In 1973, Katharine Hepburn made a movie called 'A Delicate Balance', based on Edward Albee's play. Here her co-star Betsy Blair (who played Edna) reminisces about the making of the movie.
Once again, thank you for posting! This is a very difficult story to understand.Even Katharine Hepburn stated that she agreed to play the role, in part, to try to really understand it.
You're welcome. I know, I do find it a difficult movie. To quote Katharine Hepburn: "I'm a simple, nice person. I like to make Christmas wreaths, sweep floors, cook meals. I don't understand all this complicated stuff!" But eventually, as you stated, she did, but only while filming.
I remember a quote from “Kate, Remembered” where she said “I know Albee is the be all-end all of the American theatre but I never could understand what that play was about.” I’m glad she challenged herself because she is wonderful in the movie.
As abstruse and arcane as A Delicate Balance can be in spots, it is a model of simplicity and clarity when compared with Tiny Alice, a play whose incomprehensibility and self-indulgent symbolism make it one of Albee's most quixotic and puzzling works, in my view.
Thanks for allowing me to comment again. The play's concerns, in my take, are aging, addiction, relationships, family, expectations in life, disappointment, and hope and promise.
I can understand the need to have Hepburn in the film for financial reasons, but I regret that Jessica Tandy, who had created the role of Agnes on stage, was passed over for the film. This was the second time this happened; the first was when Vivien Leigh was cast in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire over Tandy, who had created the role of Blanche du Bois. And Kim Stanley, with her gloriously fey quality and gossamer voice, would have been infinitely superior to Kate Reid, whose flat, prosaic reading of line after line turns Claire into an Ethel Merman-like caricature, very nearly sinking the film. An opportunity missed.
Great interview. i always thought Blair was the weak link in the movie. Stiff, sometimes comical in the wrong places. She is dead wrong in her ambivalance about Kate Reid's performance. I have seen many Claire's. Reid is brilliant. Albee felt the same way in a video interview done in 1973.
Yes I agree that Reid was wonderful. Extraordinary - but I can see Kim Stanley. Totally. It would have been something to see her in that role. She is right that Stanley, Maureen Stapleton and Uta Hargen were a step above. They were beyond acting.
well Blair was about the only person in the cast, besides Lee Remick who did understand what the play was about. Intelligence in an actor helps when the material is little more complex than a Hollywood romcom , KH could only play one thing KH.
I agree. I strongly suspect that Remick is the performer with whom Paul Scofield once clashed, ever so quietly; an incident recounted by Blair at the 4:19 mark.
Initially I disliked Scofield in this. Over the years I have reversed and am enthralled with his performance. Kate Reid is the best of them all here, but I agree on Uta and Maureen.
The author disagreed strongly. Seems to me his quiet, detached persona was an excellent foil to Hepburn's exuberance. He may have looked uncomfortable because he was seriously internalizing the conflicts & personality problems surrounding him. See esp. Albee's remarks on the Harry-Tobias scene. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KI1bGNexdZw.html
@@user-bc9mn7gq2c It's a matter of opinion. I thought Scofield was unconvincing and his discomfort was through playing a role where I felt he was miscast. To me, his acting in the final scene with Joseph Cotton was particularly bad, his voice was all over the place.
Blair was a wannabe Commie; the Party didn't want her to join bc she was married to Gene Kelly. Over the years Ms. Blair was often asked why she chose to end her marriage to Mr. Kelly. “How could I have left Gene, this wonderful man, after 16 years of marriage?” she said in an interview with The New Yorker in 2003. “This perfect husband, father, friend, protector, provider, hard worker. I loved and admired him as a brilliant actor and dancer as well as a good, good man! To this day, I can’t explain it.” But in fact she could. “It had nothing to do with sex,” Ms. Blair said in the same interview. “It was freedom.” Oh, brother.
It is one thing Mr. Holmgren if you are going to critique her performance in Delicate Balance but another if you choose to do personal attacks on Ms. Blair's politics & first marriage, so I must ask what is your point you are making? This seems to be a personal attack!
@@alanwilliams4254 I do agree. I had always read good things about "Marty' and I watched it tonight without any knowledge about what might happen in the movie version. I liked it. I wanted to learn more about Betsy Blair who I had never heard of before. I didn't know she had a long marriage to Mr. Kelly. But for a youtube commenter to make assumptions about personal lives is judgmental and immature. Without direct knowledge of the evolution of her marriage, without having been a fly on the wall during their relationship, how can you form a real conclusion? geez
Alan Williams He is entitled to his view as much as anyone else here. She certainly inserts personal critiques of others here. Marty is a masterpiece of film - Betsy Blair was brilliant in it.
If you read Betsy Blair's book she mentions the illusions of Communism was not what she thought it would be after seeing Russia for what it really was later on in life she had had a distorted view of it all which she contributes to being very young and impressionable so classifying her as a "commie" is outrageous remembering she was only 19 at the time!!
