. Williams, in essence, reveals that there is no way to turn back the clock, no way to wipe the slate clean, and thus there is an uphill battle to achieve real redemption. The passing of time, as Williams writes in his 1947 essay ‘The Catastrophe of Success,’ is "Loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposite. It goes tick-tick, it’s quieter than your heartbeat, but it’s slow dynamite, a gradual explosion, blasting the world we live in to burnt-out pieces. Time... who could beat it, who could defeat it ever? Maybe some saints and heroes." Chance is ultimately a hero.

The lighthouse sequence is among those scenes that make us feel for two crazy kids in love simply trying to beat the outside forces against them. This particular myth, rooted in the American consciousness, commonly referred to as ‘the American Dream’, recalls a tradition depicted in American Realist novels such as Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (1925). Like Clyde, the protagonist of Dreiser’s novel, Chance strives to rise above his poverty and in doing so, he compromises his ethical and moral codes. Del Lago’s character is not merely a diva, she's struggling to survive in the movie industry that turned her into a monster, her alias leads back to Williams’s discussion of the ‘Cinderella story’ as well as suggesting that before being consumed by this Hollywood dream, she was capable of kindness, generosity and grace – traits that in fairytales lead the princess to winning her prince. Like Chance (and Cinderella, who cleaned and toiled for her step-sisters), Del Lago was not always rich and famous. She began, like all them, with only beauty to boast of. 

The power struggle between Chance Wayne and Alexandra Del Lago is, in part, fuelled by their recognition of their similarities. The demanding and self-absorbed actress constrasts starkly with Heavenly: "a nude image of a fifteen-year-old girl with the tide beginning to lap over her body like the sea desired her as Chance would always desire her’; Heavenly's nude photograph that Chance took signifies youth and Chance’s desire to possess that youth forever. Del Lago, like others of Williams’s heroines, 'she is an agent of truth forcing lost men to face their reality.’ Miss Lucy, wen she makes her entrance in Act Two, Scene Two in the play, she is described as ‘dressed in a ball gown elaborately ruffled and very bouffant like an antebellum Southern belle’s. A single blonde curl is arranged to switch girlishly at one side of her sharp little terrier face’. Like Scarlett O’Hara, to whom Chance compares her, she holds on to her dignity and pride even under attack and scorned by her former lover Boss Finley. But her gentility and girlish behaviour is, Williams suggests, a façade. Like a terrier, she is quick and wily, and Miss Lucy wastes no time in retaliating. She immediately approaches a heckler and tells him ‘come to hear Boss Finley talk.’ 

Chance and Heavenly are just as much in love in the play but appear much more bruised by their traumatic experiences. In the play, Chance accuses Boss Finley's son: "Hear that, Tom Junior? Give your father that message. This is my town. I was born in St Cloud, not him. He was just called here down from the hills to preach hate. I was born here to make love to Heavenly. Whatever happens to me, it’s already happened." In the previous act, Alexandra asks Chance: "What are you trying to prove?" Chance: "Something’s got to mean something, doesn’t it, Princess? Well, something’s still got to mean something." Like Joanne Woodward's climactic car-ride offer of Carol to Marlon Brando's Valentine in The Fugitive Kind, sparked by another premonition of doom, the gesture of help by Alexandra is rejected by Chance, but Sweet Bird of Youth turns imminent horror into romantic redemption. The message of the film disparages the hunt for big success and promotes true love above all else. Chance is thereby decontaminated of his erotic opportunism, leaving Alexandra and Boss Finley to continue fighting their nasty battles to stay on top.

Chance runs to the front of the Finley mansion, screaming Heavenly’s name when two cars pull up and four men emerge, including Heavenly’s violent brother, Tom Junior (Rip Torn). As he is beaten, Chance continues to call her name before being dragged by his legs to one of the cars. Tom Junior, holding his daddy’s cane, tells Chance he’s about to “take away loverboy’s meal ticket.” Bloodied and swollen, Chance is reunited with Heavenly in a bittersweet happy ending—with the added bonus of political trouble for Boss Finley, ignited at a rally when heckling about Heavenly’s abortion raised questions about his family values. Behind the production, Newman had pushed his wife Joanne Woodward for the role of Heavenly, which probably would have been expanded and resonated more. Although The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and From the Terrace (1960) were blazing box-office hits, Newman's next film with Joanne Woodward Paris Blues (1961) was a sound failure, thus halting them as a popular screen team for a while.

It was under Sidney Lumet that Newman hit a new peak, playing the alcoholic, ambulance-chasing lawyer in The Verdict (1982), a very fine courtroom drama, satisfying and well-paced and handsomely crafted by David Mamet. The Verdict is basically good pulp, featuring a femme fatale, corporate evil, a surprise star witness, and Newman’s do-gooding crusader, an underdog desperately seeking redemption through a medical malpractice suit. Its archetypal components were freshly spruced, creating a compelling character study. Newman was finally a skillful enough actor to encompass a multi-faceted role, which brings real value to the melodrama of the court case. Newman rarely was better, charting his character’s reckless struggle to regain his idealism and fight his insecurities. Without Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’s Brick making him the hottest new leading man of late-fifties Hollywood, and without Sweet Bird of Youth’s Chance confirming his legitimacy as a theatre star, perhaps he wouldn’t have gotten all the way to The Hustler, meaning that his career might not have lasted long enough for him to do The Verdict, The Color of Money, or Blaze. 

Audrey Wollen’s “Sad Girl Theory” bears resemblance to the anti-optimism of Lauren Berlant, Jack Halberstam, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Sara Ahmed, all of whom point to the ways that everyday culture asks us to buy into an aspirational fantasy of “the good life,” while keeping that life ever more inaccessible. In this context, sadness, failure, and shame might constitute a kind of resistance, or, as Halberstam puts it, “not succeeding at manhood or womanhood can offer unexpected pleasures.” —Sources: "Tennessee Williams and Company: Paul Newman" (2011) by John DiLeo and "The sacrificial stud and the fugitive female in Sweet Bird of Youth" by Cambridge University Press (1998) edited by Matthew C. Roudané