User Reviews

To my mind, anything with Hepburn in it is worth seeing. She brings an intelligence to every role she plays, and often brings out facets of a character we might not have seen in the performance of someone else. In this case, Hepburn is not the usual broken, defeated Blanche DuBois-type woman that is usually associated with interpretations of Amanda Wingfield. I have seen the Gertrude Lawrence version, in which she is very good, but brings to mind a downtrodden Auntie Mame. I also saw Maureen Stapleton play Amanda on Broadway. It was a sad and compelling performance, but that Amanda was lost before the action of the play commenced - there was no hope for her.

In this version, however, Amanda is definitely a fighter, and I think the performances of the other three actors have been taken up a notch or two more than usual to accommodate Hepburn's dominance. The arguments that Tom and Amanda have are truly terrifying, and it is evident why Tom feels that his creativity is being stifled - this Amanda drives him crazy.

Here is how I see Hepburn's Amanda: she was a very successful Southern belle, who is not imagining or augmenting her reminiscences. She really was the star of the show back home, but she made a grave error in falling for and marrying a completely unsuitable man. You can imagine that Amanda and her husband had the same kind of screaming fights that she now has with her son. Amanda regrets her mistake, and she sees her flawed and needy children as a sort of karmic result of her bad marriage. However, she refuses to give up, and she hounds them relentlessly to do something "better" with their lives. She is especially hard on her son because she fears that his wanting to be a writer will lead him to become the shiftless dreamer his father was. Additionally, there is a mild inference that Tom's nightly trips 'to the movies' may have some darker ulterior motive (perhaps gay sex?), and that Amanda suspects this.

Sam Waterston is a very strong Tom Wingfield. This Tom is conflicted in his feelings for his mother, and he is very guilty about his inability to do anything for his sister. In addition, there is an element of selfishness in this Tom, which he certainly inherited from his mother as well as from his absent father. Undoubtedly, Amanda's upbringing was of the sort that produces a vain and self-centered woman. As in the case in many families, Tom and his mother are very much alike, and that makes for a lot of friction. The last scene of the play, where Tom is anguished at his self-imposed isolation as well as his guilt in abandoning his sister and his mother, is beautifully played by Waterston. The play, certainly autobiographical, is also something of a metaphor, which Tennessee Williams used over and over, the acting out of his guilt at being unable to prevent his own sister from being lobotomized. It isn't likely he could have done very much as a young man to help her, but he never got over sharing her feeling of helplessness.

Michael Moriarity's performance as the Gentleman Caller is very interesting. He is a perfectly nice guy who gets caught in the mind games that the Wingfields play. It makes his ultimate rejection of Laura that much more poignant: he isn't the fast-talking, possibly dishonest guy that would be all wrong for her, but rather a decent young man who might have made a difference in her life, if he weren't faithful to his existing girlfriend. Then again, if Laura had really wanted him, she could have used all of the techniques she learned from her mother's tales of gentlemen callers to win him over. What we have in the Wingfields are three characters who don't like where they are, but who, because of weakness or psychological dependency, can't find a way out.

Joanna Miles' portrayal of Laura is especially interesting. In the first place, this actress was rather tall and robust looking, not the usual broken blossom associated with this role. But because of this, she very much looks like she could be Hepburn's daughter. Laura's fears and insecurities are shown very subtly by Miles. In this family relationship, the mother reads the cues of helplessness given by the daughter and lets her remain outside of society. However, for all of Laura's weaknesses and inability to cope, you sense a steely center. She does not do what she does not want to do, even though her brother does bend to Amanda's will to a degree. It was a common ploy in earlier days for women to pretend to be incapacitated so that they didn't have to participate in everyday life, and more particularly, so that they wouldn't be considered marriage material. After Tom leaves his family, you can imagine that the battle of wills in the Wingfield home will continue, but this those battles will be between Amanda and Laura.

With four outstanding performances, this version of The Glass Menagerie is a must-see. When I was a girl, such great American (and other) plays were broadcast every week, and not just on 'educational' channels. I am very glad that many of these performances are available on DVD, now that I am old enough to understand what I am seeing. Unfortunately, many of these transfers are not wonderful, and the video may not be of the best quality. Nevertheless, they are worth seeing to study and to enjoy. We were blessed to have a talent like Hepburn perform for us. I hope that each succeeding generation will view her work, which we are lucky to have preserved.

Deceptively simple, tragic four-character Tennessee Williams play set in St. Louis, with magnificent performances from Katherine Hepburn, Sam Waterston (yes, he did more than just Law & Order), Michael Moriarty (ill fated to later star in *Troll*, the worst film in history), and Johanna Miles (who deserves a greater reputation if only for this performance). Like a lot of his plays, happiness is just within reach but timing is just off enough to result in sorrow. Indeed, Waterston's character notes that "the greatest distance between any two points is time." If that were not enough, there's a million other great lines: "People go to the movies instead of moving"; "Science is supposed to solve all the mysteries of the universe only it seems like it just creates many more." Katherine also delivers a couple good lines about up-North Episcopalians being no good.

*Spoilers*

What is it with Tennessee Williams and his determination to not provide a happy ending? For awhile, it looked as if he would permit painfully shy Laura Wingfield a stab at romantic bliss but once your hopes are up, he smashes it like so much glass in the titular menagerie. Granted this is just the third Williams play/movie I've seen - the other two being Suddenly, Last Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - so I don't know if all his plays have so melancholy an ending, but these three works are arguably among his best.

The Glass Menagerie, again like his other plays I've seen, takes place in the South and features a stable of fascinatingly unstable characters. Amanda Wingfield, the matriarch, is bitter for having given up "dozens of gentlemen callers" to settle for her drunken lout of a husband, who has since fled the family. She constantly vocalizes her high expectations for her children but it's all in a misguided attempt to better their lives. Her stifled son, Tom, bristles everytime she lectures him but hasn't really done much to rebel, till now that is. Her wallflower of a daughter, Laura, is so timid that she threw up in class when she had to take a speed-typing test. Since then, she's been content to stay at home everyday playing her old records and tending to her glass animal menagerie. The story takes place over two days, culminating with a dinner in which Tom's colleague, Jim, is invited, unbeknownst to him, as a gentleman caller for Laura. Literal and symbolic glass will be broken, as Tom announces his joining of the Merchant Marines, Laura has her hopes crushed, and Amanda sees her tenuous hold on the family lost.

This is Katharine Hepburn's first foray into television and she received an Emmy nomination for her masterful acting and the successful modification of her patrician New England accent to that of a Southern dame's. A young (and surprisingly good-looking) Sam Waterston of Law and Order fame also received a nomination playing her volatile son. A similarly young and good-looking Michael Moriarty took home an Emmy as dashing, aw-shucks gentlemen caller Jim, as did Joanna Miles, with her breakthrough performance as emotionally-crippled Laura.

The sorrowful solitary lives of Amanda Wingfield and her children come to life in this 1973 adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie. At times the dismal St. Louis apartment of the Wingfield family seems more like a theatrical stage than a movie set. There is a very intimate quality about this drama that stays very true to Williams' original play script.

Amanda Wingfield (Katharine Hepburn) has never recovered from being abandoned by her husband and has created a life for her children and herself that centers on her past as a southern belle. Her daughter, Laura (Joanna Miles), lives in her own world of glass animals and old records, while her son, Tom (Sam Waterston), dreams of escaping from Amanda and his mundane life. Amanda's greatest desire is for Laura to marry. She coerces Tom into bringing a suitor home for Laura from his job at the warehouse. Jim O'Connor (Michael Moriarty) brings Laura to life when he comes to dinner. But Laura's happiness is only for a moment and we find that not everyone's story ends happily.

Under the direction of Anthony Harvey, Katherine Hepburn gives an amazing performance as an aging southern belle who hasn't lost her thick southern accent or the memories from her youth. Joanne Miles plays the shy, introverted Laura with subtle grace that captivates her audience. She also uses a southern accent to portray her character. Sam Waterston's character, Tom, has no trace of any southern roots and has a view of life that differs from his family's views. He flawlessly goes from being gentle and patient with his sister to annoyed and angry at the demands of his mother. Michael Moriarty's vibrant portrayal of Jim breathes life and hope into the drama. Moriarty's enthusiastic and expressive mannerisms rival those of Hepburn's.

The costumes of Amanda and Laura greatly contrast those of Tom and Jim's. The women wear old-fashioned style dresses, while the men look more contemporary in their suits. Harvey also uses the lighting differently among the characters. Tom is set into darkened backgrounds, whereas, Laura's character is lit by an almost-angelic light. "In Memory everything seems to happen to music," Tom tells the audience and the melancholy music, an original score by John Barry, blends perfectly with the scenery and characters.

The Glass Menagerie is a well-written, well-acted and well-directed drama that leaves its audience bit reflective and sad. In the words of Amanda Wingfield, " . . . the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!"

The Glass Menagerie Review

I recently viewed The Glass Menagerie which was filmed in 1973 by Anthony Harvey. The story begins with Sam Waterston, who portrays the moody dreamer Tom Wingfield, walking alone at night down a cold and wet city street. He begins to tell us a recollection of his home life, the life that he left behind. His memory begins with his mother Amanda Winglfield which is played by Katherine Hepburn, and his younger sister Laura Wingfield who is brought to life by actress Joanna Miles. Right away you can tell that Amanda is a demanding woman who wants reality to mimic her dreams, but more often than not they never match up. Laura immediately strikes the audience as someone who just wants to please everyone. Tom however is like his rebellious father who abandoned them for the "wild" world outside 11 years prior. Laura was afflicted with a disease when she was tiny that left her crippled, which also makes her extremely shy. So instead of interacting with the outside world and being as flirtatious as her mother, she hides at home and entertains herself with her collection of glass animals, aka her glass menagerie. Her world is as delicate as her glass; thusly Laura's mental state and personality are displayed through her menagerie. Of course that doesn't do for Amanda, and she at the beginning of the year had signed Laura up for classes at the local college, but Amanda soon finds that Laura stopped going after just 2 days, and hasn't been going the past 6 weeks. She is infuriated that her daughter's future has been tossed aside so she pushes Tom to bring home a "gentleman caller" for Laura to court. He does and to everyone's surprise, but Laura's dismay, the man he brings home is Laura's old high school crush; Jim O'Conner who is briefly played by Michael Moriarty. One thing leads to another and soon Jim & Laura are alone together. He soon finds his way past her cleverly designed walls, and they end up kissing. But he reveals that he is engaged and Laura's world is destroyed along with her brother & her mother's relationship with Tom leaving forever. In the end we find Tom begging Laura to "blow out her candles" and leave his mind, and she finally does.

It's easy to see why Tennessee Williams himself preferred this version to the 1950 version, in which Gertrude Lawrence portrays Amanda Wingfield as a harridan caricature, often for laughs -- against Williams's own stage direction that "there is much to admire" in Amanda. This is definitely a step up, not least because of the divine Katharine Hepburn, who inhabits the role completely and is convincingly crushed after the Gentleman Caller leaves.

However, like another commenter, I'm amazed at the Emmy wins and nominations piled on this version. If you're looking for a really, really speedy (in every sense of the term) version of The Glass Menagerie, this would be it. Someone seems to have made Miss Hepburn's coffee with about eight shots of espresso to the cup; she plays the role at 45 rpm, with gusts up to 78. Although she's got the accent nailed (e.g. the pronunciation of "boy"), no true Mississippian would speak that fast. The result, too often, is complete unintelligibility, unfortunately in a few pivotal scenes where Miss Hepburn and Sam Waterston, two New Englanders, attempt to impersonate a Mississippi belle and her (presumably) St. Louis-born son.

And speaking of stimulant drugs and garbled lines: Michael Moriarty alternates between a curiously bland affect and jumping around freakishly in his scene with Laura. He, too, speaks so rapidly you begin to suspect he's on speed, or has been threatened with death by ABC studio execs if he runs over a certain time limit. Conversing with Laura is supposed to be like pulling teeth, yet within minutes he's actually hoisted her into the air, kissed her while she's up there, and then allowed her to slide erotically down his chest! That must have been some exciting yearbook photo.

I just don't buy Joanna Miles in this role. Yes, as another commenter noted, she looks like she could be Hepburn's daughter, and the director accentuates this by having them dress similarly and strike near-identical postures in several scenes. But Miles is too normal, too merely shy instead of truly hampered in interacting with the world. Karen Allen, opposite Joanne Woodward as Amanda, does a much better job of portraying Laura's inability to cope. Also, there is a profound flaw in Miles's performance: she doesn't limp. Even slightly. This isn't a PC complaint; it simply makes every line of dialogue about her shame over her old leg brace, or Amanda's diatribe about never using the word "crippled," seem absolutely ridiculous, and ruins our suspension of disbelief.

Waterston really comes out the best here, but his Tom is more hangdog than fierce, and the only way we know that he writes is because of the scene, whose staging is obviously left over from the live version (much like Hepburn's pointing to the portrait of her children's father in the first act on the words "your father," as if they'd be likely to forget who that guy in the photo was), in which Amanda disrupts him. Little is made of the difference between Tom and Jim, which is a much bigger scene in other settings of this play. Waterston gives a brave try at the "Killer Wingfield" speech, but it's still not a patch on Malkovich's.

Summary? Go for the 1987 version unless you're a Hepburn (or Williams) completist, or just enjoy watching actors talk like auctioneers.

This is the story of a dysfunctional southern family. The matriarch (Katharine Hepburn) is a bit deluded, a bit pushy and a bit too talkative--much like a reworking of Blanche Dubois from "A Streetcar Named Desire"--but without the sexual subtext. The daughter is completely incapable of dealing with life--possibly because her mother is such a dominant person, she's become completely ineffectual and meek. So, the more the mother bullies her into dating, the more it forces the unattractive daughter into her shell. As for the brother, he is a bit of a cypher--and seems angry at his mother but mostly avoids her.

It's funny, but the first time I saw this play and tonight when I watched this 1973 version, I couldn't help but think that the big unspoken secret in this film was that Tom was gay. It made perfect sense, as back when the play debuted, they couldn't talk about such things and often had to talked about it veiled in various euphemisms. So, when Tom disappears all the time and returns very, very late, although he says he's at the movies, I couldn't help but assume he was cruising for men. This is especially likely since the author, Tennessee Williams, was gay and homosexuality is the topic of several of his other plays (such as in "Suddenly Last Summer"). Seeing the film in this context makes it much more entertaining and gives it much greater depth--so when you watch the film, try looking at it from this point of view.

So is all this any good? Well, yes and no. Yes, the film is compelling and the characters and situations are interesting--and the acting is quite good. But the film (like many of the adaptations of Williams' plays) is high quality but unappealing at the same time---and the film may easily leave you depressed and drained. Well done overall but not exactly a bag of laughs! Just keep this in mind if you decide to watch--you need to have a pretty high tolerance for raw family dramas involving rather hopeless families.

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a play about a small family, the Wingfields, growing up in a small apartment in St. Louis. The main character and narrator, Tom, is an unhappy man working at a factory. Tom is forced to stay home in order to pay for his mother and "crippled" sister Laura. Tom and his mother fight almost constantly the entire movie. This leads him to enough rage to leave his home, abandoning his family. The only thing that happens in the movie is a man coming over for dinner, who Mrs. Wingfield tries to set up with Laura. Plot gets a 2/5 star.

Acting in the Glass Menagerie was an element that really was done well. Amanda Wingfield was played perfectly, she talks the entire movie. By about midway through the movie she should be strangled for how annoying her voice gets. Not only Amanda, but also Tom, you can really feel Tom's desire to get out of his house. He almost sounds suicidal during the movie because he shows true hatred for his current life. Acting gets 4/5 stars.

The overall direction that this movie took compared to what was expected after reading it is very intriguing to analyze. It was anticipated that Mrs. Wingfield would be a very, very, talkative women. However, I don't think it could have been expected that she could be THAT talkative. It was very hard to sit through the first section of this movie. Another odd direction this play took was how it portrayed Laura, Tom's 'crippled' sister. She is a very awkwardly shy girl who has a brace on her leg. She seems to have some kind of mental illness as well. I did not think that Laura would be played like that. I thought she would be more physically impaired than mentally. The director had other intentions however.