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In fact, it was. At the age of fifty-five Cohan had
spent most of his life on the stage. As a child he toured in
vaudeville with his parents. By the time he was fifteen, he was writing
material, and he later became famous in plays he wrote, starred in,
and produced with Sam Harris. In fact, he had total control of the casting
and the production elements. Famous for his eccentric dancing and his
broad comedy, he was a crowd pleaser and became known as the Yankee Doodle
Dandy born on the Fourth of July—the title of a famous song he sang in Little Johnny Jones
in 1904. (That he
actually was born on July 3 was finessed.) Throughout the teens and ’20s
he retired from the theatre about ten times, but some idea for a play
always lured him back. In the ’20s, however, his plays seemed to find
less favor. By the time of Ah,
Wilderness! he seemed definitely out of critical favor. His
biographer, John McCabe, wrote, “If the critics were right and his plays
were either stunts or warmed-up melodramas, it might well be that his last
retirement should be his last.”77 However,
Theresa Helburn of the Theatre Guild sent him Ah,
Wilderness! to read. In fact, this was no bolt from the blue.
The Theatre Guild had wanted to get Cohan to act for some time and had
offered him Marco Millions before offering it to Lunt
(which probably piqued Lunt). Cohan didn’t care for that role, however.
When he read the new play, he called back to say it was
magnificent. One thing that may have influenced him (and the
Theatre Guild in offering the role) was the fact that the play is set
on the Fourth of July. He was also happy about the billing they
offered him: it was the first time the Theatre Guild put an actor’s
name in lights at the top of the marquee. But as McCabe writes, there was
concern about the rehearsal and production process. Cohan, the
star, known as the man “who owned Broadway,” was to be directed
by another person, work with actors he had not cast, and speak
lines he had not written and could not rewrite to get bigger
laughs for himself.78 The public saw him only as a broad comic actor always ready to do an encore, a happy-go-lucky guy, but Don Wilmeth characterizes him as “a complex and lonely man, rarely popular with critics and something of an outcast to his fellow performers when in 1919 he refused to support the establishment of an actors’ union.”79 He perceived in O’Neill’s play the opportunity to do something of real worth in the theatre. The Cohan file at Lincoln Center contains a surprising article called “The American Way,” which he wrote in 1920. In this he said that he had always felt that the play was more important than the actor, “although that is not the popular opinion of me.” He said that he had written many plays and stories, “but to my mind they have been negligible as contributions to the American drama—yet some of the worst made a fortune.” He believed that American playwriting up to that point had been smothered with tricks. Responding to the current urge to clean up theatre, he said he agreed that offensive plays should be removed—but that he meant plays that offended one’s intelligence. He felt that serious playwrights insulted the intelligence by preaching or writing poor literature. He denied the popular maxim that the public doesn’t want literature in the theatre, and said that Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon was proof that he was right. Noting that the scene between the two brothers was one of the finest things in the American theatre, he said, “It reads as well as it acts which is the fair test of dramatic literature.” People were amazed that Cohan, “the optimistic yea-sayer” (as McCabe describes him), was a fan of O’Neill’s plays. In an article headed “Cohan to Play Guild Lead in O’Neill Comedy,” the writer expressed surprise about Cohan’s response to the work. Cohan told him that he had “shouted praises” for Beyond the Horizon so much that people thought he had a part in it, “So it’s a kind of triumph for me to see this guy (O’Neill) become the modern Shakespeare.” The article said that Cohan talked banter about everything except the play, over which he “waxed serious . . . almost pious.” The actor said, “It’s a study in human nature, I guess you would call it a comedy, but it’s got a tragic theme—no ...it’s got a serious note in it.” Cohan was personally touched by the central relationship between the father and son, according to McCabe, and based the characterization of Nat Miller on his own father, Jerry Cohan, “the warmly stern gentleman of the old school.”80 His attitude toward Ah, Wilderness! must have influenced his demeanor in rehearsals. Apparently, as McCabe describes the process, they were models of order. Cohan took direction, was gracious to the ladies in the cast, sent them flowers like the old-fashioned gentleman he was, sat patiently on an old pile of canvas while scenes were rehearsed in which he didn’t appear, and revealed inexhaustible patience. O’Neill liked him because he was Irish, he represented the traditions of his father’s time, and he was a thorough professional. Writing later, O’Neill dismissed an actress as a ham who would not “play the game like Cohan.”81 In another letter he expressed concern that the Theatre Guild must be sure to “sew up” Cohan for the road tour.82 But it remained to be seen what the critics would make of Cohan in O’Neill. In the event, they thought he was startlingly, surprisingly wonderful when the play opened in 1933. Bernard J. Quinn called it “the presentation that amazed the theatrical world.” Gilbert W. Gabriel sounded the motif, writing, “George M. Cohan presents the Guild with the best performance most of us have ever seen him give.” Walter Winchell wrote that he triumphed in the role and spoke of the charm, tenderness, and comfort the evening offered.” Percy Hammond said that there were few dramas in which one would see subtler acting than that of Cohan, and John Mason Brown said Cohan surpassed himself, giving a performance that was reason enough to see the delightful play. Edith Isaacs wrote a long article about the play and
Cohan’s performance for Theatre
Arts, emphasizing the difference between the “clear line and the sharp active rhythm which
have been the familiar marks of his stage personality” and the
underplayed, gentle quality of his Nat Miller. He spoke softly,
sometimes through his nose or out of the corner of his mouth,
“yet his sense of projection is so accurate that, to the last seat
in the house, every syllable he speaks comes more clearly, and more
beautifully, than most players’ shouts.” She said that he gave
half-gestures and movements, which the audience completed in their
minds because they were unconsciously adding their own emphasis to
his, “joining him in the acting as in the idea.” She
said that the role O’Neill created is in fact an easy part to play,
“but what Mr. Cohan does to it is a lesson in the art of acting.” 83 |
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Brooks Atkinson gave the performance close analysis, noting the change in acting style: “Mr. Cohan gives the ripest, finest, performance in his career, suggesting, as in the case of Mr. O’Neill (and the comedy) that his past achievements are no touchstone of the qualities he has never exploited.” He continued by saying that the term “splendid”was exact, but was not enthusiastic enough for the kindliness and wisdom of the acting. “He is quizzical in the style to which we are all accustomed from him, but the jaunty mannerism and the mugging have disappeared. For the fact is that ‘Ah, Wilderness!’ has dipped deeper into Mr. Cohan’s gifts and personal character than any of the antics he has written for himself. Ironic as it may sound, it has taken Eugene O’Neill to show us how fine an actor George M. Cohan is.” Cohan certainly enjoyed the experience, greeting guests in his dressing room, giving each other “drinking lessons,” and generally enjoying life, especially on Saturday nights when he and co-actor Gene Lockhart went out to a saloon to celebrate. His drinking did not bother O’Neill because it was the type his father engaged in—in Long Day’s Journey into Night James Tyrone defends his drinking, saying that he was never late onstage and never missed a performance. Like O’Neill’s father, Cohan saved his drinking until after the performance. Furthermore, he kept in good health by running around the reservoir in Central Park. Apparently, the praise for his acting did not go to his head. When Ward Morehouse wrote about the performance in 1934 he remarked to Cohan that critics were calling him the best American actor since Edwin Booth, but Cohan responded, “Don’t let ‘em kid you—next year they’ll be panning me.” Of course the play was a smash hit when it toured. During the tour in 1934, Cohan was given permission by the Theatre Guild to do something very special. He went to North Brookfield, Massachusetts, which he associated with his boyhood. There, in the town hall he and the rest of the cast (without make-up, settings, costumes, or props) presented the play for Cohan’s friends and neighbors. Naturally, this was deeply moving for those who saw it, for the cast, and undoubtedly for O’Neill. The play touched the hearts of people throughout the country. Although the cast as a whole was excellent, focus tended to be on Cohan. Writing in Richmond, Virginia, a critic said that it was difficult to convert his rich performance into words and phrases, and spoke of his “tenderness, warmth and gentle humor.” By the time the play reached Chicago, however, a problem had clearly developed. A few years later, when Cohan was performing in another play, he frankly told reviewer Robert Coleman about a tendency he had in performance. Cohan was performing in a musical and said that he had been writing so long that he had a hard time keeping himself in check: the temptation to ad lib lines of his own was almost overwhelming. Cohan said he didn’t mind it so much in Ah, Wilderness! because it was a straight play, but that, in fact, he didn’t think it was a bad idea: “I always felt it had a tendency to keep the performance fresh and alive.” Apparently, Cohan didn’t remember that he had often succumbed to the temptation when Ah, Wilderness! went on the road. As McCabe says, “He began to add little touches and bits of business which, together with a growing tendency to pause reflectively in reaction to lines spoken to him, stretched the play’s original lengthy playing time by half an hour. This was a problem for the Theatre Guild because it added on terrific costs for overtime. Theresa Helburn went back to speak to Cohan about it in Chicago. He told her that in New York it would have been wrong, but that in the heartland, seeing Americans presented onstage, the audiences didn’t mind the length.85 She apparently felt that argument was useless and so he continued in his additions until the play closed in 1935. Following his success in O’Neill’s play Cohan achieved one more great success, playing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Kaufman and Hart’s musical I’d Rather Be Right. When he died in 1942, many long articles were written about his career. Most of them pointed to the surprise of his appearing in O’Neill’s play. One obituary noted that he startled the theatre world by accepting the role, then “to the surprise of everyone, except possibly himself and Mr. O’Neill, he turned the role of the small town, philosophizing newspaper publisher into the most subtle acting accomplishment of his life.” Another noted that it was remarkable for a song-and-dance man to score a triumph of legitimate acting in a play written by “the darling of the intelligentsia.” Despite all of his successes in musicals, despite all the wealth he gained from them, the theatre world and much of the public still remembered him as Nat Miller. An unidentified obituary concluded, “It was as the star of Ah, Wilderness! that Mr. Cohan gave his finest performance as a serious actor. Here ‘the man who owned Broadway’ proved that he could play, with deep understanding and effect, a role far removed from that garish thoroughfare or anything with which he had been previously associated.” O’Neill remembered him fondly in 1941 when the Theatre Guild considered a revival of the play. He wrote to Lawrence Langner, who apparently felt O’Neill might justifiably hold a grudge against the actor, “No I don’t think Cohan is an all-wrong idea. On the contrary. A revival with him would have real sentimental audience value. Trouble is, he never would know the lines now. It was bad enough for him before.” 86 Although O’Neill had been annoyed by Cohan’s ad libbing, presumably he forgave it and thought it was partly caused by actual difficulty in remembering the lines. He gave Cohan an elegant copy of Days Without End with an inscription that emphasized their friendship. One more aspect
of Ah, Wilderness! should
be noted. Although most of the critical attention went to Cohan,
the young actor, Elisha Cook, Jr. drew praise for his Broadway
debut in the role of the young son. He was born in 1903 and had
grown up in Chicago where his father was involved in theatre. He
became an itinerant actor by his early teens. In Ah,
Wilderness! he was particularly successful (despite his actual age) in
conveying “the tense, nervous, angular speech and motion of
youth” in good contrast to Cohan’s slow, thoughtful
characterization. Several critics called the scene between the two one of the
highlights of the play. Cook was much praised for his sensitivity and
charm and further successes as a stage actor were anticipated.
Instead, he went to the Hollywood where he performed in an almost
unbelievable number of films and, later, practically every
television show created. When
he died at the age of ninety-two in 1995, he was remembered for the
O’Neill role and his many movie roles. He was particularly remembered as
a sad little man shot down by Jack Palance in Shane and as Wilmer, the gunsel, in The
Maltese Falcon, in which he warns Bogart, “Keep ridin’ me,
you’re gonna be picking iron out of your liver.” A far cry from Ah,
Wilderness! The failure of Days Without End within a few months of the success of Ah, Wilderness! was a major blow for all concerned, but particularly for O’Neill and Larimore. Unfortunately, the last play by O’Neill to be performed on Broadway in his lifetime also failed to have great success. Much has been written about the production of The Iceman Cometh in 1946. As had happened in the past, the star, James E. Barton, let the production down. Instead of resting at the intermission for the great challenge of the last act, he drank and talked with friends in his dressing room. He had to be prompted so many times that when he once got a long section in without a prompt, he was applauded by the audience. Additionally, Eddie Dowling’s direction failed to illuminate all the aspects of the complex play with its shifting moods. The worth of the play (predicted by John Huston) was not revealed until José Quintero’s legendary production with Jason Robards in 1956 at the Circle in the Square. Later that year Quintero received permission to direct the American premiere of Long Day’s Journey into Night. The interviews that follow give a picture of the work of Quintero, Robards, and others involved in these two productions. However, Fredric March gave such a memorable, definitive performance as James Tyrone that space must be given to it here. As Brooks Atkinson wrote at the time, “The performance is stunning. As the aging actor who stands at the head of the family, Fredric March gives a masterful performance that will stand as a milestone in the acting of an O’Neill play.” 87 March
was the type of actor that O’Neill admired. His biographer, Deborah
Peterson, titled his biography Fredric
March: Born in 1897, March attended the University of Wisconsin. He played his first big part in 1922 in The Lawbreaker, produced by Alice Brady’s father, William A. Brady. In 1927 he married actress Florence Eldridge, with whom he usually acted from that time on. He acted on the stage, touring with his wife in Theatre Guild productions in the ‘20s but then turned to films. He refused to be categorized as a type, like many of the other big stars. A clipping in his file called “March Outlives Screen Average” mentions his success in films and his previous failure to make it big on the stage. He was intending to take up the challenge of stage acting again, saying, “I have never got to where I wanted to in it.” He noted wryly that a film actress had made reference to his stage past, asking, “How can you stand all those flops?” He then performed in New York in Yr. Obedient Husband, which was another flop, lasting only a few days. March took it in stride, putting ads in all the papers reading “Ooops, sorry.” He went on to achieve great success in Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, and A Bell for Adano, Sophie Treadwell’s Hope for a Harvest with the Theatre Guild, and Lillian Hellman’s The Autumn Garden. In interviews before the opening of Long Day’s Journey into Night, he observed that it had taken him and Eldridge five years to find a play they wanted to perform. The first readings of the play took place at Firefly Farm, the home he and Eldridge shared in New Milford, Connecticut. Initially it had been hoped that Geraldine Page might have played the role of Mary, but March would only perform his role with his wife. The cast got along very well and there was a real feeling of ensemble. So much so, that when Bradford Dillman and Jason Robards left the cast, March and Eldridge were discontent with their replacements. Later, they pulled out of the intended London production because they did not know who would play the sons. In general, March learned all his lines before rehearsals began. Peterson quotes him as saying, “Ithink it’s almost physically impossible to give a well-rounded performance without knowing it beforehand. To try and rehearse eight hours a day and then go home at night and knock more lines into your head—it just doesn’t work. You know it first, then try to polish it as you go along.”88 In this instance, he was still working on the lines as the rehearsals went along because it was such a long role. In an effort to develop the character he studied the great romantic actors of the 1890s and early 1900s in terms of their lives and onstage manner. Peterson interviewed Bradford Dillman, who admired March’s performance greatly and who observed him closely during rehearsals. “He always brought not only the vitality, but he brought intelligence. He had a great knack for making choices that were colorful and interesting. He had an element of danger—if I was sitting in the auditorium, I didn’t dare take my eyes off him because I didn’t know what he might be doing next that I might miss.” 89 Although not a Method actor, March tried to become the character he was performing. Peterson quotes him as saying, “To give an adequate performance, an actor must cast off his own identity and become the person he is portraying; that is, at least while onstage. That has been my compelling concern; to lose my own self in the role I am playing.” 90 When the play opened it was obviously a blockbuster hit. The production won for O’Neill the Pulitzer Prize, awarded posthumously. In his book on these awards, John L. Toohey wrote, “There could have been no other decision; Long Day’s Journey into Night completely overshadowed everything else produced this season (including O’Neill’s own Moon for the Misbegotten, an artistic and financial failure).”91 March and Eldridge received Variety and New York Drama Critics Poll Awards for their acting, despite the misgivings of some critics that she did not fully exemplify the role of Mary. March received the Tony Award for Best Actor as well as the Drama Critics Circle Award. Variety wrote, “March gives a virtuoso performance in the painful, complex and exhausting role of the father. It is a masterpiece of ‘projected-from-within’emotional acting, skillfully varied and paced and rising to a stunning climax in the final scenes.” His success in suggesting the type of romantic actor in the play (an element sometimes missed in later performances of the role) was clear, as Rowland Field wrote: “Fredric March as the swaggering, hectoring father plays with the flamboyance expected of the matinee idol he is portraying.” Walter Kerr gave a picture of the details of March’s performance: “Fredric March cracks down on the skinflint monarch that O’Neill remembered as his father with majestic authority from the outset. Laughing a bit too much and a bit too hollowly, working off his nerves with a restless cigar, snapping at every insult like a guilty bulldog, he foreshadows the whole sodden fantasia of the midnight to come.” Henry Hewes wrote a long, thoughtful article on the production for the Saturday Review. In particular he noted March’s consistency in a “miraculously sustained portrayal” and his ability to underplay moments that might have tempted a lesser actor to “indulge himself in a virtuoso stunt.” He praised Robards for all aspects and commented that he was able to “explode and steal the show.” He praised Dillman and Eldridge, but noted times in her performance when he felt something was missing. Like all of the critics, he gave credit to Quintero for the production.92 Many critics felt that March reached the height of his career with this role and that his success was matched by that of Robards. Richard Watts summed up that feeling, writing, “It seems to me that Fredric March gives the finest and most penetrating performance of his career as the father, but he is no more impressive than Jason Robards, Jr. who demonstrates in the role of the older son that he is an actor of tremendous dynamic skill. All of the promise he showed in The Iceman Cometh is here fulfilled.” The play was so successful, and
such a source of pride to America as a whole, that it was sent to Paris by
the State Department to represent the United States at the International
Drama Festival in Paris. The play enjoyed a long run in the United States,
which was wonderful, but also exhausting, for the cast.
Bradford Dillman told Peterson that he was trained to “give
life’s blood every night” so that he was utterly exhausted by a
performance, but he felt the Marches were not Method actors and didn’t
feel the same exhaustion.93 In fact, they did feel
the fatigue, as March told an unidentified writer: “Of course you want
to be in a hit, but Mrs. March and I did Long Day’s Journey into Night for sixty-nine weeks, four hours a night.” |
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