by Sam Juliano
New York playwright Robert Anderson, who died in February of this year at the age of 91, may not have been on the same level of greatness as Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller, but his small body of work achieved a significant measure of success on stage and screen in its intimate and painful examination of relationships. His 1953 play, Tea and Sympathy enjoyed a hugely successful run of 712 performances on Broadway, where it was directed by Elia Kazan, and at one point starred Joan Fontaine and Anthony Perkins. The original leads, Deborah Kerr and John Kerr reprised their roles in the 1956 film version, directed by Vincente Minelli. In the late 60’s the author revealed his own familial demons with the largely autobiographical I Never Sang For My Father, which sustained a brief run before being preped for it’s eventual 1970 film release, a project that featured actors Melvyn Douglas and Gene Hackman as father and son, and Dorothy Stickney and Estelle Parsons in the supporting roles of mother and daughter. Both Douglas and Hackman scored Oscar nominations for their superlative performances, but the film, an intimate domestic drama, did unimpressively at the box office and faded away. To this day, Columbia has balked at releasing a proper DVD of the film despite the substantial cult following it has acrued over the past decades. (more…)
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