Peter Shelley - Joanne Woodward: Her Life and Career

Also by PETER SHELLEY
AND FROM MCFARLAND

Gene Hackman: The Life and Work (2019)

Philip Seymour Hoffman: The Life and Work (2017)

Anne Bancroft: The Life and Work (2017)

Neil Simon on Screen: Adaptations and Original Scripts for Film and Television (2015)

Gwen Verdon: A Life on Stage and Screen (2015)

Sandy Dennis: The Life and Films (2014)

Australian Horror Films, 19732010 (2012)

Jules Dassin: The Life and Films (2011)

Frances Farmer: The Life and Films of a Troubled Star (2011)

Grande Dame Guignol Cinema: A History of Hag Horror from Baby Jane to Mother (2009)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

Acknowledgments

Continued thanks are offered to Kath Perry and Barry Lowe for their encouragement.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

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e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-3697-9

2019 Peter Shelley. All rights reserved

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Front cover: Joanne Woodward (Photofest)

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I think I first saw Joanne Woodward in the film Rachel, Rachel (1969) where she gave a remarkable performance, expanding the clich of the virgin old maid to incorporate nobility, a wistful lyricism, intelligence and wit. She was Oscar-nominated but that year the Academy featured four other remarkable female performances, resulting in an unprecedented tie for the award by Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand. Woodward had already won the Best Actress Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve (1957), but while that seemed to be a triumph of technique, with Rachel, Rachel she achieved real screen transparency. As far as we knew, this was the real Woodward and not just an aspiring actress facing the challenge of portraying a woman with three personalities.

Her greatest strengths as a performer were her pragmatism and likability. Pauline Kael wrote that Woodward had a trouper quality: a briny actress with solidity, great audience rapport and a wide streak of humor about herself. It seemed no coincidence that she was Oscar-nominated two more times for playing inhibited conventional women with those qualities in Summer Wishes, WinterDreams (1973) and Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990). Even on the rare occasions when Woodward played dragon ladies, she made you understand their nastiness: the rich bitch in From the Terrace (1960) and the crazy rabbit-killer in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the Moon Marigolds (1972), perhaps the actresss most provocative role. She had the range to do other kinds of parts, in dramas and comedies, and even sang, though it did not get her cast in musicals. Woodwards expression of anger was nearly always funny, though in her comedies with Paul NewmanRally Round the Flag, Boys! (1958) and A New Kind of Love (1963)she lacked his lightness of touch. The latter title was particularly bizarre in that her character transformed from male drag to female drag, both equally unamusing. The comedy A Fine Madness (1966) saw the actress give her only bad performance where her playing was too broad. The attempts at sexpot roles, like The Stripper (1963), were equally problematic since she was not the Marilyn Monroe type.

Woodward also played a prostitute, in WUSA (1970), though one with a facial scarring that added something different to the canon. And she was miscast as the slatternly and sloppy Lola in TVs Come Back Little Sheba (1977). Newman reported that in The Shadow Box (1980), his wife played closest to her real personality, though the extrovert character was also a drunk.

Woodwards training with the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio had her perceived as a Method actress. In her book From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Molly Haskell describes her as one of the serious-artist actresses in black-and-white film, like Anne Bancroft, Julie Harris, Kim Stanley and Barbara Bel Geddes. These women emerged in Hollywood movies of the 1950s, but were not personality actresses, movie-movie stars in living Technicolor like Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. Haskell seemed to have a point about Woodward, since in the black-and-white The Three Faces of Eve she didnt give a movie star performance. Her Method origins were also evident in actor mannerisms, though she used them in real life when interviewed as well. They may have been choices made to express realism but her self-conscious self-touching read as fiddling, and her pursed and twisted mouth was inexplicable. The mannerisms were not as extreme and annoying as Method alumni Sandy Dennis and Geraldine Page, but they could draw unnecessary focus and undermine the actress work. She also had trouble with tears, since though Woodward could cry, tears were not visible. She could do accents, and though the actress had learned to neutralize her own Southern accent, it could still be heard in the pronunciation of some words when she wasnt playing a Southerner. For parts, Woodward changed her hair color and style, used wigs and wore glasses.

She played leading roles in five films as well as a number of supporting ones, but as she aged and got better at her craft, the parts dried up. This led her back to the stage (where she had dabbled before) and to television, where she had the leading role in a series of quality projects. The actress also produced and directed, the latter mostly for the stage, though there was a short film entitled Come Along with Me that was broadcast on television in 1982. Woodwards mature years also saw her support of the Westport Country Playhouse intensify when she took on its artistic leadership from 2000 to 2005.

This is the first book to span the actresss solo career. There have been three prior biographies of the Newmansthe out-of-print 1975 Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman: Their Lives Together (and Apart) by Gene Shalit, the 1988 Paul and Joanne by Joe Morella and Edward Z. Epstein, and the 1989 Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward by Susan Netter. Her life and career were also covered in Newman biographies by Elena Oumano (1989), Eric Lax (1996), Daniel OBrien (2004), Shawn Levy (2009), Lawrence J. Quirk (2009) and Darwin Porter (2009). The Porter book in particular explored the rumor that the Newmans had a lavender marriage and named many male stars that he had allegedly had affairs with, though no females were named as being lovers of the actress. This gossip is only mentioned since Joanne Woodward herself commented on it to the press, denouncing the rumors as fiction. But while her husband was undoubtedly the greater movie star, Woodward was considered the greater actor and therefore her work was deserving of individual attention.

This book cannot be considered the definitive coverage of her career since some of her television work is not available for viewing. My biggest regrets are not being able to see the cable version of the stage hit