Katharine Cornell
Encyclopedia
Katharine Cornell was an American stage actress, writer
, theater owner and producer
. She was born to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York
.
Cornell is known as the greatest American stage actress of the 20th century. She was nicknamed "First Lady of the Theatre," a title also bestowed upon her friend Helen Hayes
, though each deferred to the other.http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,771605,00.html Nonetheless, her contributions to acting and to the theater are unparalleled. Cornell is noted for her major Broadway
roles in serious dramas, often directed by her husband, Guthrie McClintic
. Together, they formed a production company, which gave them complete artistic freedom in choosing and producing plays. Their production company gave first or prominent Broadway
roles to some of the greatest actors of the 20th century, including many of the great British Shakespearean actors. In addition, the strength of her acting and the quality of the productions brought popular success to such authors as George Bernard Shaw
and William Shakespeare
, who until then were not often performed, thereby paving the way for their eventual popularity throughout the country for the rest of the century and beyond.
in the 1931 Broadway production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street
. Other appearances on Broadway included: W. Somerset Maugham
's The Letter
(1927), Sidney Howard
's The Alien Corn (1933), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet
(1934), Maxwell Anderson
's The Wingless Victory (1936), S. N. Behrman
's No Time for Comedy
(1939), a Tony Award
-winning Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra
(1947), and a revival of Maugham's The Constant Wife
(1951).
She appeared in only one film, the World War II
morale booster, Stage Door Canteen
, in which she played herself and, along with one of the soldiers, recited a speech from Romeo and Juliet. However, she did appear in television
adaptations of The Barretts of Wimpole Street (recreating her original role some 20 years later), and Robert E. Sherwood
's There Shall Be No Night. She also narrated the Oscar-winning documentary Helen Keller in Her Story
.
Primarily regarded as a tragedienne, she was admired for her refined, romantic presence. One reviewer observed, "Hers is not a robust romanticism, however. It tends toward dark but delicate tints, and the emotion she conveys most aptly is that of an aspiring girlishness which has always been subject to theatrical influences of a special sort."
Her friend, modern dance
legend Martha Graham
, wrote: "One evening Kit spoke of making an exit. 'Martha, when you exit take everything with you, even the grand piano if there is one on the stage.' That is what Katharine Cornell could do, strip a stage leaving the audience a little forlorn and eager for her return."
Her appearances in comedy were infrequent, and praised more widely for their warmth than their wit. When she appeared in The Constant Wife, critic Brooks Atkinson
concluded that she had changed a "hard and metallic" comedy into a romantic drama.
Cornell died on June 9, 1974, in Tisbury, Massachusetts
(on Martha's Vineyard
), aged 81.
, Germany. Katharine's father was at the time studying medicine at the University of Berlin. Six months later, they returned to Buffalo and lived at 174 Mariner St in Buffalo, NY. As a child, Katharine was not considered conventionally pretty and was called Kit because she looked like a boy, a nickname that stayed for the rest of her life. Her relationship with her parents was troubled, one reason being her mother was an alcoholic. Later, Katharine would admit that she had an unhappy childhood.
Katharine would play act in her backyard with imaginary friends. As the Cornell family always liked being in plays, and her father was a noted amateur director, they encouraged Katharine. (Her father eventually gave up medicine to be a full time manager for the Star Theater in Buffalo, and later the Majestic.) Soon she was playing in school pageants and plays, and she would watch family productions in her grandfather's attic theater, still standing at 484 Delaware Ave. She also played at the Buffalo Studio Club parlor theater, located at 508 Franklin St.
Cornell also loved athletics and was a runner-up for city championship at tennis, and an amateur swimming champion. In her memoir, she says, "An actress' best friend is a body which responds instinctively to thought." She attended the University of Buffalo (later the State University of New York at Buffalo).
Later, after Cornell had become famous, she would often bring her productions to Buffalo to be seen by friends and family. Although she never returned to Buffalo to live, her enthusiasm for the city and its inhabitants was well known. Biographer Tad Mosel
states, "To show her affection for her hometown, she always walked slowly when she left her hotel, turning her head to smile on everyone on the street, missing no one, so they could feel close to her and be able to say when they got home that night, 'Katharine Cornell smiled directly at me.'" For the rest of her career, she would be greeted backstage by several family and friends from Buffalo on a Broadway opening night. Many of her productions were held at the Erlanger Theater on Delaware Ave.
http://www.buffaloah.com/a/del/120/index.html across from the Statler Hotel
. The theater was demolished in 2007.
. There she joined the Washington Square Players
and was hailed as one of the most promising actresses of the season. After just two seasons, she then joined the Jessie Bonstelle Company, a leading New York repertory
("stock") company that divided its summers between Detroit and Buffalo. (See Temple Beth-El (Bonstelle Theatre)
. Now aged 25, she was consistently receiving glowing reviews.
Cornell joined with various theater companies, including the Bonstelle, that toured around the East Coast. In 1919, she went with the Bonstelle company to London
to play Jo in a stage adaptation of Louisa May Alcott
's novel Little Women
. Although the critics disparaged the play itself, they specifically mentioned Cornell as the one bright spot of the evening. The paper The Englishwomen wrote of Cornell: "London is unanimous in its praise, and London will flock to see her." Upon her return to New York, she met Guthrie McClintic
, a young theater director. She finally made her Broadway
debut in the play Nice People by Rachel Crothers
. She had a small part along with Tallulah Bankhead
.
Her first real Broadway role came by playing the female role of Sydney Fairfield in A Bill of Divorcement in 1921. The New York Times wrote of her performance, "[she] has the central and significant role of the play and... gives therein a performance of memorable understanding and beauty." It played for 173 performances, well enough to be considered a hit. Afterwards, Cornell played a succession of forgotten plays.
She married Guthrie McClintic
on September 8, 1921, in her aunt's summer home in Cobourg, Ontario
, Canada
. Cornell's family often summered there among other wealthy Americans. Nonetheless, it is generally acknowledged that Cornell was a lesbian, and Guthrie was gay, and their union was a lavender marriage
. She was a member of the sewing circles
in New York, and had relationships with Nancy Hamilton http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss476_bioghist.html, Tallulah Bankhead
, and Mercedes de Acosta
, among others.http://books.google.com/books?id=2p3YN828fRkC&pg=PA203&lpg=PA203&dq=nancy+hamilton+actress&source=bl&ots=tGhzb7u6Xs&sig=bA0RzbuFtB-th337fToAiRscjXw&hl=en&ei=Gj9PTPjeC8T38AbBiqmJAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CDsQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=nancy%20hamilton%20actress&f=false The couple eventually bought a townhouse at 23 Beekman Place in Manhattan.http://nymag.com/homedesign/fall2006/21968/http://www.thecityreview.com/sutton/suttonpl.html
In 1924, she and Guthrie were part of The Actor's Theatre, a successor to the Washington Square Players, and was a group of actors that sought to be a democracy without any stars. As their first production, they selected Candida
, by George Bernard Shaw
. At the time, the play was considered perfect for the group, as none of the characters were considered as outshining the others, as Shaw intended the play to be about ideas, and no so much characters. Even though the leading protagonist is Candida, she doesn't really come into her until the third act. However, Cornell essentially re-envisioned the play. She made Candida the core of the play, and has been viewed as such by directors and critics ever since. Reviews were ecstatic and audiences responded in kind. The Actor's Theatre changed their plans and decided that Cornell's name must appear above the play's title in all future productions of the troupe. Another acting troupe, the Theatre Guild
, controlled the rights to all Shaw's plays, and thereafter only allowed Cornell to play the role of Candida so long as she was alive, a role which she reprised several more times in her career. Shaw later wrote her a note stating that she had created "an ideal British Candida in my imagination."
Cornell's next role was to play Iris March in The Green Hat, a romance by Michael Arlen
in 1925. The play had themes of syphilis and loose morals, and Iris March was a strong sexual creature. Leslie Howard
played the role of Napier. While the play was still in Chicago
, it became an international hit, known all over the US and Europe. Ashton Stevens
, senior drama critic in Chicago, wrote that The Green Hat "should die at every performance of its melodramatics, its rouge and rhinestones, its preposterous third act.... Already, I am beginning to to forget its imperfections and remember only its charms." It's chief charm, he conceded, was Cornell, who sent "tiny bells up and down my unpurchasable vertebrae." Most other critics panned the play itself, but nonetheless found it irresistible because of Cornell's ability to mesmerize, despite the garish dialogue. Critic George Jean Nathan
wrote that the play was "superbly acted in its leading role by that one young woman who stands head and shoulders above all the other young women of the American theater, Miss Katharine Cornell."
The play had 231 performances in New York before going to Boston
and then a cross country tour. The play's success spawned a fashion in green hats of the type worn by Cornell in the play. Later, Talullah Bankhead played the role of Iris March in a failed London production, and Greta Garbo
played the role in a movie version.
She then starred in The Letter
by W. Somerset Maugham
as Leslie Crosby, the woman who kills her lover, in 1927. Maugham himself suggested Cornell for the part. Although the critics weren't too excited, Cornell by now had developed a loyal following and opening night was a such a sensation that the New York Sun
wrote that the sidewalks were packed with people after the performance straining to catch a glimpse of her. The play was later made into a movie starring Bette Davis
.
In 1928, Cornell played the lead role of the Countess Ellen Olenska in a dramatized version of Edith Wharton
's novel, The Age of Innocence
. The performance received not a single bad review. After this success, Cornell was offered the lead in The Dishonored Lady." Originally, it was intended for Ethel Barrymore
who failed to accept the role. The play is a lurid melodrama about true life murder in Glasgow
, Scotland
. Walter Winchell
wrote, "Never in the history of the theatre has an actress of such distinction permitted such an exciting scene. She [Cornell] actually permits a man to crack her a powerful wallop in the face!" One critic complained about the "fifth rate claptrap" of a play, and chastised Cornell for selecting such low brow theater as a waste of her talents.
Vogue
asserted that Cornell does these types of plays because "she prefers... to be blunt, trash of a violent kind." Biographer and playwright
Tad Mosel
counters that although this is meant as a reproof, when stripped of its condescension, "it is a simple statement of the truth. There was a part of her that indeed preferred trash of a violent kind. Her integrity as an artist was the only defense such a preference needed. Every performance had to be as much a revelation of herself as it was an interpretation of a role, and therefore her choice of roles and the way she played them offer great insights into her nature, greater perhaps than can be inferred from her gracious, smiling, always agreeable, and increasingly guarded behavior offstage. One must look at her performances as one looks at the output of a writer or a painter."
in Rudolph Besier
's play The Barretts of Wimpole Street
. The play is based on the real story of the Barrett family who lived on Wimpole Street
in London
. The play opens with Elizabeth, the oldest child of a large and loving family. Their father is widowed and has become embittered and determined that none of his children would ever marry, lest they become slaves to the "brutal tyranny of passion" and "the lowest urge of the body." As the play progresses, his smothering concern for his family and particularly for Elizabeth, who is an invalid, takes on a sinister character. Poet Robert Browning
has read some of Elizabeth's poetry and comes to meet her, and they immediately find an attraction for each other. When he leaves, Elizabeth struggles to her feet to watch him disappear down the lane. Elizabeth and Robert later elope, against her father's strict orders, and when he finds that she has married without his permission or knowledge, he orders that her beloved dog, Flush, be put to death. However, her sister had taken care to see that her cocker spaniel joined them in their escape.Text of the play
The play has several difficulties. The lead role of Elizabeth has to be played as submissive to her father, yet must be the center of attention throughout. Although the ending is happy for Elizabeth and Robert, the rest of the family remains under the domination of the father, who is deranged in his obsession. Elizabeth must be played for the first half laying still on a sofa wearing heavy Victorian costume, and covered with a blanket, as befitting an invalid. Many, including Lionel Barrymore
, who was asked to play the part of the father, thought it was too melodramatic and past its time. The play was turned down by 27 New York producers before Guthrie read it and found it so moving, he cried whenever he read it.
When Guthrie was in London, he was able to secure Brian Aherne
to play the part of Robert Browning. Afterwards, Guthrie immediately went to a London jewelry store and bought a necklace, two bracelets and a garnet ring, all at least 100 years old. For every single performance that she ever gave as Elizabeth Barrett, Cornell wore this same jewelry in the last act where she leaves the family home for the last time. Katharine Hepburn
was selected for the part of Henrietta, but since she was going to play in a summer stock company a few months later, she couldn't contract. Casting the dog was troublesome, since it would have to lie still in his basket on stage for a great length of time, and then exit when called for. Guthrie selected an eight-month-old cocker spaniel who played the role for the full run and many others afterwards to unanimous applause.
Guthrie directed the play with a meticulous attention to period detail, and it lasted three hours. Cornell was herself listed as the producer, although it was actually produced by C. & M.C. Productions, Inc., a company wholly owned by both Guthrie and Katharine. The play opened in first in Cleveland, then Buffalo before reaching New York in January 1931.
Brooks Atkinson
wrote of opening night: "After a long succession of meretricious plays it introduces us to Katharine Cornell as an actress of the first order. Here the disciplined fury that she has been squandering on catch-penny plays becomes the vibrant beauty of finely wrought character.... By the crescendo of her playing, by the wild sensitivity that lurks behind her ardent gestures and her piercing stares across the footlights, she charges the drama with a meaning beyond the facts it records. Her acting is quite as remarkable for the carefulness of its design as for the fire of her presence.... The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a triumph for MIss Cornell and the splendid company with which she has surrounded herself."
All other critics were uniform in praise of her acting: superb, eloquent, exalted, dark, rhythmic, luminous, haunting, lyric, ravishing. Even Dorothy Parker
, known for her caustic wit and unsentimental reviews, wrote that although she didn't think it a good play, she "paid it the tribute of tears." Further, "Miss Katharine Cornell is a completely lovely Elizabeth Barrett.... It is little wonder that Miss Cornell is so worshipped; she has romance, or, if you like better the word of the daily-paper critics, she has glamour." The play ran for 370 performances. When it was announced that it was closing, the remaining performances sold out and hundreds were turned away.
The play's success engendered a revival of Robert Browning's poetry, and cocker spaniels became the popular dog that year. Irving Thalberg
wanted Cornell to play her part in an MGM production, even offering that if she was not completely satisfied with the result, the film would be destroyed. She refused, and a movie was released with most of the cast intact, and Thalberg's wife, actress Norma Shearer
, played the part. Cornell refused to ever act in movies because she had seen audiences laugh at the acting of old movies and did not want that to happen to her. According to biographer Tad Mosel, "she did not feel that she was acting for historians or nostalgia fans of the future but for audiences of the here and now, people who came into the theatre tonight, sat in their seats and waited for the curtain to go up. Not only were they the ones she wanted to reach, but she wanted to be there when they responded, she did not want to be off in another part of the world while they gazed at a second-hand image on a screen. In fact, she was not sure she could give them anything to respond to without the inducement of their presence." Moreover, the largeness of her facial structure—her bone structure—were so explicit that they could be seen to the last row, but "might have been less than an asset on the screen where the camera enlarges and exaggerates. Her voice and gestures were eloquent theatre props that might have been too much for the screen, necessitating adjustments so basic that she could not make them. And beyond physical equipment... it is possible that the quality she had as an individual, the unique something about her that transcended technique and craft and fifth-rate writing might not have transcended cameras; it would not have come through to an audience without her physical presence."
However, other sources state that Hollywood would secure Broadway plays for its own actors under contract, and that Cornell was never considered for the roles she originated. Additionally, Cornell apparently wrote to film director George Cukor
, intimating that she would consider a film if he would direct her. Nothing came of this effort.
She turned down many movie roles that eventually won Academy Awards
for the actresses who actually did play those parts, from Olan in The Good Earth
, to Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls
. Additionally, many of her hit plays continued life either as vehicles for other great actresses, or became movies. However, as audiences were deserting live theater for the movies, Cornell became even more determined to stay in the theater in order to help keep it vibrant.
. Her success in "Lucrece" landed her on the cover of Time Magazine on December 26, 1932. In the article, she is quoted as saying "To act, you have to burst out spontaneously and feel constantly and deeply. So if you're too accustomed to using your head instead of your feelings you won't be able to call on your feelings when you want them. I tell young women not to come on the stage, unless there is nothing else they can be happy in."
Her next production would be Romeo and Juliet
, with Guthrie as usual directing, and Cornell playing Juliet. It would be the first time either had participated in any Shakespeare play, and their inexperience showed. Moreover, Shakespeare wasn't fashionable, and his plays were not often presented in live theater, the last play being Hamlet
with John Barrymore
twelve years earlier. The play opened in Buffalo and had a difficult time. Her friend, modern dance pioneer Martha Graham
, choreographed the dance sequences. While still in Buffalo, Graham thought the Juliet costume all wrong. She bought some soft white nun's veiling, from which she fashioned a flowing robe.
The play was incorporated into a seven-month country-wide tour that would rotate three plays, Romeo and Juliet, Barretts, and Candida. Planned during the height of the Great Depression
, many theater experts and actors advised against such an ambitious tour. In fact, this was the first time anyone had tried to take a legitimate Broadway show on an all-country tour, let alone three. It took them to cities such as Milwaukee, Seattle, Portland, Oregon
, San Francisco, Los Angeles
, Oakland, Sacramento
, Salt Lake City, Cheyenne
, San Antonio, New Orleans, Houston, Savannah
, and back up the east coast to New England
. The actors assembled for the tour had to be able to play multiple parts and included Orson Welles
, Basil Rathbone
, Brian Aherne
, and Flush.
Because movies had so completely taken over from live theater, there were major areas of the country closed off to the tour. Many stops at smaller cities hadn't seen live theater since the First World War, or ever. Nonetheless, box office records were set in most cities and town. In New Orleans, women rioted when they found out that tickets has been sold out. Variety
reported that the tour gave 225 performances and played to 500,000 people. People in smaller areas would travel up to two days to see a performance, and the presenting towns would gain a small but welcome swell in revenues from restaurants and hotels as a result.
The most famous story to arise out of the tour came when the troupe was to play Barretts in Seattle on Christmas night, which was Guthrie's hometown. They planned to arrive in the morning, and as it normally takes six hours to set up the stage, do lighting and blocking checks and distribute costumes, they figured there would be plenty of time.
However, it had been raining for 23 days, and roads and railroads were being washed out. The train moved very slowly, often stopping. The theater management telegraphed that the venue had been completely sold out for the evening performance and wanted regular updates to insure the public that the production was on its way. The troupe kept up the telegraphs, but eventually even these lines gave out. By that evening, the troupe was still far from the city and gave up hope of doing any performance that night. The train finally arrived in Seattle at 11:30 pm. There was a lively crowd waiting for them at the train station, and the manager of the Metropolitan Theatre came up to Cornell and informed her that the audience was still waiting. Guthrie asked, "how many?" "The entire house," was the reply, "Twelve hundred people." Cornell was shocked and asked, "Do you mean they want a performance at this hour?" "They're expecting it," the manager replied.
All 55 members of the cast and crew immediately drove to the theater. Sets and props had to be protected in the downpour. As soon as the troupe arrived at the theater, the audience streamed back into their seats. Cornell decided that the audience could watch the sets for "Barretts" be unpacked and set up, and so raised the curtain. The stage hands, sound checks and electricians worked to accomplish in one hour what normally took six. By 1 am, they were ready to begin the play. Mosel writes, "The audience had paid the actors the supreme compliment of having the faith to wait for them, and the actors responded with the kind of performance actors wish they could give every day of their lives." When the final curtain fell at 4 am, they received more curtain calls than they ever had.
Ray Henderson, the troupe's publicist and manager, managed to get this story into every newspaper in America the next day. Alexander Woollcott
established a radio tradition on his program, The Town Crier. For years afterward, every Christmas, Woollcott would tell the story of the Seattle audience that waited until 1 am for to see Katharine Cornell 'emerge from the flood' and give the performance of her life. It was Woollcott who nicknamed Cornell "First Lady of the Theatre."
in New York with a completely new production. Guthrie threw out the entire production and started over, with just a handful of the actors from the tour. Orson Welles
was kept, but played Tybalt
instead of Mercutio
, making his Broadway debut. Maurice Evans
played Romeo, while Ralph Richardson
took the part of Mercutio, and Edith Evans
played the Nurse. Guthrie's idea was to keep the play 'light, gay, hot sun, spacious' with no hint of the doom that would conclude the play. Also, he coached Cornell to read for meaning, sense and emotion, in place of the poetics of iambic pentameter.
This was a great break with past productions, which up until then had relied upon Victorian prudery and notions of how a classic play should be performed. Guthrie reinstated the Prologue and believed that all twenty-three scenes were necessary, cutting only the obsolete comedy of the musicians and servants. For the first time. the carnal desires, the youthful romanticism, and the earthiness of language were given equal importance.
The production opened in December 1934, and, as usual, the reviews were glowing. Burns Mantle
called Cornell "the greatest Juliet of her time." Taking note of the freshness of approach, Richard Lockridge
of the New York Sun
wrote that Cornell played Juliet as "an eager child, rushing toward love with arms stretched out." Cornell herself said that her biggest secret of acting is to do away with all excesses and embellishments, to bring an interpretation to its utmost simplicity. Margot Stevenson from the original cast later said that Cornell was "just this big Italian girl in love!" Stark Young
said in The New Republic
: She makes you believe in love, that Juliet loves, and that the diapason and poetry of love are the reward for its torment. Of various [other] Juliets this must have been one of the last things to be said."
John Mason Brown
wrote in the New York Post
: "It is not often in our lifetime that we are privileged to enjoy the pleasant sensation of feeling that the present and the future have met for a few triumphant hours.... Yet it was this very sensation—this uncommon sensation of having the present and future meet; eye-witnessing the kind of event to which we will be looking back with pride in the years to come—that forced its warming way, I suspect, into the consciousness of many of us last night as we sat spellbound. Miss Cornell's Juliet is luscious and charming. It finds her at her mellowest and most glamorous. It burns with the intensity Miss Cornell brings to all her acting. It moves gracefully and lightly; it is endlessly haunting in its pictorial qualities; and reveals a Miss Cornell who equals the beauty of the lyric lines she speaks with a new-found lyric beauty of her own voice.... To add that it is by all odds the most lovely and enchanting Juliet our present-day theatre has seen is only to toss it the kind of superlative it honestly deserves." Later, the same critic determined that this role was a turning point in her career, as it meant that she could finally leave the 'trifling scripts' of her earlier career and could meet the challenging demands of the greatest classic roles.
was given his first prominent Broadway role. Critics found that this new production had grown richer and more satisfying, but closed three weeks later because other plays were contracted.
The next play, also starring Meredith, was Flowers in the Forest, a didactic anti-war play that lasted only 40 performances and counts among Cornell's greatest failures.
by George Bernard Shaw. Guthrie cast Maurice Evans
as the Dauphin, Brian Aherne as Warwick, Tyrone Power
as Bertrand de Poulengy, and Arthur Byron as the Inquisitor. St. Joan opened on March 9, 1936, and Burns Mantle wrote that the triumph belonged to two maids, "the Maid of Domrémy
, France
, and the Maid of Buffalo, N.Y." John Anderson of the New York Journal wrote, "Before there is any haggling, let it be said that it is Shaw's greatest play and that Miss Cornell is superb in it. She is beautiful to look at and her performance is enkindled by the spiritual exaltation of a transcendent heroine."
It was in this play that Cornell's real artistry became apparent. Audience members talked of having been 'changed' by her performance, and 'mesmerized.' Writer S.N. Behrman said "it was something essential in herself, as a person, that the audiences sensed and reached out to." Another said that she was like "radium, flashing its healing rays," while others used an older phrase, "magnetic influence."
The play closed in the spring of 1936 only because the production company had already contracted to produce Maxwell Anderson
's The Wingless Victory. St. Joan finished with a seven-week tour through five major cities.
Flush, the spaniel that played the part of Flush in Barretts, died in July 1937. He had played his role 709 times, and traveled over 25,000 miles on tours, never getting drunk or arriving late. At his death, the Associated Press
sent the story out over its entire network worldwide.
's Wingless Victory, Guthrie decided to avoid the so-called 'star entrance,' where the audience expects the star of the play to enter grandly to general applause. Instead, he had another character take the star entrance, and only then was it revealed that Cornell was onstage. The effect was startling. Opened in 1936, the play received mixed reviews, and many bad ones, but Cornell was nonetheless respected for taking any role and twisting it to make it her own. Gently disparaging the play itself, Brooks Atkinson wrote that Cornell is "Our Queen of tragedy, a thoughtful actress and a great one."http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30B16FD3F5A1B7B93C6AB1789D95F428385F9&scp=16&sq=%22Katharine%20Cornell%22&st=cse
Alternating with Victory, Cornell revived Candida with Mildred Natwick
as Prossy. After their conclusion, she took a year off and wrote her memoir (with the help of Ruth Woodbury Sedgewick) entitled "I Wanted to be an Actress". It was published by Random House in 1939.
, Alfred Drake
, Keenan Wynn
and Nancy Hamilton. Immediately after that closed, Cornell starred in her second comedy, No Time for Comedy
by S.N. Behrman. Guthrie cast the young Laurence Olivier
in the title role, giving him his first major Broadway appearance.http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB091FF63B58127A93CAA8178FD85F4D8385F9&scp=17&sq=%22Katharine%20Cornell%22&st=cse During rehearsals, Cornell had a difficult time with the comedic timing, and someone shook their head and said, "Poor old Kit!" Olivier shot back, "Poor old Kit is the most successful woman in the American theater! The richest, the most beautiful, the most sought after, the most distinguished, the most loved -- Poor old Kit indeed!"
In his memoir, S.N. Behrman wrote, "Miss Cornell had less [exhibitionism] than any actress or actor I have ever known. Her position in the theatre transcended technique.... It was something essential in herself, as a person, that the audiences sensed and reached out to.... The whole stage and the other actors took light from the radiance of her personality."
The play opened on April 17, 1939 and became the third biggest money maker for Cornell, and the second production to gross over a million dollars. With a few cast changes, including that of Olivier, the play went on a nationwide tour.
starred opposite her. Her production company was running so smoothly that Massey said, "Whatever anyone tells you, Kit ran her own show. They will say everything was managed by those people around her, but it is absolutely not true. She knew everything that was going on and she made all the decisions. At the end of the day you could find her poring over the box office receipts. She was a shrewd and intelligent businesswoman."
The play opened in 1941 in San Francisco, just one week before Pearl Harbor
, and was the only show not cancelled, despite numerous blackouts. Given the distraction of the war, the play was not well received. Gregory Peck
was part of the tour as 'the secretary.'
, Cornell decided upon a revival of Candida to benefit the Army Emergency Fund and the Navy Relief Society. Of her five productions of this play, this fourth one is remembered for the star studded cast of Raymand Massey, Burgess Meredith, Mildred Natwick
and Dudley Digges
. Cornell was able to convince all actors, Shaw, the theater hands and the Schubert organization to donate their labor, services and venue for free so that almost all proceeds went directly to the fund.
urged Guthrie to produce Anton Chekhov
's Three Sisters
. Judith Anderson
played Olga, Gertrude Musgrove was selected for Irina, while Cornell had the role of Masha. Others included theater legend Edmund Gwenn
, Dennis King
and Kirk Douglas
in his Broadway debut. The play opened in Washington in December 1942, and no one expected it to be much of a financial success. The opening was attended by Eleanor Roosevelt
and the Soviet ambassador. It then played for 122 performances in New York before going on the road, exceeding the low expectations. It had the longest run of any Chekhov play in the U.S. and the longest run of this particular play anywhere up to that point.
Cornell is said to have played Masha with a nobility of spirit without ostentation, and that she found the wit in her role. Time Magazine wrote, in anticipation of its opening, "Not for nothing is Katharine Cornell the top-ranking actress in the U.S. theater as well as a successful producer as well as the wife of able Director Guthrie McClintic. Over the years Cornell has performed many near-miracles. She has made the yearning soul as good box office as the fiery body. She has made an invalid lady on a couch the essence of glamor. She has turned Shakespeare and Shaw into rousing hits. And when, next week, she brings her revival of Chekhov's 'The Three Sisters' to Broadway, it will boast a dream production by anybody's reckoning — the most glittering cast the theater has seen, commercially, in this generation."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQT6A3uvy0, which starred many of Hollywood's best actors, under the auspices of the American Theatre Wing
for War Relief. This organization was created by playwright Rachel Crothers
, and created the Stage Door Canteen to entertain troops during the war. Cornell donated time to work at the Canteen cleaning tables.http://americantheatrewing.org/about/history_of_atw.php
General George C. Marshall asked Cornell to do a play to entertain the troops in Europe. Cornell decided to take "Barretts of Wimpole Street" to the troops in Europe as a touring production with the USO and the Special Services Division. However, the USO and the Division stated that no G.I. would sit for a three-hour costume drama
about two middle-aged Victorian
poets. They suggested an alternate, some sort of 'ribald farce
' in case Barretts proved a failure. Cornell would prepare Blithe Spirit
, but nonetheless insisted upon Barretts, saying that if she was going to entertain the soldiers, she must take them her very best, and her very best was "Barretts." The army then insisted that they cut the love scenes, as the play was far too long at three hours, wanted someone to 'explain' the play to the men beforehand, and prepared her for what they saw as rude, tasteless and ignorant troops. The entire company, backed by Cornell and Guthrie, resisted all entreaties and played their roles with every degree of authenticity as the Broadway original.
At the first production, the army's fears seemed to be validated. At the start of the play, which takes place in damp, chilly London, the doctor advises that Elizabeth go to Italy
for rest. The audience, G.I.s fighting in war-torn Italy, exploded in laughter, hooting, yelling and stamping. According to actress Margalo Gillmore
, "It was true, then, we thought, they would go on laughing and it would never stop and the Barretts would go under a tidal wave of derision. But we were wrong. Kit and Guthrie were holding the laugh, just as if they had heard it a hundred times, not showing any alarm, not even seeming to wait for it, but handling it, controlling it, ready to take over at the first sign of its getting out of hand. It rose and fell and before it could rise again, Kit spoke."
The play continued, and outbreaks of an occasional catcall, guffaw or heckling were quickly shushed by others. Gillmore continues: "Kit had a shining light in her. With that strange sixth sense of the actor that functions unexplainably in complete independence of lines spoken and emotions projected, she had been aware of the gradual change out front from a dubious indifference to the complete absorption of interest. At first they hung back, keeping themselves separate from us, a little self-consciously, a little defiantly, and then line by line, scene by scene, she had felt them relax and respond and give themselves up to the play and the story, til at least they were that magic indivisible thing, an audience. 'We must never forget this, never,' said Kit. 'We've seen an audience born.'"
The tour opened in Santa Maria, a small town 15 miles north of Naples
, in 1944. G.I.s lined up three hours ahead of time and profusely thanked the cast afterwards. Brian Aherne wrote that after one show in Italy, the manager overheard a tough burly paratrooper say to his buddy, "Well, what I tell ya? Told ya it would be better than going to a cathouse." Convinced of its success, the army brass okayed two more weeks. The company eventually played for six months, from August 1944 to January 1945, throughout Italy, including stops in Rome
, Florence
and Siena
. From there, the company was transferred under the aegis of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
and played in France
, including Dijon
, Marseilles, Versailles
. In Paris
, Gertrude Stein
and Alice B. Toklas
wanted to see the play, but found that performances were strictly limited to enlisted personnel. They were nonetheless given disguises and were able to see the play. Additionally, the cast made a point of visiting hospitals every day throughout the entire tour.
Now aged 51, Cornell was then told by the army that she had done enough for the effort and to remain in Paris. Her response was to be taken as close to the front as possible. The company performed in Maastrich and Heerlen in the Netherlands
, just eight miles from the front. The tour concluded in London
amid exploding German V2 bombs.
Upon her return to New York, Cornell found mail piled up from the G.I.s who had seen the show. They thanked her for "the most nerve-soothing remedy for a weary G.I.," for having brought "yearned-for femininity," reminding them that, unlike other USO shows, "a woman is not all leg," and for "the awakening of something that I though died with the passing of routine military life in the foreign service."
Long after the tour was finished, Cornell continued to receive letters, not just from servicemen who had seen the show, but from wives, mothers and even school teachers from the home front. Their letters say that the first letter they received from their boy came after he had seen her show, or it was the first time they had heard from them in two years. Fellow actors reported that G.I.s in the South Pacific
were heard to talk about the show.
After the war, Cornell co-chaired the Community Players, a successor to the American Theatre Wing, to assist war veterans and their families on their return home.
Cornell was featured for the second time on the cover of Time magazine on December 21, 1942, with Judith Anderson and Ruth Gordon.
playing the role of the young Marchbanks. Whereas Cornell represented an older, exuberant romantic style, Brando heralded the newer style of Method Acting
, with its reliance upon psychological insights and personal experience. Although reviews were a good as ever, audiences and some critics had difficulty with the play itself, as the Edwardian drama had little relevance to post-war American life.
Now in her mid-50s, appropriate roles became harder to find. The plays that earned her such an exceptional reputation — young Elizabeth Barrett, Juliet, St. Joan, various sexually charged women — were no longer playable by her. The newer roles were simply not her style.
, which opened at the Hanna Theater in Cleveland, a difficult role for which she was ideally suited. Although often played for her youth and beauty, Cornell chose to play her as a mature woman. The last production in New York had been in 1937 with Tallulah Bankhead in the lead, and it was no success. Critic Ward Morrison proclaimed the Cornell's "beauty and power and grandeur and I do not hesitate to proclaim it one of the finest achievements of her career." Again, Cornell's presence insured that this play would have it longest run ever at 251 performances.
She followed that with Jean Anouilh
's adaptation of the Greek tragedy Antigone
. Sir Cedric Hardwicke
played King Creon
, and Marlon Brando
was cast as The Messenger. After the opening, Cornell's friend Helen Keller
told her, "This play is a parable of humanity. It has no time or space." One critic said, "if the world and the theatre had more courageous spirits like [Cornell], our cumulative dreams would be greater, our thoughts, nobler."
Alternating with Antony, Cornell alternated with another revival of Barretts of Wimpole Street, for an eight-week tour to the West Coast, with Tony Randall
in both plays, and Maureen Stapleton
as Iras in Antony.http://americantheatrewing.org/biography/detail/tony_randall/ Other cast members included Eli Wallach
, Joseph Wiseman
, Douglas Watson, Charles Noble, and Charlton Heston
.
dramatized her historical novel For One Sweet Grape into That Lady," set in the Spain
of Philip II
. A swash buckling romance, the play was not well received. In 1951, Cornell played the lead in Somerset Maugham's comedy, The Constant Wife
for a summer festival in Colorado. The play, starring her longtime favorite Brian Aherne was produced again in New York and grossed more money for the production company than any other play.
In 1953, Cornell found a suitable role in The Prescott Proposals, about a United States Delegate to the United Nations
. Christopher Fry
wrote a verse drama The Dark is Light Enough
, set in the Austria
of 1848. The cast included Tyrone Power
, who played the love interest, Lorne Greene
, and Marian Winters
. (Christopher Plummer
was Power's understudy
. In his memoir
, Plummer states that Cornell was "the last of the great actress-managers, and that she was his "sponsor.") In 1957, Cornell staged There Shall Be No Night
, the Pulitzer Prize
winning play by Robert E. Sherwood
. This play was adapted for the TV and broadcast on NBC
with actor Charles Boyer
. Another play by Fry, The Firstborn, was set in Biblical Egypt
, with Anthony Quayle
playing Moses
. Leonard Bernstein
, recently appointed musical director of the New York Philharmonic
, wrote two songs for the production. The play toured in Tel Aviv
in 1958. She continued with several other forgettable plays, and her last production was Dear Liar, by Jerome Kilty.
Although Cornell was constantly performing, she took a three year absence while she recovered from a lung operation from 1955 to 1958. Additionally, with the exception of The Constant Wife, box office receipts were lagging even when she received excellent reviews. Tours continued to sell out, but even those began to fail as the decade bore on. By the end of the 1950s, the C. & M.C production company was finished. She did find time in 1954 to be the narrator for the film The Unconquered, the lifestory of her friend Helen Keller
.
Starting in the 1940s, however, she began to collect tributes from various theatrical organization and colleges and universities, which bestowed her with honorary degrees and awards.
, next door to Brian Aherne
and down the street from Margalo Gillmore
. Since all three were cast members of Barretts, E. 51st St became known as Wimpole Street
. Cornell also bought an old building on Martha's Vineyard
known as the Barn and made additions to it. Cornell restored the 300 year old Association Hall on the island, which was eventually renamed the Katharine Cornell Theater.
For her 80th birthday party in 1973, an assistant put together a tape of birthday greetings from Laurence Olivier
, John Gielgud
, and Ralph Richardson
, among many other actors whom she had known. The tape runs for seven and half hours. She died of pneumonia
on June 9, 1974 at the Barn in Tisbury, Massachusetts, and is buried next to the Association Hall that she had restored and was subsequently named in her honor.http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=235&PIpi=1456530
In her memoir, Cornell states: "I do think that the rapid success achieved by some people in pictures has seriously hurt the chances of a lot young men and woman who are studying for the stage. The success stories that we read in the Hollywood magazines make it all sound too easy. A youngster was a chauffeur yesterday and today he owns four swimming pools! It doesn't work that way on the stage.... Some young actresses haven't been inclined to listen to me when I told that there was no royal road to success on the stage.
Getting started in the theatre still has a great element of luck in it, of course. Some producer must see the right person at just the right time. To get that kind of break, a girl has got to keep pounding away and tramp the streets from one manager's office ot another, no matter how discouraging it may be. At the same time, she must remember that when the break does come, she must have the equipment necessary to capitalize on it. I get the impression that most of the young girls who come to me for parts simply haven't worked hard enough. In New York they have every chance in the world to round out their education in their spare time. At the galleries along 57th Street they can see the best pictures in all the world. They can hear the finest music. They can get the best books in inexpensive editions. Best of all, they can listen to the finest actors and actresses of the day. When they tell me that they can't afford to go to the theatre very often, I usually find they think it beneath their dignity to sit in the top balcony!
I think the most important thing for young actresses to do is to learn to use their voices properly. I always found the reading French aloud helped me tremendously. I think that French makes you use your mouth more than any other language I know. I still occasionally read some French book aloud to myself before a performance."
Town Hall on Martha's Vineyard
houses a theatre on its second floor. Originally known as Association Hall, it was re-named "The Katharine Cornell Theater" http://www.kctconcerts.com in her honor and later, her memory. A donation from her estate provided the funds for renovation (lighting, heating, elevator) as well as decoration of four large murals depicting Vineyard life and legend by local artist Stan Murphy. The Katharine Cornell Theater is a popular venue for plays, music, movies and more. Her gravesite and memorial are located next door to the Theater.
There is another theater space at the State University of New York at Buffalo named in her honor. Many student productions are presented there year round.
The Katharine Cornell-Guthrie McClintic Room was dedicated in April 1974 at the New York Public Library
's Theatre Collection at Lincoln Center. The room contains a large collection of Cornell's papers, reviews and other items.
Smith College
has a collection of Cornell's papers dating from 1938 to 1960http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss230_main.html; plus additional materials in the papers of Nancy Hamilton link
The New York Public Library contains correspondence between Russian dance critic Igor Stupnikov and Cornell's assistants Nancy Hamilton and Gertrude Macy in the Billy Rose
Theater Archive.
Cornell donated some of her costumes designed by famed Russian fashion designer Valentina
to the Museum of the City of New York
. They include costumes for her roles in Cleopatra and Antigone.
Cornell and Quayle also recorded for LP a scene from Barretts, and Cornell recited a selection of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett from Sonnets from the Portuguese. Cornell's short scene in Stage Door Canteen can be viewed on YouTube. In it, she recites some lines from Romeo and Juliet.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQT6A3uvy0
On April 2, 1956, NBC
TV broadcast of a production of Barretts with Anthony Quayle in the role of Robert Browning.http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=people&c=tv&advanced=1&p=1&item=T78:0344. Cornell was featured in a Hallmark Hall of Fame
production of Robert E. Sherwood
's play, There Shall Be No Night
. It was broadcast on NBC on March 17, 1957.http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=people&c=tv&advanced=1&p=1&item=T78:0158
On January 6, 1957, Dave Garroway
interviewed Cornell for Wide Wide World
: A Woman's Story.http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=people&c=tv&advanced=1&p=1&item=T80:0190
She also appeared on TV as herself for an NBC Symphony Orchestra
broadcast on March 22, 1952,http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=people&c=tv&advanced=1&p=1&item=T77:0206 (Cornell and Guthrie often tuned into the Orchestra broadcasts, even while on tour. Often the cast and crew would join them in listening to the radio.)
Additionally, she was interviewed three times for the radio program Stage Struck, hosted by Mike Wallace. http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=all&c=all&advanced=1&p=1&item=R78:0207 http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=all&c=all&advanced=1&p=1&item=R78:0219 http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=all&c=all&advanced=1&p=1&item=R78:0210
for Antony and Cleopatra (1947, award year 1948) along with Jessica Tandy
in A Streetcar Named Desire
and Judith Anderson
in Medea
. It was the first time any actor, male or female, won a Tony Award playing a Shakespearean role. Additionally, she was honored with the first New York Drama League Award
in 1935 for her performance as Juliet. In March 1937, The Chi Omega
Sorority's National Achievement Award was given to her by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt
at a White House
reception.
Cornell was awarded a medal 'for good speech on the stage" by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
, and received a citation as Woman of the Year by the American Friends of the Hebrew University in 1959.
After her role in St. Joan, she was awarded honorary degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Elmira College
,http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1787&dat=19370613&id=F5YcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XWQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1471,5701383 Smith College
, the University of Pennsylvania
, and Hobart
. Clark University
, Ithaca College
and Princeton
awarded degrees in the 1940s, and Baylor University
, Middlebury College
and Kenyon College
awarded theirs in the 1950s.
On January 10, 1974, she received the American National Theater and Academy
's National Artist Award for 'her incomparable acting ability" and for "having elevated the theater throughout the world." http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1979&dat=19740115&id=1FwoAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BwYGAAAAIBAJ&pg=4768,1607534
In 1935, when the University of Buffalo was still a private institution, she was awarded the Chancellor's Medal of the University.
The Artvoice,http://www.artvoice.com a weekly arts newspaper in Buffalo, each year awards the Katharine Cornell Award, given to visiting artists for outstanding contribution to the Buffalo theater season.
The townhouse at 33 Beekman Place that Cornell and her husband lived in for many years has a historical marker in honor of their importance to New York City.
Her husband, Guthrie McClintic, wrote a memoir entitled Me & Kit, published in 1955 by the Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown Company
Lucille M. Pederson wrote a biography entitled, Katharine Cornell: A Bio-biography, published in 1994 by the Greenwood Press. Gladys Malvern wrote a book entitled, "Curtain Up! The Story of Katharine Cornell." It was published in 1943 and includes a forward by Katharine Cornell.http://lccn.loc.gov/43016810
Additionally, a biography of Cornell was written in Russian by Igor Stupnikov, a Russian dance critic.http://www.nypl.org/archives/4693.
Flora Merrill wrote Flush of Wimpole Street and Broadway, a book about the cocker spaniel that starred in Barretts. It was published by Robert McBride & Co., New York, 1933. It is illustrated by Edwina. Inspired by the play, Virginia Woolf
wrote Flush: A Biography
, a part fiction, part biography of the original dog owned by Elizabeth Barrett. It was also published in 1933.
holds a bronze bust of Cornell from 1961 by artist Malvina Hoffman
. Additionally, it has a pastel portrait by William Cotton from 1933.http://www.npg.si.edu/competition/site/about/image_credits.html
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery
in Buffalo, NY, has a 1926 full length portrait of Cornell by artist Eugene Speicher
in her role as Candida. The gallery also possess a 1930 life mask by Karl Illava, an undated drawing of her as Elizabeth Barrett by Louis Lupas, and two sculptures by Anna Glenny Dunbar from 1930.
The Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University
has a portrait of Cornell in her role as Elizabeth Barrett painted by Alexander Clayton on display.http://www.browninglibrary.org/index.php?id=48568 Cornell donated the portrait and several items related to Barretts to the library.
Additionally, the State University of New York at Buffalo holds a portrait of Cornell painted by surrealist Salvador Dalí
dated 1951.
Although Cornell is buried in Tisbury, Massachusetts, there is a cenotaph
in her memory in the George W. Tifft plot at Forest Lawn Cemetery
in Buffalo.
(to honor her close friend from Buffalo, Conger Goodyear, who was a founder of MoMA and its first president), Cornell University
's theater department, and the Actor's Fund of America.
as Cornell.http://www.lct.org/showMain.htm?id=192 In Buffalo, the play was produced by the Kavinoky Theatre in May 2011.Buffalo News Review
Cornell is mentioned in the third chorus in the song, "Gee How I Wish I Was Back in the Army," by Irving Berlin
:
Cornell is also referenced in the lyrics of "Let's Face It", by Cole Porter
:
Cornell is referenced as a plot point in the comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner
by Moss Hart
and George S. Kaufman
. The character Bert Jefferson writes a play, and his girlfriend Maggie Cutler, convinced the play would be a hit on Broadway, gives the play to another character in the hopes that Katharine Cornell will produce it.script
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, theater owner and producer
Theatrical producer
A theatrical producer is the person ultimately responsible for overseeing all aspects of mounting a theatre production. The independent producer will usually be the originator and finder of the script and starts the whole process...
. She was born to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
.
Cornell is known as the greatest American stage actress of the 20th century. She was nicknamed "First Lady of the Theatre," a title also bestowed upon her friend Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...
, though each deferred to the other.http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,771605,00.html Nonetheless, her contributions to acting and to the theater are unparalleled. Cornell is noted for her major Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
roles in serious dramas, often directed by her husband, Guthrie McClintic
Guthrie McClintic
Guthrie McClintic was a successful theatre director, film director and producer based in New York. -Life and career:...
. Together, they formed a production company, which gave them complete artistic freedom in choosing and producing plays. Their production company gave first or prominent Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
roles to some of the greatest actors of the 20th century, including many of the great British Shakespearean actors. In addition, the strength of her acting and the quality of the productions brought popular success to such authors as George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, who until then were not often performed, thereby paving the way for their eventual popularity throughout the country for the rest of the century and beyond.
Acting career
Katharine Cornell's most famous role was as English poet Elizabeth Barrett BrowningElizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...
in the 1931 Broadway production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a 1934 American film depicting the real-life romance between poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning , despite the opposition of her father Edward Moulton-Barrett . The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture...
. Other appearances on Broadway included: W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
's The Letter
The Letter (play)
The Letter is a play by W. Somerset Maugham dramatised from a short story that first appeared in his 1926 collection The Casuarina Tree. The story is based on a real-life scandal involving the wife of the headmaster of a school in Kuala Lumpur who was convicted in a murder trial after shooting...
(1927), Sidney Howard
Sidney Howard
Sidney Coe Howard was an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for the screenplay for Gone with the Wind.-Early life:...
's The Alien Corn (1933), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
(1934), Maxwell Anderson
Maxwell Anderson
James Maxwell Anderson was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist and lyricist.-Early years:Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela Stephenson, both of Scots and Irish descent...
's The Wingless Victory (1936), S. N. Behrman
S. N. Behrman
Samuel Nathaniel Behrman was an American playwright and screenwriter, who also worked for the New York Times.-Early Years:...
's No Time for Comedy
No Time for Comedy
No Time for Comedy is a 1940 comedy-drama film based on the play of the same name by S. N. Behrman, starring James Stewart, Rosalind Russell, Genevieve Tobin and Charles Ruggles.-Plot summary:...
(1939), a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
-winning Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony...
(1947), and a revival of Maugham's The Constant Wife
The Constant Wife
The Constant Wife, a comedy of manners, was written by W. Somerset Maugham in 1926 and later published for general sales in April 1927.- Plot :...
(1951).
She appeared in only one film, the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
morale booster, Stage Door Canteen
Stage Door Canteen
Stage Door Canteen is a musical film produced by Sol Lesser Productions and distributed by United Artists. It was directed by Frank Borzage and features many cameo appearances by celebrities, and the majority of the film is essentially a filmed concert although there is also a storyline to the...
, in which she played herself and, along with one of the soldiers, recited a speech from Romeo and Juliet. However, she did appear in television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
adaptations of The Barretts of Wimpole Street (recreating her original role some 20 years later), and Robert E. Sherwood
Robert E. Sherwood
Robert Emmet Sherwood was an American playwright, editor, and screenwriter.-Biography:Born in New Rochelle, New York, he was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker, and his wife, the former Rosina Emmet, a well-known illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood...
's There Shall Be No Night. She also narrated the Oscar-winning documentary Helen Keller in Her Story
Helen Keller in Her Story
Helen Keller in Her Story is an American biographical documentary about Helen Keller made in 1954.It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1955. It starred Helen Keller and used extensive footage of her visits/remembrances of Dwight Eisenhower, Martha Graham and others...
.
Primarily regarded as a tragedienne, she was admired for her refined, romantic presence. One reviewer observed, "Hers is not a robust romanticism, however. It tends toward dark but delicate tints, and the emotion she conveys most aptly is that of an aspiring girlishness which has always been subject to theatrical influences of a special sort."
Modern dance
Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. Although the term Modern dance has also been applied to a category of 20th Century ballroom dances, Modern dance as a term usually refers to 20th century concert dance.-Intro:...
legend Martha Graham
Martha Graham
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...
, wrote: "One evening Kit spoke of making an exit. 'Martha, when you exit take everything with you, even the grand piano if there is one on the stage.' That is what Katharine Cornell could do, strip a stage leaving the audience a little forlorn and eager for her return."
Her appearances in comedy were infrequent, and praised more widely for their warmth than their wit. When she appeared in The Constant Wife, critic Brooks Atkinson
Brooks Atkinson
Justin Brooks Atkinson was an American theatre critic. He worked for The New York Times from 1925 to 1960...
concluded that she had changed a "hard and metallic" comedy into a romantic drama.
Cornell died on June 9, 1974, in Tisbury, Massachusetts
Tisbury, Massachusetts
Tisbury is a town located on Martha's Vineyard in Dukes County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,755 at the 2000 census.Vineyard Haven is the main village/town center of Tisbury. The two names are used interchangeably...
(on Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....
), aged 81.
Family and childhood
Cornell was born into a rich and prominent Buffalo society family. Her grandfather, Samuel Garretson Cornell, came to Buffalo in the 1850s and was the founder of Cornell Lead Works. One of his sons, Peter, married Alice Gardner Plimpton who gave birth to Katharine while living in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Germany. Katharine's father was at the time studying medicine at the University of Berlin. Six months later, they returned to Buffalo and lived at 174 Mariner St in Buffalo, NY. As a child, Katharine was not considered conventionally pretty and was called Kit because she looked like a boy, a nickname that stayed for the rest of her life. Her relationship with her parents was troubled, one reason being her mother was an alcoholic. Later, Katharine would admit that she had an unhappy childhood.
Katharine would play act in her backyard with imaginary friends. As the Cornell family always liked being in plays, and her father was a noted amateur director, they encouraged Katharine. (Her father eventually gave up medicine to be a full time manager for the Star Theater in Buffalo, and later the Majestic.) Soon she was playing in school pageants and plays, and she would watch family productions in her grandfather's attic theater, still standing at 484 Delaware Ave. She also played at the Buffalo Studio Club parlor theater, located at 508 Franklin St.
Cornell also loved athletics and was a runner-up for city championship at tennis, and an amateur swimming champion. In her memoir, she says, "An actress' best friend is a body which responds instinctively to thought." She attended the University of Buffalo (later the State University of New York at Buffalo).
Later, after Cornell had become famous, she would often bring her productions to Buffalo to be seen by friends and family. Although she never returned to Buffalo to live, her enthusiasm for the city and its inhabitants was well known. Biographer Tad Mosel
Tad Mosel
Tad Mosel was an American playwright and one of the leading dramatists of hour-long teleplay genre for live television during the 1950s. He received the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play All the Way Home....
states, "To show her affection for her hometown, she always walked slowly when she left her hotel, turning her head to smile on everyone on the street, missing no one, so they could feel close to her and be able to say when they got home that night, 'Katharine Cornell smiled directly at me.'" For the rest of her career, she would be greeted backstage by several family and friends from Buffalo on a Broadway opening night. Many of her productions were held at the Erlanger Theater on Delaware Ave.
http://www.buffaloah.com/a/del/120/index.html across from the Statler Hotel
Statler Hotel
The Statler Hotel company was one of the United States' early chains of hotels catering to traveling businessmen and tourists. It was founded by Ellsworth Milton Statler in Buffalo, New York.- Early ventures :...
. The theater was demolished in 2007.
Early career
In 1915, her mother died, leaving her enough money to be independent, and she left for New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. There she joined the Washington Square Players
Washington Square Players
The Washington Square Players was a New York theatrical production company founded in 1914. Its debut production in 1915 was a collection of one-act plays, some of which had been written for the event. In 1916 the troupe started presenting full-length plays, among which were Shaw's Mrs Warren's...
and was hailed as one of the most promising actresses of the season. After just two seasons, she then joined the Jessie Bonstelle Company, a leading New York repertory
Repertory
Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...
("stock") company that divided its summers between Detroit and Buffalo. (See Temple Beth-El (Bonstelle Theatre)
Temple Beth-El (Bonstelle Theatre)
The Bonstelle Theatre is a theater operated by Wayne State University, and is located at 3424 Woodward Avenue . It was originally built in 1902 as the Temple Beth-El, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.-Construction:When Rabbi Leo M...
. Now aged 25, she was consistently receiving glowing reviews.
Cornell joined with various theater companies, including the Bonstelle, that toured around the East Coast. In 1919, she went with the Bonstelle company to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to play Jo in a stage adaptation of Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...
's novel Little Women
Little Women
Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott . The book was written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869...
. Although the critics disparaged the play itself, they specifically mentioned Cornell as the one bright spot of the evening. The paper The Englishwomen wrote of Cornell: "London is unanimous in its praise, and London will flock to see her." Upon her return to New York, she met Guthrie McClintic
Guthrie McClintic
Guthrie McClintic was a successful theatre director, film director and producer based in New York. -Life and career:...
, a young theater director. She finally made her Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
debut in the play Nice People by Rachel Crothers
Rachel Crothers
Rachel Crothers was a prolific and successful American playwright and theater director, known for her well-crafted plays. One of the most famous was Susan and God , which was made into a film by MGM in 1940 starring Joan Crawford and Frederic March.Crothers was born in Bloomington, Illinois, USA...
. She had a small part along with Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
.
Her first real Broadway role came by playing the female role of Sydney Fairfield in A Bill of Divorcement in 1921. The New York Times wrote of her performance, "[she] has the central and significant role of the play and... gives therein a performance of memorable understanding and beauty." It played for 173 performances, well enough to be considered a hit. Afterwards, Cornell played a succession of forgotten plays.
She married Guthrie McClintic
Guthrie McClintic
Guthrie McClintic was a successful theatre director, film director and producer based in New York. -Life and career:...
on September 8, 1921, in her aunt's summer home in Cobourg, Ontario
Cobourg, Ontario
Cobourg is a town in the Canadian province of Ontario, located in Southern Ontario 95 km east of Toronto. It is the largest town in Northumberland County. Its nearest neighbour is Port Hope, to the west. It is located along Highway 401 and the former Highway 2...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Cornell's family often summered there among other wealthy Americans. Nonetheless, it is generally acknowledged that Cornell was a lesbian, and Guthrie was gay, and their union was a lavender marriage
Lavender marriage
Lavender marriage is a type of male-female marriage of convenience in which the couple are not both heterosexual and conceal the homosexual or bisexual orientation of one or both spouses...
. She was a member of the sewing circles
Sewing circles
A group of people, especially women, who meet regularly for the purpose of sewing, often for charitable causes.Sewing circles is a phrase used to describe the underground, closeted lesbian and bisexual film actresses and their relationships in Hollywood, United States, particularly during...
in New York, and had relationships with Nancy Hamilton http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss476_bioghist.html, Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
, and Mercedes de Acosta
Mercedes de Acosta
Mercedes de Acosta was an American poet, playwright, and socialite, best known for her numerous lesbian affairs with Hollywood personalities including Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Alla Nazimova, Eva Le Gallienne, Isadora Duncan, Katharine Cornell, Ona Munson, Adele Astaire and, allegedly,...
, among others.http://books.google.com/books?id=2p3YN828fRkC&pg=PA203&lpg=PA203&dq=nancy+hamilton+actress&source=bl&ots=tGhzb7u6Xs&sig=bA0RzbuFtB-th337fToAiRscjXw&hl=en&ei=Gj9PTPjeC8T38AbBiqmJAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CDsQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=nancy%20hamilton%20actress&f=false The couple eventually bought a townhouse at 23 Beekman Place in Manhattan.http://nymag.com/homedesign/fall2006/21968/http://www.thecityreview.com/sutton/suttonpl.html
Stardom
Candida (play)
Candida, a comedy by playwright George Bernard Shaw, was first published in 1898, as part of his Plays Pleasant. The central characters are clergyman James Morell, his wife Candida and a youthful poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who tries to win Candida's affections. The play questions Victorian notions...
, by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
. At the time, the play was considered perfect for the group, as none of the characters were considered as outshining the others, as Shaw intended the play to be about ideas, and no so much characters. Even though the leading protagonist is Candida, she doesn't really come into her until the third act. However, Cornell essentially re-envisioned the play. She made Candida the core of the play, and has been viewed as such by directors and critics ever since. Reviews were ecstatic and audiences responded in kind. The Actor's Theatre changed their plans and decided that Cornell's name must appear above the play's title in all future productions of the troupe. Another acting troupe, the Theatre Guild
Theatre Guild
The Theatre Guild is a theatrical society founded in New York City in 1918 by Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Helen Westley and Theresa Helburn. Langner's wife, Armina Marshall, then served as a co-director. It evolved out of the work of the Washington Square Players.Its original purpose was to...
, controlled the rights to all Shaw's plays, and thereafter only allowed Cornell to play the role of Candida so long as she was alive, a role which she reprised several more times in her career. Shaw later wrote her a note stating that she had created "an ideal British Candida in my imagination."
Cornell's next role was to play Iris March in The Green Hat, a romance by Michael Arlen
Michael Arlen
Michael Arlen , original name Dikran Kouyoumdjian, was an Armenian essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter, who had his greatest successes in the 1920s while living and writing in England...
in 1925. The play had themes of syphilis and loose morals, and Iris March was a strong sexual creature. Leslie Howard
Leslie Howard (actor)
Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...
played the role of Napier. While the play was still in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, it became an international hit, known all over the US and Europe. Ashton Stevens
Ashton Stevens
Ashton P Stevens was an American drama critic. His newspaper column appeared in the San Francisco Examiner and later in the Chicago Herald-American...
, senior drama critic in Chicago, wrote that The Green Hat "should die at every performance of its melodramatics, its rouge and rhinestones, its preposterous third act.... Already, I am beginning to to forget its imperfections and remember only its charms." It's chief charm, he conceded, was Cornell, who sent "tiny bells up and down my unpurchasable vertebrae." Most other critics panned the play itself, but nonetheless found it irresistible because of Cornell's ability to mesmerize, despite the garish dialogue. Critic George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan was an American drama critic and editor.-Early life:Nathan was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana...
wrote that the play was "superbly acted in its leading role by that one young woman who stands head and shoulders above all the other young women of the American theater, Miss Katharine Cornell."
The play had 231 performances in New York before going to Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
and then a cross country tour. The play's success spawned a fashion in green hats of the type worn by Cornell in the play. Later, Talullah Bankhead played the role of Iris March in a failed London production, and Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...
played the role in a movie version.
She then starred in The Letter
The Letter (play)
The Letter is a play by W. Somerset Maugham dramatised from a short story that first appeared in his 1926 collection The Casuarina Tree. The story is based on a real-life scandal involving the wife of the headmaster of a school in Kuala Lumpur who was convicted in a murder trial after shooting...
by W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
as Leslie Crosby, the woman who kills her lover, in 1927. Maugham himself suggested Cornell for the part. Although the critics weren't too excited, Cornell by now had developed a loyal following and opening night was a such a sensation that the New York Sun
New York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
wrote that the sidewalks were packed with people after the performance straining to catch a glimpse of her. The play was later made into a movie starring Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
.
In 1928, Cornell played the lead role of the Countess Ellen Olenska in a dramatized version of Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
's novel, The Age of Innocence
The Age of Innocence
The Age of Innocence is a novel by Edith Wharton published in 1920, which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. The story is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s. In 1920, The Age of Innocence was serialized in four parts in the Pictorial Review magazine, and later released by D...
. The performance received not a single bad review. After this success, Cornell was offered the lead in The Dishonored Lady." Originally, it was intended for Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors.-Early life:Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew...
who failed to accept the role. The play is a lurid melodrama about true life murder in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. Walter Winchell
Walter Winchell
Walter Winchell was an American newspaper and radio gossip commentator.-Professional career:Born Walter Weinschel in New York City, he left school in the sixth grade and started performing in a vaudeville troupe known as Gus Edwards' "Newsboys Sextet."His career in journalism was begun by posting...
wrote, "Never in the history of the theatre has an actress of such distinction permitted such an exciting scene. She [Cornell] actually permits a man to crack her a powerful wallop in the face!" One critic complained about the "fifth rate claptrap" of a play, and chastised Cornell for selecting such low brow theater as a waste of her talents.
Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
asserted that Cornell does these types of plays because "she prefers... to be blunt, trash of a violent kind." Biographer and playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Tad Mosel
Tad Mosel
Tad Mosel was an American playwright and one of the leading dramatists of hour-long teleplay genre for live television during the 1950s. He received the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play All the Way Home....
counters that although this is meant as a reproof, when stripped of its condescension, "it is a simple statement of the truth. There was a part of her that indeed preferred trash of a violent kind. Her integrity as an artist was the only defense such a preference needed. Every performance had to be as much a revelation of herself as it was an interpretation of a role, and therefore her choice of roles and the way she played them offer great insights into her nature, greater perhaps than can be inferred from her gracious, smiling, always agreeable, and increasingly guarded behavior offstage. One must look at her performances as one looks at the output of a writer or a painter."
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
Katharine Cornell is perhaps best known in her role as poet Elizabeth Barrett BrowningElizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...
in Rudolph Besier
Rudolph Besier
Rudolf Besier was a Dutch-English dramatist and translator, who is best known for his play The Barretts of Wimpole Street ....
's play The Barretts of Wimpole Street
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a 1934 American film depicting the real-life romance between poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning , despite the opposition of her father Edward Moulton-Barrett . The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture...
. The play is based on the real story of the Barrett family who lived on Wimpole Street
Wimpole Street
Wimpole Street is a street in central London, England. Located in the City of Westminster, it is associated with private medical practice and medical associations. No. 1 Wimpole Street is an example of Edwardian baroque architecture, completed in 1912 by architect John Belcher as the home of the...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The play opens with Elizabeth, the oldest child of a large and loving family. Their father is widowed and has become embittered and determined that none of his children would ever marry, lest they become slaves to the "brutal tyranny of passion" and "the lowest urge of the body." As the play progresses, his smothering concern for his family and particularly for Elizabeth, who is an invalid, takes on a sinister character. Poet Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
has read some of Elizabeth's poetry and comes to meet her, and they immediately find an attraction for each other. When he leaves, Elizabeth struggles to her feet to watch him disappear down the lane. Elizabeth and Robert later elope, against her father's strict orders, and when he finds that she has married without his permission or knowledge, he orders that her beloved dog, Flush, be put to death. However, her sister had taken care to see that her cocker spaniel joined them in their escape.Text of the play
The play has several difficulties. The lead role of Elizabeth has to be played as submissive to her father, yet must be the center of attention throughout. Although the ending is happy for Elizabeth and Robert, the rest of the family remains under the domination of the father, who is deranged in his obsession. Elizabeth must be played for the first half laying still on a sofa wearing heavy Victorian costume, and covered with a blanket, as befitting an invalid. Many, including Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul...
, who was asked to play the part of the father, thought it was too melodramatic and past its time. The play was turned down by 27 New York producers before Guthrie read it and found it so moving, he cried whenever he read it.
When Guthrie was in London, he was able to secure Brian Aherne
Brian Aherne
Brian Aherne was a British actor of both stage and screen, who found success in Hollywood.-Early life and stage career:...
to play the part of Robert Browning. Afterwards, Guthrie immediately went to a London jewelry store and bought a necklace, two bracelets and a garnet ring, all at least 100 years old. For every single performance that she ever gave as Elizabeth Barrett, Cornell wore this same jewelry in the last act where she leaves the family home for the last time. Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
was selected for the part of Henrietta, but since she was going to play in a summer stock company a few months later, she couldn't contract. Casting the dog was troublesome, since it would have to lie still in his basket on stage for a great length of time, and then exit when called for. Guthrie selected an eight-month-old cocker spaniel who played the role for the full run and many others afterwards to unanimous applause.
Guthrie directed the play with a meticulous attention to period detail, and it lasted three hours. Cornell was herself listed as the producer, although it was actually produced by C. & M.C. Productions, Inc., a company wholly owned by both Guthrie and Katharine. The play opened in first in Cleveland, then Buffalo before reaching New York in January 1931.
Brooks Atkinson
Brooks Atkinson
Justin Brooks Atkinson was an American theatre critic. He worked for The New York Times from 1925 to 1960...
wrote of opening night: "After a long succession of meretricious plays it introduces us to Katharine Cornell as an actress of the first order. Here the disciplined fury that she has been squandering on catch-penny plays becomes the vibrant beauty of finely wrought character.... By the crescendo of her playing, by the wild sensitivity that lurks behind her ardent gestures and her piercing stares across the footlights, she charges the drama with a meaning beyond the facts it records. Her acting is quite as remarkable for the carefulness of its design as for the fire of her presence.... The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a triumph for MIss Cornell and the splendid company with which she has surrounded herself."
All other critics were uniform in praise of her acting: superb, eloquent, exalted, dark, rhythmic, luminous, haunting, lyric, ravishing. Even Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
, known for her caustic wit and unsentimental reviews, wrote that although she didn't think it a good play, she "paid it the tribute of tears." Further, "Miss Katharine Cornell is a completely lovely Elizabeth Barrett.... It is little wonder that Miss Cornell is so worshipped; she has romance, or, if you like better the word of the daily-paper critics, she has glamour." The play ran for 370 performances. When it was announced that it was closing, the remaining performances sold out and hundreds were turned away.
The play's success engendered a revival of Robert Browning's poetry, and cocker spaniels became the popular dog that year. Irving Thalberg
Irving Thalberg
Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make very profitable films.-Life and...
wanted Cornell to play her part in an MGM production, even offering that if she was not completely satisfied with the result, the film would be destroyed. She refused, and a movie was released with most of the cast intact, and Thalberg's wife, actress Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...
, played the part. Cornell refused to ever act in movies because she had seen audiences laugh at the acting of old movies and did not want that to happen to her. According to biographer Tad Mosel, "she did not feel that she was acting for historians or nostalgia fans of the future but for audiences of the here and now, people who came into the theatre tonight, sat in their seats and waited for the curtain to go up. Not only were they the ones she wanted to reach, but she wanted to be there when they responded, she did not want to be off in another part of the world while they gazed at a second-hand image on a screen. In fact, she was not sure she could give them anything to respond to without the inducement of their presence." Moreover, the largeness of her facial structure—her bone structure—were so explicit that they could be seen to the last row, but "might have been less than an asset on the screen where the camera enlarges and exaggerates. Her voice and gestures were eloquent theatre props that might have been too much for the screen, necessitating adjustments so basic that she could not make them. And beyond physical equipment... it is possible that the quality she had as an individual, the unique something about her that transcended technique and craft and fifth-rate writing might not have transcended cameras; it would not have come through to an audience without her physical presence."
However, other sources state that Hollywood would secure Broadway plays for its own actors under contract, and that Cornell was never considered for the roles she originated. Additionally, Cornell apparently wrote to film director George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
, intimating that she would consider a film if he would direct her. Nothing came of this effort.
She turned down many movie roles that eventually won Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for the actresses who actually did play those parts, from Olan in The Good Earth
The Good Earth
The Good Earth is a novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932. The best selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, it was an influential factor in Buck winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938...
, to Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls
For Whom the Bell Tolls
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is assigned to blow up a...
. Additionally, many of her hit plays continued life either as vehicles for other great actresses, or became movies. However, as audiences were deserting live theater for the movies, Cornell became even more determined to stay in the theater in order to help keep it vibrant.
The 1933 tour
After Barretts closed, Cornell played leading parts in two plays, "Lucrece" and "Alien Corn." A considerable portion of her role in "Lucrece" was played in pantomimePantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
. Her success in "Lucrece" landed her on the cover of Time Magazine on December 26, 1932. In the article, she is quoted as saying "To act, you have to burst out spontaneously and feel constantly and deeply. So if you're too accustomed to using your head instead of your feelings you won't be able to call on your feelings when you want them. I tell young women not to come on the stage, unless there is nothing else they can be happy in."
Her next production would be Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
, with Guthrie as usual directing, and Cornell playing Juliet. It would be the first time either had participated in any Shakespeare play, and their inexperience showed. Moreover, Shakespeare wasn't fashionable, and his plays were not often presented in live theater, the last play being Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
with John Barrymore
John Barrymore
John Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...
twelve years earlier. The play opened in Buffalo and had a difficult time. Her friend, modern dance pioneer Martha Graham
Martha Graham
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...
, choreographed the dance sequences. While still in Buffalo, Graham thought the Juliet costume all wrong. She bought some soft white nun's veiling, from which she fashioned a flowing robe.
The play was incorporated into a seven-month country-wide tour that would rotate three plays, Romeo and Juliet, Barretts, and Candida. Planned during the height of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, many theater experts and actors advised against such an ambitious tour. In fact, this was the first time anyone had tried to take a legitimate Broadway show on an all-country tour, let alone three. It took them to cities such as Milwaukee, Seattle, Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, San Francisco, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, Oakland, Sacramento
Sacramento
Sacramento is the capital of the state of California, in the United States of America.Sacramento may also refer to:- United States :*Sacramento County, California*Sacramento, Kentucky*Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta...
, Salt Lake City, Cheyenne
Cheyenne
Cheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains, who are of the Algonquian language family. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taeo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese .The Cheyenne are thought to have branched off other tribes of Algonquian stock inhabiting lands...
, San Antonio, New Orleans, Houston, Savannah
Savannah
Savannah or savanna is a type of grassland.It can also mean:-People:* Savannah King, a Canadian freestyle swimmer* Savannah Outen, a singer who gained popularity on You Tube...
, and back up the east coast to New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
. The actors assembled for the tour had to be able to play multiple parts and included Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, Basil Rathbone
Basil Rathbone
Sir Basil Rathbone, KBE, MC, Kt was an English actor. He rose to prominence in England as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in over 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films...
, Brian Aherne
Brian Aherne
Brian Aherne was a British actor of both stage and screen, who found success in Hollywood.-Early life and stage career:...
, and Flush.
Because movies had so completely taken over from live theater, there were major areas of the country closed off to the tour. Many stops at smaller cities hadn't seen live theater since the First World War, or ever. Nonetheless, box office records were set in most cities and town. In New Orleans, women rioted when they found out that tickets has been sold out. Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
reported that the tour gave 225 performances and played to 500,000 people. People in smaller areas would travel up to two days to see a performance, and the presenting towns would gain a small but welcome swell in revenues from restaurants and hotels as a result.
The most famous story to arise out of the tour came when the troupe was to play Barretts in Seattle on Christmas night, which was Guthrie's hometown. They planned to arrive in the morning, and as it normally takes six hours to set up the stage, do lighting and blocking checks and distribute costumes, they figured there would be plenty of time.
However, it had been raining for 23 days, and roads and railroads were being washed out. The train moved very slowly, often stopping. The theater management telegraphed that the venue had been completely sold out for the evening performance and wanted regular updates to insure the public that the production was on its way. The troupe kept up the telegraphs, but eventually even these lines gave out. By that evening, the troupe was still far from the city and gave up hope of doing any performance that night. The train finally arrived in Seattle at 11:30 pm. There was a lively crowd waiting for them at the train station, and the manager of the Metropolitan Theatre came up to Cornell and informed her that the audience was still waiting. Guthrie asked, "how many?" "The entire house," was the reply, "Twelve hundred people." Cornell was shocked and asked, "Do you mean they want a performance at this hour?" "They're expecting it," the manager replied.
All 55 members of the cast and crew immediately drove to the theater. Sets and props had to be protected in the downpour. As soon as the troupe arrived at the theater, the audience streamed back into their seats. Cornell decided that the audience could watch the sets for "Barretts" be unpacked and set up, and so raised the curtain. The stage hands, sound checks and electricians worked to accomplish in one hour what normally took six. By 1 am, they were ready to begin the play. Mosel writes, "The audience had paid the actors the supreme compliment of having the faith to wait for them, and the actors responded with the kind of performance actors wish they could give every day of their lives." When the final curtain fell at 4 am, they received more curtain calls than they ever had.
Ray Henderson, the troupe's publicist and manager, managed to get this story into every newspaper in America the next day. Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table....
established a radio tradition on his program, The Town Crier. For years afterward, every Christmas, Woollcott would tell the story of the Seattle audience that waited until 1 am for to see Katharine Cornell 'emerge from the flood' and give the performance of her life. It was Woollcott who nicknamed Cornell "First Lady of the Theatre."
Romeo and Juliet
Although they had toured with this play, Cornell and her husband Guthrie decided to open Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
in New York with a completely new production. Guthrie threw out the entire production and started over, with just a handful of the actors from the tour. Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
was kept, but played Tybalt
Tybalt
Tybalt is a fictional character and the main antagonist in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. He is Lady Capulet's nephew, Juliet's hot-tempered cousin and Romeo's rival. Tybalt shares the same name as the character Tibert/Tybalt the "Prince of Cats" in Reynard the Fox, a point of...
instead of Mercutio
Mercutio
Mercutio a fictional character in William Shakespeare's 1597 tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. He is a close friend of Romeo, and Romeo's cousin Benvolio, and also a blood relative to Prince Escalus and Count Paris. As such, being neither a Montague nor a Capulet, Mercutio is one of the few in Verona...
, making his Broadway debut. Maurice Evans
Maurice Evans (actor)
Maurice Herbert Evans was an English actor noted for his interpretations of Shakespearean characters. In terms of his screen roles, he is probably best known as Dr...
played Romeo, while Ralph Richardson
Ralph Richardson
Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....
took the part of Mercutio, and Edith Evans
Edith Evans
Dame Edith Mary Evans, DBE was a British actress. She was known for her work on the British stage. She also appeared in a number of films, for which she received three Academy Award nominations, plus a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award.Evans was particularly effective at portraying haughty...
played the Nurse. Guthrie's idea was to keep the play 'light, gay, hot sun, spacious' with no hint of the doom that would conclude the play. Also, he coached Cornell to read for meaning, sense and emotion, in place of the poetics of iambic pentameter.
This was a great break with past productions, which up until then had relied upon Victorian prudery and notions of how a classic play should be performed. Guthrie reinstated the Prologue and believed that all twenty-three scenes were necessary, cutting only the obsolete comedy of the musicians and servants. For the first time. the carnal desires, the youthful romanticism, and the earthiness of language were given equal importance.
The production opened in December 1934, and, as usual, the reviews were glowing. Burns Mantle
Burns Mantle
Robert Burns Mantle was a well-known American drama critic. He founded the Best Plays annual publication in 1920.. , The New York Times...
called Cornell "the greatest Juliet of her time." Taking note of the freshness of approach, Richard Lockridge
Richard Lockridge
Richard Orson Lockridge was an American writer of detective fiction. Richard Lockridge with his wife Frances created one of the most famous American mystery series, Mr. and Mrs. North....
of the New York Sun
New York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
wrote that Cornell played Juliet as "an eager child, rushing toward love with arms stretched out." Cornell herself said that her biggest secret of acting is to do away with all excesses and embellishments, to bring an interpretation to its utmost simplicity. Margot Stevenson from the original cast later said that Cornell was "just this big Italian girl in love!" Stark Young
Stark Young
Stark Young was an American teacher, playwright, novelist, painter, literary critic and essayist.-Biography:Stark Young was born in Como, Mississippi to Mary Clark Starks and Alfred Alexander Young, a local physician....
said in The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
: She makes you believe in love, that Juliet loves, and that the diapason and poetry of love are the reward for its torment. Of various [other] Juliets this must have been one of the last things to be said."
John Mason Brown
John Mason Brown
John Mason Brown was an American drama critic and author.Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he graduated from Harvard College in 1923. He worked for the New York Evening Post from 1929 to 1941. He served as a lieutenant in the United States Navy during World War II, beginning in 1942...
wrote in the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
: "It is not often in our lifetime that we are privileged to enjoy the pleasant sensation of feeling that the present and the future have met for a few triumphant hours.... Yet it was this very sensation—this uncommon sensation of having the present and future meet; eye-witnessing the kind of event to which we will be looking back with pride in the years to come—that forced its warming way, I suspect, into the consciousness of many of us last night as we sat spellbound. Miss Cornell's Juliet is luscious and charming. It finds her at her mellowest and most glamorous. It burns with the intensity Miss Cornell brings to all her acting. It moves gracefully and lightly; it is endlessly haunting in its pictorial qualities; and reveals a Miss Cornell who equals the beauty of the lyric lines she speaks with a new-found lyric beauty of her own voice.... To add that it is by all odds the most lovely and enchanting Juliet our present-day theatre has seen is only to toss it the kind of superlative it honestly deserves." Later, the same critic determined that this role was a turning point in her career, as it meant that she could finally leave the 'trifling scripts' of her earlier career and could meet the challenging demands of the greatest classic roles.
The Barretts revived
Romeo and Juliet closed on February 23, 1935, and two nights later, the production company revived The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and Burgess MeredithBurgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...
was given his first prominent Broadway role. Critics found that this new production had grown richer and more satisfying, but closed three weeks later because other plays were contracted.
The next play, also starring Meredith, was Flowers in the Forest, a didactic anti-war play that lasted only 40 performances and counts among Cornell's greatest failures.
St. Joan
For the next season, the Cornell and her husband decided to do St. JoanSaint Joan (play)
Saint Joan is a play by George Bernard Shaw, based on the life and trial of Joan of Arc. Published not long after the canonization of Joan of Arc by the Roman Catholic Church, the play dramatises what is known of her life based on the substantial records of her trial. Shaw studied the transcripts...
by George Bernard Shaw. Guthrie cast Maurice Evans
Maurice Evans (actor)
Maurice Herbert Evans was an English actor noted for his interpretations of Shakespearean characters. In terms of his screen roles, he is probably best known as Dr...
as the Dauphin, Brian Aherne as Warwick, Tyrone Power
Tyrone Power
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...
as Bertrand de Poulengy, and Arthur Byron as the Inquisitor. St. Joan opened on March 9, 1936, and Burns Mantle wrote that the triumph belonged to two maids, "the Maid of Domrémy
Domrémy-la-Pucelle
Domrémy-la-Pucelle is a commune in the Vosges department in Lorraine in northeastern France.The village, originally named Domrémy, is the birthplace of Joan of Arc. It has since been renamed Domrémy-la-Pucelle after Joan's nickname, la Pucelle d'Orléans .-Geography:Domrémy is positioned along the...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and the Maid of Buffalo, N.Y." John Anderson of the New York Journal wrote, "Before there is any haggling, let it be said that it is Shaw's greatest play and that Miss Cornell is superb in it. She is beautiful to look at and her performance is enkindled by the spiritual exaltation of a transcendent heroine."
It was in this play that Cornell's real artistry became apparent. Audience members talked of having been 'changed' by her performance, and 'mesmerized.' Writer S.N. Behrman said "it was something essential in herself, as a person, that the audiences sensed and reached out to." Another said that she was like "radium, flashing its healing rays," while others used an older phrase, "magnetic influence."
The play closed in the spring of 1936 only because the production company had already contracted to produce Maxwell Anderson
Maxwell Anderson
James Maxwell Anderson was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist and lyricist.-Early years:Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela Stephenson, both of Scots and Irish descent...
's The Wingless Victory. St. Joan finished with a seven-week tour through five major cities.
Flush, the spaniel that played the part of Flush in Barretts, died in July 1937. He had played his role 709 times, and traveled over 25,000 miles on tours, never getting drunk or arriving late. At his death, the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
sent the story out over its entire network worldwide.
Wingless Victory
In Maxwell AndersonMaxwell Anderson
James Maxwell Anderson was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist and lyricist.-Early years:Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela Stephenson, both of Scots and Irish descent...
's Wingless Victory, Guthrie decided to avoid the so-called 'star entrance,' where the audience expects the star of the play to enter grandly to general applause. Instead, he had another character take the star entrance, and only then was it revealed that Cornell was onstage. The effect was startling. Opened in 1936, the play received mixed reviews, and many bad ones, but Cornell was nonetheless respected for taking any role and twisting it to make it her own. Gently disparaging the play itself, Brooks Atkinson wrote that Cornell is "Our Queen of tragedy, a thoughtful actress and a great one."http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30B16FD3F5A1B7B93C6AB1789D95F428385F9&scp=16&sq=%22Katharine%20Cornell%22&st=cse
Alternating with Victory, Cornell revived Candida with Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick was an American stage and film actress.- Early life :A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she was born to Joseph and Mildred Marion Dawes Natwick. She graduated from the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore...
as Prossy. After their conclusion, she took a year off and wrote her memoir (with the help of Ruth Woodbury Sedgewick) entitled "I Wanted to be an Actress". It was published by Random House in 1939.
No Time for Comedy
Cornell's assistant Gertrude Macy produced a musical revue One for the Money which starred unknown actors who later achieved fame, including Gene KellyGene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
, Alfred Drake
Alfred Drake
Alfred Drake was an American actor and singer.-Biography:Born as Alfred Capurro in New York City, the son of parents emigrated from Recco, Genoa, Drake began his Broadway career while still a student at Brooklyn College...
, Keenan Wynn
Keenan Wynn
Keenan Wynn was an American character actor. His bristling mustache and expressive face were his stock in trade, and though he rarely had a lead role, he got prominent billing in most of his film and TV parts....
and Nancy Hamilton. Immediately after that closed, Cornell starred in her second comedy, No Time for Comedy
No Time for Comedy
No Time for Comedy is a 1940 comedy-drama film based on the play of the same name by S. N. Behrman, starring James Stewart, Rosalind Russell, Genevieve Tobin and Charles Ruggles.-Plot summary:...
by S.N. Behrman. Guthrie cast the young Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
in the title role, giving him his first major Broadway appearance.http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB091FF63B58127A93CAA8178FD85F4D8385F9&scp=17&sq=%22Katharine%20Cornell%22&st=cse During rehearsals, Cornell had a difficult time with the comedic timing, and someone shook their head and said, "Poor old Kit!" Olivier shot back, "Poor old Kit is the most successful woman in the American theater! The richest, the most beautiful, the most sought after, the most distinguished, the most loved -- Poor old Kit indeed!"
In his memoir, S.N. Behrman wrote, "Miss Cornell had less [exhibitionism] than any actress or actor I have ever known. Her position in the theatre transcended technique.... It was something essential in herself, as a person, that the audiences sensed and reached out to.... The whole stage and the other actors took light from the radiance of her personality."
The play opened on April 17, 1939 and became the third biggest money maker for Cornell, and the second production to gross over a million dollars. With a few cast changes, including that of Olivier, the play went on a nationwide tour.
The Doctor's Dilemma
Cornell next played in Shaw's play, The Doctor's Dilemma, and Raymond MasseyRaymond Massey
Raymond Hart Massey was a Canadian/American actor.-Early life:Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna , who was born in Illinois, and Chester Daniel Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. Massey's family could trace their ancestry back to the American...
starred opposite her. Her production company was running so smoothly that Massey said, "Whatever anyone tells you, Kit ran her own show. They will say everything was managed by those people around her, but it is absolutely not true. She knew everything that was going on and she made all the decisions. At the end of the day you could find her poring over the box office receipts. She was a shrewd and intelligent businesswoman."
The play opened in 1941 in San Francisco, just one week before Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...
, and was the only show not cancelled, despite numerous blackouts. Given the distraction of the war, the play was not well received. Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...
was part of the tour as 'the secretary.'
The war years
Shortly after the U.S. entered World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Cornell decided upon a revival of Candida to benefit the Army Emergency Fund and the Navy Relief Society. Of her five productions of this play, this fourth one is remembered for the star studded cast of Raymand Massey, Burgess Meredith, Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick was an American stage and film actress.- Early life :A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she was born to Joseph and Mildred Marion Dawes Natwick. She graduated from the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore...
and Dudley Digges
Dudley Digges
Sir Dudley Digges , of Chilham Castle, Kent , was a Member of Parliament, elected to the Parliament of 1614 and that of 1621, and also a "Virginia adventurer," an investor who ventured his capital in the Virginia Company of London...
. Cornell was able to convince all actors, Shaw, the theater hands and the Schubert organization to donate their labor, services and venue for free so that almost all proceeds went directly to the fund.
The Three Sisters
A year later, Ruth GordonRuth Gordon
Ruth Gordon Jones , better known as Ruth Gordon, was an American actress and writer. She was perhaps best known for her film roles such as Minnie Castevet, Rosemary's overly solicitous neighbor in Rosemary's Baby, as the eccentric Maude in Harold and Maude and as the mother of Orville Boggs in the...
urged Guthrie to produce Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
's Three Sisters
Three Sisters (play)
Three Sisters is a play by Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov, perhaps partially inspired by the situation of the three Brontë sisters, but most probably by the three Zimmermann sisters in Perm...
. Judith Anderson
Judith Anderson
Dame Judith Anderson, AC, DBE was an Australian-born American-based actress of stage, film and television. She won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award.-Early life:...
played Olga, Gertrude Musgrove was selected for Irina, while Cornell had the role of Masha. Others included theater legend Edmund Gwenn
Edmund Gwenn
Edmund Gwenn was an English theatre and film actor.-Background:Born Edmund John Kellaway in Wandsworth, London , and educated at St. Olave's School and later at King's College London, Gwenn began his acting career in the theatre in 1895...
, Dennis King
Dennis King
Dennis King was an English actor and singer.Born in Coventry as Dennis Pratt, King had a stage career in both drama and musicals. He emigrated to the USA in 1921 and went on to a successful career on the Broadway stage. He appeared in two musical films and played non-singing roles in two other...
and Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past , Champion , Ace in the Hole , The Bad and the Beautiful , Lust for Life , Paths of Glory , Gunfight at the O.K...
in his Broadway debut. The play opened in Washington in December 1942, and no one expected it to be much of a financial success. The opening was attended by Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
and the Soviet ambassador. It then played for 122 performances in New York before going on the road, exceeding the low expectations. It had the longest run of any Chekhov play in the U.S. and the longest run of this particular play anywhere up to that point.
Cornell is said to have played Masha with a nobility of spirit without ostentation, and that she found the wit in her role. Time Magazine wrote, in anticipation of its opening, "Not for nothing is Katharine Cornell the top-ranking actress in the U.S. theater as well as a successful producer as well as the wife of able Director Guthrie McClintic. Over the years Cornell has performed many near-miracles. She has made the yearning soul as good box office as the fiery body. She has made an invalid lady on a couch the essence of glamor. She has turned Shakespeare and Shaw into rousing hits. And when, next week, she brings her revival of Chekhov's 'The Three Sisters' to Broadway, it will boast a dream production by anybody's reckoning — the most glittering cast the theater has seen, commercially, in this generation."
Entertaining the troops
Cornell's only film role was a short few lines from Romeo and Juliet in the movie, Stage Door CanteenStage Door Canteen
Stage Door Canteen is a musical film produced by Sol Lesser Productions and distributed by United Artists. It was directed by Frank Borzage and features many cameo appearances by celebrities, and the majority of the film is essentially a filmed concert although there is also a storyline to the...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQT6A3uvy0, which starred many of Hollywood's best actors, under the auspices of the American Theatre Wing
American Theatre Wing
The American Theatre Wing is a New York City-based organization "dedicated to supporting excellence and education in theatre," according to its mission statement...
for War Relief. This organization was created by playwright Rachel Crothers
Rachel Crothers
Rachel Crothers was a prolific and successful American playwright and theater director, known for her well-crafted plays. One of the most famous was Susan and God , which was made into a film by MGM in 1940 starring Joan Crawford and Frederic March.Crothers was born in Bloomington, Illinois, USA...
, and created the Stage Door Canteen to entertain troops during the war. Cornell donated time to work at the Canteen cleaning tables.http://americantheatrewing.org/about/history_of_atw.php
General George C. Marshall asked Cornell to do a play to entertain the troops in Europe. Cornell decided to take "Barretts of Wimpole Street" to the troops in Europe as a touring production with the USO and the Special Services Division. However, the USO and the Division stated that no G.I. would sit for a three-hour costume drama
Costume drama
A costume drama or period drama is a period piece in which elaborate costumes, sets and properties are featured in order to capture the ambiance of a particular era.The term is usually used in the context of film and television...
about two middle-aged Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
poets. They suggested an alternate, some sort of 'ribald farce
Farce
In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...
' in case Barretts proved a failure. Cornell would prepare Blithe Spirit
Blithe Spirit (play)
Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...
, but nonetheless insisted upon Barretts, saying that if she was going to entertain the soldiers, she must take them her very best, and her very best was "Barretts." The army then insisted that they cut the love scenes, as the play was far too long at three hours, wanted someone to 'explain' the play to the men beforehand, and prepared her for what they saw as rude, tasteless and ignorant troops. The entire company, backed by Cornell and Guthrie, resisted all entreaties and played their roles with every degree of authenticity as the Broadway original.
At the first production, the army's fears seemed to be validated. At the start of the play, which takes place in damp, chilly London, the doctor advises that Elizabeth go to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
for rest. The audience, G.I.s fighting in war-torn Italy, exploded in laughter, hooting, yelling and stamping. According to actress Margalo Gillmore
Margalo Gillmore
Margaret Lorraine "Margalo" Gillmore was an English American film, stage and television actress....
, "It was true, then, we thought, they would go on laughing and it would never stop and the Barretts would go under a tidal wave of derision. But we were wrong. Kit and Guthrie were holding the laugh, just as if they had heard it a hundred times, not showing any alarm, not even seeming to wait for it, but handling it, controlling it, ready to take over at the first sign of its getting out of hand. It rose and fell and before it could rise again, Kit spoke."
The play continued, and outbreaks of an occasional catcall, guffaw or heckling were quickly shushed by others. Gillmore continues: "Kit had a shining light in her. With that strange sixth sense of the actor that functions unexplainably in complete independence of lines spoken and emotions projected, she had been aware of the gradual change out front from a dubious indifference to the complete absorption of interest. At first they hung back, keeping themselves separate from us, a little self-consciously, a little defiantly, and then line by line, scene by scene, she had felt them relax and respond and give themselves up to the play and the story, til at least they were that magic indivisible thing, an audience. 'We must never forget this, never,' said Kit. 'We've seen an audience born.'"
The tour opened in Santa Maria, a small town 15 miles north of Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, in 1944. G.I.s lined up three hours ahead of time and profusely thanked the cast afterwards. Brian Aherne wrote that after one show in Italy, the manager overheard a tough burly paratrooper say to his buddy, "Well, what I tell ya? Told ya it would be better than going to a cathouse." Convinced of its success, the army brass okayed two more weeks. The company eventually played for six months, from August 1944 to January 1945, throughout Italy, including stops in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
and Siena
Siena
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...
. From there, the company was transferred under the aegis of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
and played in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, including Dijon
Dijon
Dijon is a city in eastern France, the capital of the Côte-d'Or département and of the Burgundy region.Dijon is the historical capital of the region of Burgundy. Population : 151,576 within the city limits; 250,516 for the greater Dijon area....
, Marseilles, Versailles
Versailles
Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
. In Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
and Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.-Early life, relationship with Gertrude Stein:...
wanted to see the play, but found that performances were strictly limited to enlisted personnel. They were nonetheless given disguises and were able to see the play. Additionally, the cast made a point of visiting hospitals every day throughout the entire tour.
Now aged 51, Cornell was then told by the army that she had done enough for the effort and to remain in Paris. Her response was to be taken as close to the front as possible. The company performed in Maastrich and Heerlen in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, just eight miles from the front. The tour concluded in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
amid exploding German V2 bombs.
Upon her return to New York, Cornell found mail piled up from the G.I.s who had seen the show. They thanked her for "the most nerve-soothing remedy for a weary G.I.," for having brought "yearned-for femininity," reminding them that, unlike other USO shows, "a woman is not all leg," and for "the awakening of something that I though died with the passing of routine military life in the foreign service."
Long after the tour was finished, Cornell continued to receive letters, not just from servicemen who had seen the show, but from wives, mothers and even school teachers from the home front. Their letters say that the first letter they received from their boy came after he had seen her show, or it was the first time they had heard from them in two years. Fellow actors reported that G.I.s in the South Pacific
Pacific Ocean theater of World War II
The Pacific Ocean theatre was one of four major naval theatres of war of World War II, which pitted the forces of Japan against those of the United States, the British Commonwealth, the Netherlands and France....
were heard to talk about the show.
After the war, Cornell co-chaired the Community Players, a successor to the American Theatre Wing, to assist war veterans and their families on their return home.
Cornell was featured for the second time on the cover of Time magazine on December 21, 1942, with Judith Anderson and Ruth Gordon.
Candida, revived
After the war, American theater was experiencing a change in style with the new generation. Cornell revived Candida for the fifth and last time in April 1946, with Marlon BrandoMarlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
playing the role of the young Marchbanks. Whereas Cornell represented an older, exuberant romantic style, Brando heralded the newer style of Method Acting
Method acting
Method acting is a phrase that loosely refers to a family of techniques used by actors to create in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters, so as to develop lifelike performances...
, with its reliance upon psychological insights and personal experience. Although reviews were a good as ever, audiences and some critics had difficulty with the play itself, as the Edwardian drama had little relevance to post-war American life.
Now in her mid-50s, appropriate roles became harder to find. The plays that earned her such an exceptional reputation — young Elizabeth Barrett, Juliet, St. Joan, various sexually charged women — were no longer playable by her. The newer roles were simply not her style.
Shakespeare and Anouilh
In 1946, Cornell chose Shakespeare's Antony and CleopatraAntony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony...
, which opened at the Hanna Theater in Cleveland, a difficult role for which she was ideally suited. Although often played for her youth and beauty, Cornell chose to play her as a mature woman. The last production in New York had been in 1937 with Tallulah Bankhead in the lead, and it was no success. Critic Ward Morrison proclaimed the Cornell's "beauty and power and grandeur and I do not hesitate to proclaim it one of the finest achievements of her career." Again, Cornell's presence insured that this play would have it longest run ever at 251 performances.
She followed that with Jean Anouilh
Jean Anouilh
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' Classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's...
's adaptation of the Greek tragedy Antigone
Antigone
In Greek mythology, Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Oedipus' mother. The name may be taken to mean "unbending", coming from "anti-" and "-gon / -gony" , but has also been suggested to mean "opposed to motherhood", "in place of a mother", or "anti-generative", based from the root...
. Sir Cedric Hardwicke
Cedric Hardwicke
Sir Cedric Webster Hardwicke was a noted English stage and film actor whose career spanned nearly fifty years...
played King Creon
Creon
Creon is a figure in Greek mythology best known as the ruler of Thebes in the legend of Oedipus. He had two children with his wife, Eurydice: Megareus and Haemon...
, and Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
was cast as The Messenger. After the opening, Cornell's friend Helen Keller
Helen Keller
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree....
told her, "This play is a parable of humanity. It has no time or space." One critic said, "if the world and the theatre had more courageous spirits like [Cornell], our cumulative dreams would be greater, our thoughts, nobler."
Alternating with Antony, Cornell alternated with another revival of Barretts of Wimpole Street, for an eight-week tour to the West Coast, with Tony Randall
Tony Randall
Tony Randall was a U.S. actor, comic, producer and director.-Early years:Randall was born Arthur Leonard Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Julia and Mogscha Rosenberg, an art and antiques dealer...
in both plays, and Maureen Stapleton
Maureen Stapleton
Maureen Stapleton was an American actress in film, theater and television.-Early life:Stapleton was born Lois Maureen Stapleton in Troy, New York, the daughter of Irene and John P. Stapleton, and grew up in a strict Irish American Catholic family...
as Iras in Antony.http://americantheatrewing.org/biography/detail/tony_randall/ Other cast members included Eli Wallach
Eli Wallach
Eli Herschel Wallach is an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...
, Joseph Wiseman
Joseph Wiseman
Joseph Wiseman was a Canadian theater and film actor, best known for starring as the titular antagonist of the first James Bond film, Dr. No, his role as Manny Weisbord on Crime Story, and his career on Broadway...
, Douglas Watson, Charles Noble, and Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
.
Postwar theatre
Finding good roles became increasingly a concern. Kate O'BrienKate O'Brien
Kate O'Brien , was an Irish novelist and playwright.-Biography:Kathleen "Kate" Mary Louie O'Brien was born in Limerick City at the end of the 19th century. Following the death of her mother when she was five, she became a boarder at Laurel Hill convent...
dramatized her historical novel For One Sweet Grape into That Lady," set in the Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
of Philip II
Philip II of Spain
Philip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....
. A swash buckling romance, the play was not well received. In 1951, Cornell played the lead in Somerset Maugham's comedy, The Constant Wife
The Constant Wife
The Constant Wife, a comedy of manners, was written by W. Somerset Maugham in 1926 and later published for general sales in April 1927.- Plot :...
for a summer festival in Colorado. The play, starring her longtime favorite Brian Aherne was produced again in New York and grossed more money for the production company than any other play.
In 1953, Cornell found a suitable role in The Prescott Proposals, about a United States Delegate to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
. Christopher Fry
Christopher Fry
Christopher Fry was an English playwright. He is best known for his verse dramas, notably The Lady's Not for Burning, which made him a major force in theatre in the 1940s and 1950s.-Early life:...
wrote a verse drama The Dark is Light Enough
The Dark is Light Enough (play)
The Dark is Light Enough is a 1954 play by Christopher Fry, which he wrote for Dame Edith Evans and set during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848...
, set in the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
of 1848. The cast included Tyrone Power
Tyrone Power
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...
, who played the love interest, Lorne Greene
Lorne Greene
Lorne Greene , was the stage name of Lyon Himan Green, OC, a Canadian actor.His television roles include Ben Cartwright on the western Bonanza, and Commander Adama in the science fiction movie and subsequent TV Series Battlestar Galactica...
, and Marian Winters
Marian Winters
Marian Winters was an American actress of stage, film, and television.-Biography:Born in New York City, New York to a Jewish-American family, Winters made her debut in summerstock at age sixteen. She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn.She began her career on Broadway understudying...
. (Christopher Plummer
Christopher Plummer
Arthur Christopher Orne Plummer, CC is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1957's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther and The Man Who Would Be King.In a career that spans over five...
was Power's understudy
Understudy
In theater, an understudy is a performer who learns the lines and blocking/choreography of a regular actor or actress in a play. Should the regular actor or actress be unable to appear on stage because of illness or emergencies, the understudy takes over the part...
. In his memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
, Plummer states that Cornell was "the last of the great actress-managers, and that she was his "sponsor.") In 1957, Cornell staged There Shall Be No Night
There Shall Be No Night
There Shall Be No Night is a three-act play written by American playwright Robert E. Sherwood. The play was presented by the Theatre Guild from April 29 through November 2, 1940, at Broadway's Alvin Theatre...
, the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winning play by Robert E. Sherwood
Robert E. Sherwood
Robert Emmet Sherwood was an American playwright, editor, and screenwriter.-Biography:Born in New Rochelle, New York, he was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker, and his wife, the former Rosina Emmet, a well-known illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood...
. This play was adapted for the TV and broadcast on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
with actor Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer was a French actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found success in movies during the 1930s. His memorable performances were among the era's most highly praised romantic dramas,...
. Another play by Fry, The Firstborn, was set in Biblical Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, with Anthony Quayle
Anthony Quayle
Sir John Anthony Quayle, CBE was an English actor and director.-Early life:Quayle was born in Ainsdale, Southport, in Lancashire to a Manx family....
playing Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
. Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, recently appointed musical director of the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
, wrote two songs for the production. The play toured in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
in 1958. She continued with several other forgettable plays, and her last production was Dear Liar, by Jerome Kilty.
Although Cornell was constantly performing, she took a three year absence while she recovered from a lung operation from 1955 to 1958. Additionally, with the exception of The Constant Wife, box office receipts were lagging even when she received excellent reviews. Tours continued to sell out, but even those began to fail as the decade bore on. By the end of the 1950s, the C. & M.C production company was finished. She did find time in 1954 to be the narrator for the film The Unconquered, the lifestory of her friend Helen Keller
Helen Keller
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree....
.
Starting in the 1940s, however, she began to collect tributes from various theatrical organization and colleges and universities, which bestowed her with honorary degrees and awards.
Retirement
Guthrie died on October 29, 1961 of a lung hemorrage, shortly after the couple had celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary. As he had always directed Cornell in every production since their marriage, she decided to retire from the stage altogether. She sold her residences and bought a house on E. 51st St. in ManhattanManhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, next door to Brian Aherne
Brian Aherne
Brian Aherne was a British actor of both stage and screen, who found success in Hollywood.-Early life and stage career:...
and down the street from Margalo Gillmore
Margalo Gillmore
Margaret Lorraine "Margalo" Gillmore was an English American film, stage and television actress....
. Since all three were cast members of Barretts, E. 51st St became known as Wimpole Street
Wimpole Street
Wimpole Street is a street in central London, England. Located in the City of Westminster, it is associated with private medical practice and medical associations. No. 1 Wimpole Street is an example of Edwardian baroque architecture, completed in 1912 by architect John Belcher as the home of the...
. Cornell also bought an old building on Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....
known as the Barn and made additions to it. Cornell restored the 300 year old Association Hall on the island, which was eventually renamed the Katharine Cornell Theater.
For her 80th birthday party in 1973, an assistant put together a tape of birthday greetings from Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
, John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
, and Ralph Richardson
Ralph Richardson
Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....
, among many other actors whom she had known. The tape runs for seven and half hours. She died of pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
on June 9, 1974 at the Barn in Tisbury, Massachusetts, and is buried next to the Association Hall that she had restored and was subsequently named in her honor.http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=235&PIpi=1456530
On acting and the theatre
Cornell served on the Board of Directors of The Rehearsal Club. The club was a place for young actresses to stay while they looked for work, and offered support for their careers. Occasionally, she could be seen serving food to the women, and Guthrie often found minor roles in his productions for them.In her memoir, Cornell states: "I do think that the rapid success achieved by some people in pictures has seriously hurt the chances of a lot young men and woman who are studying for the stage. The success stories that we read in the Hollywood magazines make it all sound too easy. A youngster was a chauffeur yesterday and today he owns four swimming pools! It doesn't work that way on the stage.... Some young actresses haven't been inclined to listen to me when I told that there was no royal road to success on the stage.
Getting started in the theatre still has a great element of luck in it, of course. Some producer must see the right person at just the right time. To get that kind of break, a girl has got to keep pounding away and tramp the streets from one manager's office ot another, no matter how discouraging it may be. At the same time, she must remember that when the break does come, she must have the equipment necessary to capitalize on it. I get the impression that most of the young girls who come to me for parts simply haven't worked hard enough. In New York they have every chance in the world to round out their education in their spare time. At the galleries along 57th Street they can see the best pictures in all the world. They can hear the finest music. They can get the best books in inexpensive editions. Best of all, they can listen to the finest actors and actresses of the day. When they tell me that they can't afford to go to the theatre very often, I usually find they think it beneath their dignity to sit in the top balcony!
I think the most important thing for young actresses to do is to learn to use their voices properly. I always found the reading French aloud helped me tremendously. I think that French makes you use your mouth more than any other language I know. I still occasionally read some French book aloud to myself before a performance."
Theatres and research centers
The TisburyTisbury, Massachusetts
Tisbury is a town located on Martha's Vineyard in Dukes County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,755 at the 2000 census.Vineyard Haven is the main village/town center of Tisbury. The two names are used interchangeably...
Town Hall on Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....
houses a theatre on its second floor. Originally known as Association Hall, it was re-named "The Katharine Cornell Theater" http://www.kctconcerts.com in her honor and later, her memory. A donation from her estate provided the funds for renovation (lighting, heating, elevator) as well as decoration of four large murals depicting Vineyard life and legend by local artist Stan Murphy. The Katharine Cornell Theater is a popular venue for plays, music, movies and more. Her gravesite and memorial are located next door to the Theater.
There is another theater space at the State University of New York at Buffalo named in her honor. Many student productions are presented there year round.
The Katharine Cornell-Guthrie McClintic Room was dedicated in April 1974 at the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
's Theatre Collection at Lincoln Center. The room contains a large collection of Cornell's papers, reviews and other items.
Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
has a collection of Cornell's papers dating from 1938 to 1960http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss230_main.html; plus additional materials in the papers of Nancy Hamilton link
The New York Public Library contains correspondence between Russian dance critic Igor Stupnikov and Cornell's assistants Nancy Hamilton and Gertrude Macy in the Billy Rose
Billy Rose
William "Billy" Rose was an American impresario, theatrical showman and lyricist. He is credited with many famous songs, notably "Me and My Shadow" , "It Happened in Monterey" and "It's Only a Paper Moon"...
Theater Archive.
Cornell donated some of her costumes designed by famed Russian fashion designer Valentina
Valentina (fashion designer)
Valentina Nicholaevna Sanina Schlee , known professionally simply as Valentina, was a Russian émigrée fashion designer and theatrical costume designer active from 1928 to the late 1950s....
to the Museum of the City of New York
Museum of the City of New York
The Museum of the City of New York is an art gallery and history museum founded in 1923 to present the history of New York City, USA and its people...
. They include costumes for her roles in Cleopatra and Antigone.
Cornell and Quayle also recorded for LP a scene from Barretts, and Cornell recited a selection of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett from Sonnets from the Portuguese. Cornell's short scene in Stage Door Canteen can be viewed on YouTube. In it, she recites some lines from Romeo and Juliet.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQT6A3uvy0
The Paley Center for Media
The Paley Center for Media has a collection of Cornell's television appearances:On April 2, 1956, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
TV broadcast of a production of Barretts with Anthony Quayle in the role of Robert Browning.http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=people&c=tv&advanced=1&p=1&item=T78:0344. Cornell was featured in a Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The second longest-running television program in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2011...
production of Robert E. Sherwood
Robert E. Sherwood
Robert Emmet Sherwood was an American playwright, editor, and screenwriter.-Biography:Born in New Rochelle, New York, he was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker, and his wife, the former Rosina Emmet, a well-known illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood...
's play, There Shall Be No Night
There Shall Be No Night
There Shall Be No Night is a three-act play written by American playwright Robert E. Sherwood. The play was presented by the Theatre Guild from April 29 through November 2, 1940, at Broadway's Alvin Theatre...
. It was broadcast on NBC on March 17, 1957.http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=people&c=tv&advanced=1&p=1&item=T78:0158
On January 6, 1957, Dave Garroway
Dave Garroway
David Cunningham "Dave" Garroway was the founding host of NBC's Today from 1952 to 1961. His easygoing, relaxed, and relaxing style belied a battle with depression that may have contributed to the end of his days as a leading television personality—and, eventually, his life...
interviewed Cornell for Wide Wide World
Wide Wide World
Wide Wide World was a 90-minute documentary series telecast live on NBC on Sunday afternoons at 4pm Eastern. Conceived by network head Pat Weaver and hosted by Dave Garroway, Wide Wide World was introduced on the Producers' Showcase series on June 27, 1955...
: A Woman's Story.http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=people&c=tv&advanced=1&p=1&item=T80:0190
She also appeared on TV as herself for an NBC Symphony Orchestra
NBC Symphony Orchestra
The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra established by David Sarnoff of the National Broadcasting Company especially for conductor Arturo Toscanini...
broadcast on March 22, 1952,http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=people&c=tv&advanced=1&p=1&item=T77:0206 (Cornell and Guthrie often tuned into the Orchestra broadcasts, even while on tour. Often the cast and crew would join them in listening to the radio.)
Additionally, she was interviewed three times for the radio program Stage Struck, hosted by Mike Wallace. http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=all&c=all&advanced=1&p=1&item=R78:0207 http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=all&c=all&advanced=1&p=1&item=R78:0219 http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=Katharine+Cornell&f=all&c=all&advanced=1&p=1&item=R78:0210
Awards and honors
Katharine Cornell won a Tony AwardTony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for Antony and Cleopatra (1947, award year 1948) along with Jessica Tandy
Jessica Tandy
Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy was an English-American stage and film actress.She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films...
in A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
and Judith Anderson
Judith Anderson
Dame Judith Anderson, AC, DBE was an Australian-born American-based actress of stage, film and television. She won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award.-Early life:...
in Medea
Medea
Medea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of...
. It was the first time any actor, male or female, won a Tony Award playing a Shakespearean role. Additionally, she was honored with the first New York Drama League Award
Drama League Award
The Drama League Awards, created in 1935, honor distinguished productions and performances both on Broadway and Off-Broadway, in addition to recognizing exemplary career achievements in theatre, musical theatre, and directing...
in 1935 for her performance as Juliet. In March 1937, The Chi Omega
Chi Omega
Chi Omega is a women's fraternity and the largest member of the National Panhellenic Conference. Chi Omega has 174 active collegiate chapters and over 230 alumnae chapters. Chi Omega's national headquarters is located in Memphis, Tennessee....
Sorority's National Achievement Award was given to her by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
at a White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
reception.
Cornell was awarded a medal 'for good speech on the stage" by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
, and received a citation as Woman of the Year by the American Friends of the Hebrew University in 1959.
After her role in St. Joan, she was awarded honorary degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Elmira College
Elmira College
Elmira College is a coeducational private liberal arts college located in Elmira, in New York State's Southern Tier region.The college is noted as the oldest college still in existence which granted degrees to women that were the equivalent of those given to men...
,http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1787&dat=19370613&id=F5YcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XWQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1471,5701383 Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
, the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, and Hobart
Hobart
Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...
. Clark University
Clark University
Clark University is a private research university and liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts.Founded in 1887, it is the oldest educational institution founded as an all-graduate university. Clark now also educates undergraduates...
, Ithaca College
Ithaca College
Ithaca College is a private college located on the South Hill of Ithaca, New York. The school was founded by William Egbert in 1892 as a conservatory of music. The college has a strong liberal arts core, but also offers several pre-professional programs and some graduate programs. The college is...
and Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
awarded degrees in the 1940s, and Baylor University
Baylor University
Baylor University is a private, Christian university located in Waco, Texas. Founded in 1845, Baylor is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.-History:...
, Middlebury College
Middlebury College
Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college located in Middlebury, Vermont, USA. Founded in 1800, it is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the United States. Drawing 2,400 undergraduates from all 50 United States and over 70 countries, Middlebury offers 44 majors in the arts,...
and Kenyon College
Kenyon College
Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio, founded in 1824 by Bishop Philander Chase of The Episcopal Church, in parallel with the Bexley Hall seminary. It is the oldest private college in Ohio...
awarded theirs in the 1950s.
On January 10, 1974, she received the American National Theater and Academy
American National Theater and Academy
The American National Theatre and Academy is a non-profit theatre producer and training organization that was established in 1935 to be the official United States national theatre that would be an alternative to the for-profit Broadway houses of the day....
's National Artist Award for 'her incomparable acting ability" and for "having elevated the theater throughout the world." http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1979&dat=19740115&id=1FwoAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BwYGAAAAIBAJ&pg=4768,1607534
In 1935, when the University of Buffalo was still a private institution, she was awarded the Chancellor's Medal of the University.
The Artvoice,http://www.artvoice.com a weekly arts newspaper in Buffalo, each year awards the Katharine Cornell Award, given to visiting artists for outstanding contribution to the Buffalo theater season.
The townhouse at 33 Beekman Place that Cornell and her husband lived in for many years has a historical marker in honor of their importance to New York City.
Biographies
Cornell wrote her own memoir published in 1939 entitled I Always Wanted to be an Actress, published by Random House.Her husband, Guthrie McClintic, wrote a memoir entitled Me & Kit, published in 1955 by the Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown Company
Lucille M. Pederson wrote a biography entitled, Katharine Cornell: A Bio-biography, published in 1994 by the Greenwood Press. Gladys Malvern wrote a book entitled, "Curtain Up! The Story of Katharine Cornell." It was published in 1943 and includes a forward by Katharine Cornell.http://lccn.loc.gov/43016810
Additionally, a biography of Cornell was written in Russian by Igor Stupnikov, a Russian dance critic.http://www.nypl.org/archives/4693.
Flora Merrill wrote Flush of Wimpole Street and Broadway, a book about the cocker spaniel that starred in Barretts. It was published by Robert McBride & Co., New York, 1933. It is illustrated by Edwina. Inspired by the play, Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
wrote Flush: A Biography
Flush: A Biography
Flush: A Biography, an imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, is a cross-genre blend of fiction and nonfiction by Virginia Woolf published in 1933 and reprinted in 2005 by Persephone Books...
, a part fiction, part biography of the original dog owned by Elizabeth Barrett. It was also published in 1933.
Subject of artworks
The Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
holds a bronze bust of Cornell from 1961 by artist Malvina Hoffman
Malvina Hoffman
Malvina Hoffman , was an American sculptor and author, well known for her life-size bronze sculptures of people...
. Additionally, it has a pastel portrait by William Cotton from 1933.http://www.npg.si.edu/competition/site/about/image_credits.html
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...
in Buffalo, NY, has a 1926 full length portrait of Cornell by artist Eugene Speicher
Eugene Speicher
Speicher, Eugene was an American portrait, landscape, and figurative painter.One of the foremost realists of his generation who closely upheld the mantle of his mentor, Robert Henri, Speicher was born in Buffalo, New York. He began his studies in art at the Albright Art School...
in her role as Candida. The gallery also possess a 1930 life mask by Karl Illava, an undated drawing of her as Elizabeth Barrett by Louis Lupas, and two sculptures by Anna Glenny Dunbar from 1930.
The Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University
Baylor University
Baylor University is a private, Christian university located in Waco, Texas. Founded in 1845, Baylor is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.-History:...
has a portrait of Cornell in her role as Elizabeth Barrett painted by Alexander Clayton on display.http://www.browninglibrary.org/index.php?id=48568 Cornell donated the portrait and several items related to Barretts to the library.
Additionally, the State University of New York at Buffalo holds a portrait of Cornell painted by surrealist Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
dated 1951.
Although Cornell is buried in Tisbury, Massachusetts, there is a cenotaph
Cenotaph
A cenotaph is an "empty tomb" or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been interred elsewhere. The word derives from the Greek κενοτάφιον = kenotaphion...
in her memory in the George W. Tifft plot at Forest Lawn Cemetery
Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo
Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York was founded in 1849 by Charles E. Clark. It covers over 250 acres and over 152,000 are buried there. Notable graves include U.S. President Millard Fillmore, singer Rick James, and inventor Lawrence Dale Bell...
in Buffalo.
The Katharine Cornell Foundation
The Katharine Cornell Foundation was funded with profits from Barretts. The foundation was dissolved in 1963, distributing its assets to the Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
(to honor her close friend from Buffalo, Conger Goodyear, who was a founder of MoMA and its first president), Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
's theater department, and the Actor's Fund of America.
Cultural references
Cornell is featured in a play by Buffalo born playwright A.R. Gurney entitled The Grand Manner.http://artvoice.com/issues/v9n26/theaterweek The play is about his encounter with Cornell as a young man when she was in the production of Antony and Cleopatra. The play ran during the summer of 2010 at Lincoln Center and starred Kate BurtonKate Burton
Kate Burton may refer to:*Kate Burton , American actress of stage and television*Kate Burton , British aid worker who was kidnapped in the Gaza Strip in December 2005 and released later that month-See also:...
as Cornell.http://www.lct.org/showMain.htm?id=192 In Buffalo, the play was produced by the Kavinoky Theatre in May 2011.Buffalo News Review
Cornell is mentioned in the third chorus in the song, "Gee How I Wish I Was Back in the Army," by Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
:
"Gee, I wish I was back in the Army/
The shows we got civilians couldn't see/
How we would yell for DietrichMarlene DietrichMarlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
and Cornell/
JolsonAl JolsonAl Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
, Hope and Benny all for free."
Cornell is also referenced in the lyrics of "Let's Face It", by Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...
:
"Farming, that's the fashion,/
Farming, that's the passion/
Of our great celebrities of today./
Kit Cornell is shellin' peas,/
Lady Mendl's climbin' trees,/
Dear Mae WestMae WestMae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades....
is at her best in the hay."
Cornell is referenced as a plot point in the comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came to Dinner is a comedy in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It debuted on October 16, 1939 at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. It then enjoyed a number of New York and London revivals. The first London production was staged at The Savoy Theatre starring Robert...
by Moss Hart
Moss Hart
Moss Hart was an American playwright and theatre director, best known for his interpretations of musical theater on Broadway.-Early years:...
and George S. Kaufman
George S. Kaufman
George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...
. The character Bert Jefferson writes a play, and his girlfriend Maggie Cutler, convinced the play would be a hit on Broadway, gives the play to another character in the hopes that Katharine Cornell will produce it.script
External links
- Photographs from the George Eastman House:
- Obituary in the New York Times
- For more photos of Cornell, her first home in Buffalo, and other information: http://www.buffaloah.com/h/cornellk/tc.html
- Yale has a website: Katharine Cornell
- Life Magazine has a collection of photos.http://www.life.com/search/?type=images&q0=katharine+cornell
- Katharine Cornell Papers, 1801-1983. Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library.
- Katharine Cornell Papers, 1938-1960. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College
- Nancy Hamilton Papers, 1862-1992. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College