emailsfromanactor

[emailsfromanactor]

[emailsfromanactor]

My local cinema informs me that an upcoming biopic about Richard Burton is on the way. Maybe it will be of interest to my fellows from the Emails from an Actor group.

[emailsfromanactor]

Happy Terrible Valentine's Day, friends of Redfield and Sterne!

[emailsfromanactor]

Some Richard Burton lore for you!

As for kissing his male co-star, [Robert] Goulet says it wouldn’t be his first time. Back in 1960, "Moss Hart was directing this scene between Richard Burton and me in Camelot, and we’re supposed to come face to face. We had been drinking and I said to Richard, ‘Shall we kiss?’ And he said, ‘Alright … on the lips?’ Now I had never kissed a man before in my life, not even my father, but I couldn’t back down. We said, ‘Mr. Hart, could we show you the relationship between Lancelot and [King Arthur] so the audience will know immediately?’ He said, ‘By all means.’ Then Richard and I kissed. It took an hour and a half to get Moss off the ceiling. He made us do it again for [Alan Jay] Lerner and then for [Frederick] Loewe. Moss made us do it once more for the [chorus] kids. And everybody laughed, except two of the boy dancers cried."

From this 2005 interview with Robert Goulet, when he was in La Cage aux Folles.

[emailsfromanactor]

Happy anniversary of the Gielgud-Burton Hamlet's first day of rehearsals! I realized I'd never made good on my promise to sort through and post the color photos from this production, so here's a start! These seem to have been staged for promotional material rather than taken during a performance.

[emailsfromanactor]

It's that time of year again! Kicking off my best-ofs of 2024 with books, since I'm not in immediate danger of finishing more before the year ends. Here's my top five (as ever, unranked):

Devotions, Mary Oliver As you may have noticed for yourself, 2024 was, uh, challenging. In a variety of ways. And while I'd long been familiar with some of Oliver's greatest hits, I finally decided to turn to this collection to explore further (since it had been hanging out, unread, on my bookshelf). Not only did I love the poetry itself, but the anthology's choice to move backward in time created an intriguing effect as you watched Oliver's interest shift as she youthened. Strong recommend.

The Dutch House, Ann Patchett I've hollered before about my love for Patchett, but even so, this book felt made for me and my noted love of stories about siblings. I took this book with me on a vacation and devoured it in big, delicious chunks. Maeve, especially, is going to stick with me for a long time.

The Last Chronicle of Barset, Anthony Trollope OK this one probably would not hit as hard if you picked it up on its own, but as the finale of the Barsetshire Chronicles, hot damn. When I tell you this is my 1867-flavored Endgame, I need you to understand I was beside myself every single time a character from an earlier book appeared, and it was so many times. The other books in this series are pretty loosely connected for the most part, but Trollope let almost everyone come back and take a bow here at the end. Shed a tear for Septimus Harding.

Letters From an Actor, William Redfield Shoutout to @emailsfromanactor for introducing me to this delightful book. Redfield played Guildenstern in the John Gielgud-Richard Burton production of Hamlet, and provides a front row seat along with plenty of commentary. Our boy has opinions, and I was here for them. (Emails From An Actor also incorporated Richard L. Sterne's John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in Hamlet: A Journal of Rehearsals, which I did enjoy, but Redfield's authorial voice got him in the top five.)

Men at Arms, Terry Pratchett I've been reading Discworld on and off since high school, but I'd never read the Watch books. This is largely because many people I trust told me I'd love them; I sort of developed a "break glass in case of emergency" vibe around that portion of the series. But 2024 seemed to call for something delightful, and these were it. I also read Guards, Guards and Feet of Clay this year, but Men at Arms squeezed ahead because of the extremely Pratchett-typical approach to the MacGuffin and the introduction of Angua, for whom I would take a bullet (though she wouldn't need me to).

[emailsfromanactor]

You're very welcome! I'm so happy that I was able to introduce more people to our boy Bill. :D

28!

BILL REDFIELD MY BEST FRENEMY BILL REDFIELD. thank you to @emailsfromanactor for one of the best times I had all year

[emailsfromanactor]

Further Brando information! According to Adam Redfield's afterword, Marlon Brando had been sent every letter he was mentioned in with the expectation that if he didn't like it, he'd say something.

Yeah! And he never did, so he really didn't have the right to complain about them being published. Unless something happened and he didn't get the letters, I guess.

[emailsfromanactor]

who's hotter: young al pacino or young marlon brando (this is not about how they are as persons this is purely physical thank you)

[emailsfromanactor]

Stephen Fry's no 1 recommendation is Erotic Vagrancy by Roger Lewis about Taylor and Burton:

Roger Lewis’s Erotic Vagrancy is my book (and title) of the year. A magnificent, compendious and fantastically readable account of the phenomenon that was Taylor-Burton. It manages to be hilarious and at the same time deeply insightful and understanding. What emerges is a truthful and scintillating picture of the couple and their astonishing impact on each other and on the world around them. What makes the experience of reading Erotic Vagrancy so matchless is that Lewis writes, word on word, sentence on sentence, better that any biographer alive.

It would be nice to finish the year the way I started it with a book about Burton.

[emailsfromanactor]

Boop!

[emailsfromanactor]

Happy 60th anniversary of Hamlet: The Theatrofilm! I'm going to celebrate by watching it, which, confession, I haven't actually done in full since 2006. If anyone wants to do the same and needs a copy that isn't the terrible one on YouTube... here. :D Here's hoping we won't find it as appalling as John Gielgud did!

[emailsfromanactor]

Richard Burton (1925 – 1984) as Ferdinand and Hazel Penwarden (?) as Miranda in “The Tempest” (1951)

[emailsfromanactor]

Here's a link without the paywall! The article is largely concerned with Olivier, but I was more surprised that the book seems to have never been given to Gielgud.

O’Toole, then almost 50 and skeletal-gaunt, was carrying in his hands a little red book. As the audience hushed he explained that the book was given to the actor who was considered the definitive Hamlet of his generation. When O’Toole had played the part in 1963, the actor Michael Redgrave had given him the book. Redgrave had been given it by someone else, a great actor of the previous generation, and now O’Toole was passing it on to Jacobi, who in turn could give it to whomever he pleased.

[emailsfromanactor]

The Cast of Hamlet (1964) in Musicals: Part 6

At last, we come to our boy William Redfield (Guildenstern). But not only him! Why does he have to share a post? You'll see.

Redfield did five musicals on Broadway, starting at age ten with Virginia, or, as you might remember it from the letters, the one with the horse who had an "accident" onstage and had to be replaced by a wooden one. Ten years later, he - Redfield, not the horse - starred in Barefoot Boy With Cheek. That unfortunately went unrecorded, but here's Redfield on the Playbill cover with Nancy Walker:

Next he replaced the lead in Miss Liberty, which was recorded with the original actor. (If IBDB is to be believed, Miss Liberty is the last time Refield was billed as "Billy" rather than "William," at least on Broadway.) And then came Out of This World, Cole Porter's less-successful followup to Kiss Me, Kate. Redfield played Mercury, as in the god. And this time he did get to record his performance! Before we get to the album, here's a tiny photograph (Redfield's the shirtless one on the left):

And here's a newspaper caricature of the cast (Redfield's the one in the tree):

And here's one of his songs! (Just one, this post is already long and will get longer, but you can hear the rest here.)

In 1967, Redfield played Spintho, a non-singing role, in Androcles and the Lion, a TV musical adaptation of the Shaw play of the same name. A video of it survives, but unfortunately it looks like this:

John Cullum was also in that! He did get to sing.

And then in 1972 there was Redfield's last Broadway show of any kind, Dude. Hold that thought.

Gerome Ragni (ensemble, Horatio understudy) co-wrote the book and lyrics of Hair. You're probably familiar with Hair. It was kind of a big deal. And you may recall that one song took its lyrics from Hamlet:

I wonder if John Gielgud ever heard that song. And what he thought of the tortured scansion. "Majes-tickle," yikes. Not to mention leaving the "a" out of the title line. But it does pronounce "express" Gielgud's way! There's another Hamlet reference (along with some Romeo and Juliet) in "The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)."

Ragni also originated the role of Berger. Here you can see him singing the title song with his co-librettist James Rado on The Dick Cavett Show (he's the brown-haired one who starts on the floor) (and the one who starts singing the wrong part later in the song):

Oooo, I was scrolling through the comments and Adam Redfield, son of William Redfield, was among them, saying that his dad was a guest on the same episode! I guess this post pairing is even more relevant than I thought! Redfield's segment doesn't appear to be on the internet, alas.

And speaking of that relevance... as you may have guessed, Ragni was involved with Dude. He wrote the book and lyrics, without Rado this time, but again to Galt MacDermot's music. Dude... did not do as well as Hair. In fact, it was a pretty spectacular flop, running only 16 previews and 16 performances. It did get an album, but unfortunately it wasn't really a cast album, and Redfield isn't on it. There is an audio bootleg with him, but it's not tracked and, well, I don't really want to listen to that whole mess to find his parts. Maybe someday.

Anyway, The New York Times wrote an article about Dude - and quoted Redfield. That's right, we get to hear from Bill again! I've pasted his quotes below the cut, and you can read the whole article here. Everything about this show sounds wild.

“The songs were great but the script remained a mass of undoable nonsense,” said actor William Redfield, one of “Dude's” stars. “I'm very fond of Ragni but the truth must be told.”

...

During most of the rehearsals, choreographer Falco concentrated on movement. “It was like the Decathlon,” Redfield said. “We sprinted, we climbed, we tumbled, we ran. God, how we ran! I thought I was going to have a heart attack. We also rehearsed a lot of the musical numbers but the show was never completely blocked. And we didn't dare discuss the script. How could we? There was none.”

...

Once inside the Broadway Theater, technical problems arose. At the first runthrough, the stage, filled with two tons of top soil, filthied the actors and dumped dirt on everybody sitting in the first ten rows. People sneezed from the dust fumes; clouds of dirt rose into the air, making it difficult to see. At the second runthrough, the stage was watered down. Naturally, the dirt turned into mud. “Actors will do anything to get ahead, but this was too much,” Redfield said. “We phoned Equity and threatened insurrection.” Eventually the stage was filled with thousands of brown felt scraps to simulate dirt. But the felt went, too, to be replaced by plastic. Then Bufano called a company meeting which turned into a therapy session. “We became hysterical,” Redfield continued, “and released all our hostilities about the show, our fears. ‘When was Gerry going to write some new dialogue?’ we screamed. Later we began yelling about our careers and what the theater meant to us and what life on earth meant to us … “

...

At the first preview on September 11, “the audience wanted to kill,” according to Bill Redfield. “They kept yelling ‘rip‐off!’ Worst of all, they could neither hear nor understand us.”

...

They decided to go to Ragni in a body and give him an ultimatum: Either he rewrite certain key scenes or the show would close. “Gerry creates best under this kind of pressure,” Adela Holzer said. “I think he realized we meant what we said.” Even so, Redfield and Rae Allen (who played Adam and Eve) were forced to write some of their own dialogue. “We had to. It was either write it or stand mute in the confusion.”

Oh, for a sequel to Letters from an Actor!

[emailsfromanactor]

[emailsfromanactor]

The Cast of Hamlet (1964) in Musicals: Part 5

Oops I've been neglecting this again. Here we go!

Eileen Herlie (Gertrude) did two Broadway musicals. I hadn't listened to either until this project, and I'm glad I have now, she has a lovely singing voice. For the first show, Take Me Along, she was nominated for a Tony! Here she is with Jackie Gleason:

Next she did All American with Ray Bolger (yes as in the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz), playing a college dean. In this song, she attempts (pretends to attempt?) to seduce a student because... plot? Here's a synopsis, it's very convoluted. But the song is fun!

And here's the hit song of the show, a duet with Ray Bolger, because I can't not include him:

George Voskovec (Player King) was a replacement Herr Schultz in the original production of Cabaret! Here are some audio bootleg highlights. I haven't listened to the whole thing, but Voskovec is mentioned in the description, so he's probably in there somewhere.

Shortly after Hamlet, Robert Burr (Bernardo, Hamlet understudy) had a featured role in Bajour, a show which is, uh. Racist. Here's Burr's song, a duet with Nancy Dussault (plus ensemble). Warning for an anti-Romani slur in the dialogue, though the lyrics are fine.

Anyway, Burr was also in the ensemble of the 1947 revival of The Cradle Will Rock, which starred Alfred Drake, and he played Edouard Dindon in the first national tour of La Cage aux Folles.

Barnard Hughes (Marcellus, Priest, Claudius understudy) played Senator McFetridge, which seems to be a non-singing role, in How Now, Dow Jones. At some point during the run of that show, he took over a larger role. Much later, he played Henry in the film adaptation of The Fantasticks. Do not watch the film adaptation of The Fantasticks. A terrible representation of one of my favorite shows. :(

Geoff Garland (Lucianus, Gravedigger and Reynaldo understudy) was the Two of Spades in that Alice in Wonderland with Richard L. Sterne, and likewise didn't get to film it. He played some small roles in Cyrano with Christopher Plummer, appearing as the Monk on one brief dialogue-only track of the cast album:

Before those he played Lord Brockhurst in a regional production of The Boy Friend, and after, he did two productions of My Fair Lady as Alfred P. Doolittle.

Fun fact, All American, Bajour, How Now, Dow Jones, and Cyrano are all featured in the book Not Since Carrie: 40 Years of Broadway Musical Flops.