Movie Review: Gypsy, starring Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood, and Karl Malden (1962)

Original poster for Gypsy, 1962.

Natalie Wood as Louise, and Rosalind Russell as Rose in Gypsy.

Natalie Wood as Louise and Karl Malden as Herbie in Gypsy. (Note Caroline the cow in the background.)

Natalie Wood after Louise's transformation into Gypsy Rose Lee. *Sigh* She was so beautiful.

Natalie Wood on the set with the real Gypsy Rose Lee, who was at least 5 inches taller than Natalie.

Natalie Wood in her dressing room. I love this photo, and not just because of what Natalie's wearing. It's such a great composition, the way Natalie is standing is such an interesting pose. She seems unaware of the camera, and there's the mystery of all the people whose faces we don't see. Who are they?

The 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy introduced the world to a character with a huge personality: dedicated stage mother Rose Hovick, whose only ambition in life is to make her daughter June a vaudeville star. No matter that vaudeville is already on the way out, Rose will find a way to make it happen. The character of Rose is widely known in pop culture as “Mama Rose,” but she’s actually never referred to that way in either the play or the 1962 movie version. Gypsy featured a book written by Arthur Laurents, with music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Laurents and Sondheim had previously collaborated on West Side Story. Oddly enough, Natalie Wood starred in both the movie versions of West Side Story and Gypsy. 

The score of Gypsy is simply fantastic, and it features many great songs like “Small World,” “You’ll Never Get Away From Me,” “All I Need is the Girl,” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” and “Let Me Entertain You.” While the Broadway production starred the legendary Ethel Merman as Rose, the movie starred three actors not known for their singing voices: Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood, and Karl Malden. The decision was made by someone to cut all of the songs that Karl Malden’s character, Herbie, sings, turning it into a non-singing part. That decision meant ditching the super cute song “Together (Wherever We Go),” which was filmed, but then cut. It’s included on the DVD as a bonus feature. Natalie Wood had her singing voice dubbed for West Side Story, much to her annoyance, and she did all of her own singing in Gypsy. Rosalind Russell had appeared in musicals before, as she starred in the original Broadway production of Wonderful Town, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and music by Leonard Bernstein. But for Gypsy her vocals were mixed with those of Lisa Kirk. Some songs, like “Mr. Goldstone, I Love You” are all Russell’s voice, while others are a mix, and Kirk did an excellent job of matching Russell’s voice. 

In terms of acting, Russell, Wood, and Malden all did excellent work. The role of Herbie, Rose’s long-suffering boyfriend, requires a “normal guy” actor, and Karl Malden certainly fit that bill. Malden is by turns intense and also good-naturedly laid-back, and it’s another superb performance from an actor whose career was full of them. Russell is marvelous as Rose, who comes off as something of a more intense version of Russell’s Auntie Mame. Like Mame, Rose sucks all the oxygen out of any room she’s in. Sometimes in a good way, and sometimes in a bad way. Wood is fabulous as Louise, the plain older sister who is never the star, but finally blossoms into the burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee. For the role of Louise, you need someone who is believable as both a shy wallflower and as the belle of the ball. Wood was such a good actress that she pulled it off very convincingly. I know, we all KNOW Natalie Wood is gorgeous, even when she’s dressed up as plain as she can possibly be. The costume designers did a really good job of making Wood look plain as Louise. (Orry-Kelly designed Natalie’s dresses for the burlesque scenes, but I doubt he had anything to do with the drab clothes Wood wears as Louise.)

Gypsy was directed by Mervyn LeRoy, who had a long career in Hollywood stretching back to the dawn of the talkies. An old school studio director who could handle any genre, two of LeRoy’s best known films today are Mister Roberts and Quo Vadis. I really enjoyed the sets in Gypsy. The sets throughout the movie are obviously fake. For example, the train station where Rose sings “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” and the Western set as Louise becomes the new star of the act after June leaves. I think it was an obvious choice to make the sets look like sets, and I took that to be a way of showing the audience that these characters don’t exist in the “real world.” Their whole lives revolve around showbiz, and they are disconnected from any other kind of reality. Especially Rose, who creates her own reality wherever she goes. 

There aren’t many interesting behind the scenes stories from the set of Gypsy. As a small nod to my ongoing fascination with Warren Beatty, I’ll point out that Beatty was dating Wood during the production of Gypsy, and most days he could be found on the set, being a supportive boyfriend. According to Gavin Lambert’s 2005 biography of Natalie Wood, the reason that Rosalind Russell played Rose instead of Ethel Merman was a simple one: Russell’s husband, theatrical producer Frederick Brisson, owned the film rights to Gypsy, and sold the rights to Warner Brothers on the condition that Russell would play Rose. (Natalie Wood: A Life, by Gavin Lambert, p.184) 

Natalie Wood began her career as an actress at the age of 5, and Wood’s biographer Suzanne Finstad has a rather dramatic view of her role in Gypsy: “Natalie was driven by demons to play the stripper with the stage mother of all stage mothers, Mama Rose-played in the movie by Rosalind Russell-viewing Gypsy as the catharsis for all her years as a child star under the tyranny of Mud.” (Mud was a nickname for Natalie’s mother Maria Zakharenko.) (Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, by Suzanne Finstad, p.279) However, Christopher Nickens’ 1986 book Natalie Wood: A Biography in Photographs, says the opposite. Nickens writes, “Maria realized early on that Natalie was destined to be a performer, and she was wise enough to encourage her daughter’s talents and help her make the most of them.” Nickens also includes two quotes from Natalie to back up his point. Natalie told Hedda Hopper during the filming of Gypsy, “My mother was the furthest thing from a stage mother.” When asked how she dealt with being a child actor, Wood told the Los Angeles Times: “It all depends more than anything else on the parents. I happened to enjoy it all. I wanted it. I wasn’t being pushed. I was lucky.” (All three quotes from Natalie Wood: A Biography in Photographs, by Christopher Nickens, p.113) 

So, which was it? Was Gypsy just like Natalie Wood’s own childhood? Or was her mother nothing at all like Rose Hovick? The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I think it’s fair to say that Wood had a sometimes difficult relationship with her mother, and she probably related to Louise in some ways. Natalie’s beautiful rendition of the song “Little Lamb” is proof enough for me that she felt a connection to Louise. 

Another member of the Wood/Zakharenko family who might have felt a close connection to the overlooked Louise was Natalie’s little sister, Lana Wood, who also became an actress but whose career never climbed to the same heights as Natalie’s. 

Wood was at the peak of her movie stardom when Gypsy was released in November 1962, and if you watch the trailer you’ll see that Warner Brothers was really selling the movie as “Natalie Wood Strips,” while in reality it’s only the last 15% of the movie that’s about Louise’s transformation into Gypsy Rose Lee. Wood received some stripping tips from Gypsy Rose Lee herself on the set. Wood was understandably a bit nervous about the stripping scenes, but in the finished film she handles them with aplomb. Because Wood was so petite, with reports of her height ranging from 5’0” to 5’3”, and the real Gypsy Rose Lee was 5’8”, director Mervyn LeRoy and director of photography Harry Stradling Sr. did their best to make Natalie look as tall as possible during the stripping scenes. Natalie’s clothes were made to accentuate her legs and give the illusion of greater height. Most of the camera angles are low, so you’re looking up at Wood, making her look taller. And notice how during the New Year’s Eve strip, the showgirls disappear into the wings by the time Natalie appears on screen, so you never see a showgirl towering over her. Wood certainly looked glamorous and very beautiful and attractive in the scenes where she’s Gypsy Rose Lee.

Gypsy was a financial success, earning $11 million at the box office, making it the 9^th highest grossing movie of 1962. Warner Brothers’ other 1962 musical release, The Music Man, made just under $15 million, making it the 5^th highest grossing movie of 1962. Wood and Russell were both nominated for Golden Globes for Best Actress in a Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy, and Russell took home the trophy. Malden was nominated for Best Actor in a Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy, losing out to Marcello Mastroianni in Divorce, Italian Style. 

Gypsy is a wonderful film of one of the great American stage musicals, and it showcases great performances from Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood, and Karl Malden.

The Films of Warren Beatty: Splendor in the Grass starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, directed by Elia Kazan, written by William Inge (1961)

Poster for Splendor in the Grass, 1961. I like how Warren Beatty is described as "a very special star!"

Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass, 1961. Don't go too far, you kids!

Director Elia Kazan on the set of Splendor in the Grass, with Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood, 1960. You know, just directing shirtless, like you do.

Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood, circa 1962. Natalie Wood had such great style, and she was so incredibly beautiful.

This is such a cute picture of Warren and Natalie. Unfortunately, they weren't this happy all of the time.

The first time moviegoers got a glimpse of Warren Beatty, he was making out with Natalie Wood in a car. It was a fitting entrance for Beatty, who became known as a legendary ladies’ man. 

Beatty made his movie debut in 1961’s Splendor in the Grass, starring opposite Wood in a story about a teenage romance. In Splendor, set in Kansas in 1928 and 1929, Beatty played Bud Stamper, a standout athlete, and Wood played Wilma Dean “Deanie” Loomis. Bud’s family is very rich, thanks to oil, while Deanie’s father is a grocer. Unfortunately, both Bud and Deanie get terrible advice about sex and relationships from their parents. Although Deanie’s mother (Audrey Christie) wants Deanie to have the financial security that Bud can give her, she is horrified at the thought that Deanie and Bud might be going too far. As she says to Deanie at the beginning of the movie, “Boys don’t respect a girl they can go all the way with. Boys want a nice girl for a wife.” Deanie asks, “Is it so terrible to have those feelings about a boy?” Her mother’s tart response is “No nice girl does…She just lets her husband near her in order to have children.” Yikes. 

In the Stamper household, Bud can barely get a word in edgewise with his overbearing, Babbitt-like father Ace (Pat Hingle). Ace is worried that a girl like Deanie is only interested in Bud for his money, and will try to trap him into marriage by letting Bud get her pregnant. Ace’s solution to that problem is telling Bud that he should continue to date Deanie, but get his rocks off with slutty girls. 

Splendor in the Grass is full of sexual tension, as both Bud and Deanie want to have sex, but they know that “good” boys and “nice” girls don’t have sex before marriage. The temptation leads to turmoil and illness, as Bud stops seeing Deanie, and she attempts to drown herself, which leads to her parents sending her to a psychiatric hospital. Bud and Deanie marry other people, and they are left with the memory of “the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower.”

Splendor is a superb movie, written by William Inge, one of the major American playwrights of the 1950’s, whose other works include Come Back, Little Sheba, Picnic, and Bus Stop. Inge captured the passion of young love, and also the stultifying small town that Bud and Deanie inhabit, with its rigid behavioral expectations. Splendor was directed by Elia Kazan, one of the major American directors of the 1950’s, whose other films include A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden. There was a lot of talent assembled for Splendor in the Grass, and they all did remarkable work. Warren Beatty gave an excellent performance as Bud, and Natalie Wood delivered one of her definitive performances as Deanie. 

The supporting cast of Splendor was marvelously talented. Pat Hingle was great as the annoying Ace Stamper. Hingle had recently survived a terrible accident, as he had fallen fifty feet down an elevator shaft in 1959, breaking many bones and nearly dying. His limp as Ace Stamper was no actor’s affectation-that was how Hingle walked after the accident. As you watch the movie, you’ll notice that Hingle doesn’t seem old enough to be Warren Beatty’s dad, and he wasn’t. Hingle was just thirteen years older than Beatty. But Hingle was twenty three years older than Joanna Roos, who plays his wife in the movie! Barbara Loden played Bud’s older sister, a wild flapper who is in full rebellion against the family. Loden was having an affair with Elia Kazan, and they eventually married in 1967. Look for Phyllis Diller at the end of the movie as a nightclub hostess-she even gets to tell a few jokes. Also be on the lookout for William Inge in an uncredited cameo as the Reverend. 

How did Warren Beatty get to be so lucky to make his first film with Natalie Wood, Eliza Kazan, and William Inge? The story that usually gets told is that Warren Beatty’s acting career was jump-started when the director Joshua Logan saw him at the North Jersey Playhouse in in a production of Compulsion in December of 1958. Logan was a noted theater director who co-wrote the book for South Pacific. Logan was a good friend of the playwright William Inge, and had directed the movie versions of Inge’s plays Picnic, starring William Holden, in one of his best roles, and Bus Stop, starring Marilyn Monroe. Inge thought that Beatty would be perfect for one of the lead roles in Splendor in the Grass, a screenplay he was writing for director Elia Kazan. The story of Beatty being discovered by Joshua Logan is repeated in Peter Biskind’s biography of Beatty, but Suzanne Finstad’s Beatty biography has a different tale to tell. Finstad’s book states that William Inge saw Beatty on an episode of an NBC TV show called True Story. Inge thought that Beatty would be perfect for Splendor in the Grass. (Warren Beatty: A Private Man, by Suzanne Finstad, p.174) Inge refuted the story that he or Logan saw Beatty on stage, and he said in 1967, “Just for the record, neither Josh Logan nor I even knew that Warren had played in Compulsion.” (Finstad, p.180) I couldn’t find any reference to Beatty appearing on an episode of True Story on imdb.com to confirm Inge’s story, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Before Beatty made Splendor, he was briefly under contract to MGM, but he bought himself out of the contract in the summer of 1959, before he had ever accepted any roles at the studio. Even then, Beatty was highly selective about the parts he played. At this point in time, if Warren Beatty was known to anyone in the show business world, it was most likely for being Shirley MacLaine’s little brother, or for being Joan Collins’ boyfriend. But William Inge believed in Beatty’s talent, and he gave Beatty the lead role in his new play, A Loss of Roses, which opened on Broadway in November, 1959. It closed after just three weeks. It is, to date, Beatty’s only appearance on the Broadway stage. However, Beatty was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor. A Loss of Roses was eventually filmed as The Stripper, released in 1963. Richard Beymer, most famous for playing Tony in West Side Story, played the role that Beatty played on stage. And, in another connection to Natalie Wood’s most famous roles, Gypsy Rose Lee had a role in The Stripper. 

Beatty’s screen credits at the time he began filming Splendor in the Grass included appearances on 5 TV shows, plus 2 episodes of a TV show called Look Up and Live, and 5 episodes on the teenage sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, playing Milton Armitage, a rich kid who vied with Dwayne Hickman for Tuesday Weld’s affections. It was not exactly an overpowering body of work. But Beatty did very well in Splendor. Of course, it helped that Inge tailored the role to fit Beatty. Beatty’s acting style was highly reminiscent of the late James Dean, and working with Kazan and Wood only reinforced the connection to Dean. Beatty’s performance in Splendor is much better than his performances in his other early movies, like The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, All Fall Down, and Lilith. Part of the reason might be that Splendor is just a better movie than Beatty’s other early movies. 

At the time Splendor was filmed in 1960, Natalie Wood was having a difficult time finding the kind of roles she wanted to play. Wood had started out as a child star, appearing in the Christmas classic Miracle on 34^th Street when she was just eight years old. Wood had made the difficult transition to adolescence with her fantastic performance as Judy, opposite James Dean in 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause. But five years after Rebel, her career seemed stuck. Off-screen, Wood was married to handsome young actor Robert Wagner, and they were one of young Hollywood’s most popular couples, who gathered headlines wherever they went. 

Wood longed to play Deanie, and in the words of her biographer Suzanne Finstad, “She saw Splendor, and its director, Kazan, as her last best hope to restore her integrity as an actress.” (Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, by Suzanne Finstad, p.254) Kazan said of Wood’s reputation at the time, “People said generally that she was finished, washed up.” (The Sexiest Man Alive: A Biography of Warren Beatty, by Ellis Amburn, p.35) Kazan had always had Wood on his short list of actresses to play Deanie, but he was wary of her reputation as a pampered movie star. Once he met her in person, he knew that she would be excellent as Deanie. Kazan said later of Wood, “She worked as if her life depended on it.” (Natasha, p.256) 

As excited as Wood was to play Deanie, there were also parts of the script that made her nervous. Wood was very frightened at the thought of filming the scene where Deanie attempts to kill herself by throwing herself into a reservoir where she and Bud used to park and neck. Wood had been terrified of water since she was a child, and insisted that Kazan hire a double to film the scene. Wood claimed that Kazan hired a double, but the double couldn’t swim at all, forcing Wood to perform the stunt herself. Kazan claimed that he didn’t hire a double for Wood. Regardless of the truth, Wood had to confront one of her deepest fears, and the scene is wrenching not only because of Deanie’s emotional state, but because of the way it echoes Wood’s own tragic death by drowning in 1981. (Natasha, p.261-2 has more information about the filming of the scene.)

Another difficult scene for Natalie Wood to film was the one in which Deanie has an emotional argument with her mother while taking a bath. Her mother tries to get more information about how far Deanie went with Bud, and asks her, “Did he spoil you?” Deanie yells back “I’m not spoiled!” Natalie had to perform the scene nearly naked, and she also did it without an accessory that she always wore. For the bathtub scene, Natalie took off the bracelets that she wore on her left wrist. She had broken her left wrist at a young age, and it never healed properly, so her wrist bone stuck out a bit. Natalie was always very self-conscious about her wrist, so she wore bracelets to hide it. But for the bathtub scene, Natalie isn’t wearing anything on her left wrist. Wood’s biographer Suzanne Finstad wrote the following about the bathtub scene: “The combination of Kazan’s wizardry, Natalie’s emotional connection to the mother/daughter conflict in the scene, the panic of dousing her head under the bath water, and the vulnerability she felt at being seen ‘naked’-without her bracelet-produced a hysteria in Natalie that may be her most powerful moment as an actress.” (Natasha, p.260)  

Together Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty made a very pretty pair. Beatty was an extremely handsome young man, with a thick head of dark brown hair, full, sensual lips, a cleft chin, and clear blue eyes. Women didn’t seem to care that his ears stuck out a little bit. Natalie Wood was simply stunning. She was a very attractive woman who had lots of sex appeal. Wood was petite, with reports of her height varying from 5’0” to 5’3”. Wood had beautiful big warm brown eyes, dark brown hair, and an inviting smile. And no man ever cared that her left wrist stuck out a little bit. 

On the set, Wood and Beatty had a somewhat frosty relationship. Wood bestowed on Beatty the nickname “Mental Anguish,” for the way he overanalyzed every nuance of the script. (Natasha, p.258) In an unfinished memoir from 1966, Wood wrote of Beatty: “After he got the role, a few misunderstandings crept in. Warren had heard rumors that I didn’t want him in the film, that he was too much of an unknown, that we needed an established male star to carry the picture at the box office. None of this was true. But Warren believed it…Warren acted quite aloof.” (Warren Beatty: A Private Man, by Suzanne Finstad, p.235) Finstad describes Wood’s memoir in more detail: “In July of 1966, Wood submitted her ‘life story’ to Peter Wyden, then the executive director of Ladies’ Home Journal, and a book publisher. It was written by hand, and in typescript with Wood’s handwritten corrections.” (Finstad, p.260) 

 Beatty’s romantic relationship with Wood almost certainly did not start on the set of Splendor, but rather a year later, in 1961, after Wood separated from Robert Wagner. During filming of Splendor Beatty was still dating Joan Collins, and Collins and Wagner were frequently on the set. Splendor began filming in New York City on May 9, 1960, and it wrapped on August 16, 1960. Just two days later Wood started rehearsals for West Side Story. (Biskind, p.38) Ironically, Beatty had tested for the role of Tony in West Side Story, but he lost out to the dull and colorless Richard Beymer. (Finstad, p.228) 

In his book Pieces of My Heart, Robert Wagner wrote, “Beatty had nothing to do with our breakup, and Natalie didn’t begin to see him until after we split.” (Wagner, p.136, quoted in Biskind’s biography of Beatty) In an interview with Peter Biskind, Beatty also says that nothing happened between him and Natalie during filming. “There’s a lot of apocrypha about Natalie and I having something going on during Splendor in the Grass. It’s utterly untrue. In fact it was a fairly distant relationship.” (Biskind, p.37) 

Natalie Wood’s account of how her relationship with Beatty began also squares with what Beatty and Wagner said. Wood wrote, “I have suffered in silence from gossip about my walking away from my marriage to go with Warren. There was gossip and speculation that Warren was in some way responsible for the end of the marriage. It is totally untrue. Warren had nothing to do with it. We began our relationship after, not before, my marriage collapsed.” (Finstad, p.268, source is Wood’s 1966 “life story”) 

Wood and Wagner announced their separation on June 21, 1961, and a month later, on July 27^th, Beatty was Wood’s date at a preview screening of West Side Story. Even though Robert Wagner said Beatty didn’t have anything to do with their breakup, he was still pissed off at Beatty. “I wanted to kill the son of a bitch. I was hanging around outside his house with a gun, hoping he would walk out. I not only wanted to kill him, I was prepared to kill him.” (Wagner, Pieces of My Heart, p.142, quoted in Biskind bio) If Wagner had really wanted to kill Beatty, he probably should have just hung around outside the house that Natalie Wood was renting. 

Both Wood and Beatty were pilloried in the popular press at the time they started dating, because the assumption at the time was that their relationship had precipitated the disintegration of Wood and Wagner’s marriage. Beatty, who has long had a contentious relationship with the press, was accused of being a homewrecker, and he said in an interview with Peter Biskind: “The press has beat the shit out of me since 1960. Nobody gets beat up like a twenty-two-year-old pretty boy.” (Biskind, p.49) 

Wood and Beatty’s relationship was anything but calm, and they eventually broke up in 1963. But for a while they were one of the hottest Hollywood couples, a sort of junior version of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Wood wrote of their relationship, “Neither Warren nor I was ready for a permanent relationship…at bottom, we both knew it was only an interim relationship. Both of us were not only immature but moody…we were both so confused that we thought fighting and hostility meant real emotional honesty.” (Finstad, p.273, source is Wood’s 1966 “life story”)

Splendor was released on October 10, 1961, and Beatty was given a big press buildup before the film’s release. That buildup, combined with his new romance with Wood meant that millions of people had seen Warren Beatty’s face and name before they had ever seen him on screen. Which begs the question: why was the post-production period for Splendor so long? In those days, it was extremely rare for a movie to be released 14 months after it had finished filming, especially a property that the studio actually had faith in. A more normal post-production period for Splendor would have meant a release in early 1961. If Kazan had really been under pressure from Warner Brothers, it could have even come out in December of 1960. Another odd thing about the release of Splendor is that it came out just before West Side Story, which premiered in New York City on October 18, 1961. West Side Story would assuredly be one of the major releases of 1961, so why release Splendor at the same time and have two films starring Natalie Wood competing at the box office? But it doesn’t seem as though the competition hurt either film, as they both did very well. According to Wikipedia, West Side Story was the highest-grossing movie released in 1961, earning $43 million. Splendor in the Grass was number 10, earning $11,000,000. Annoyingly, there’s no link to where the total for Splendor comes from. IMDB says Splendor made $8.7 million, which was still a huge total, and would put it at 14^th for the year. 

Wood and Beatty both received glowing reviews for their performances in Splendor, and they were both nominated for Golden Globes. They both lost, Beatty to that year’s Oscar winner, the handsome German actor Maximilian Schell for his role in Judgement at Nuremburg, and Wood to Geraldine Page for Summer and Smoke. (Ironically, one of Wood’s fellow nominees was Beatty’s sister Shirley MacLaine, who was nominated for The Children’s Hour.) However, Beatty did win the Golden Globe for “Most Promising Newcomer-Male,” which he shared with the singer Bobby Darin. 

Splendor in the Grass was nominated for two Oscars, William Inge for his original screenplay, and Wood for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Beatty and Wood attended the Oscars together, and Life magazine was so sure Natalie would win the Oscar that they hired a photographer to follow her on the day of the ceremony, April 9, 1962. (Natasha, p.282-3) Inge won the Oscar, but Wood lost to Sophia Loren, who won for her role in Two Women. Meanwhile, West Side Story won 10 Oscars that night. Later that week, after losing the Oscar, Wood filed for divorce from Robert Wagner. According to Beatty biographer Ellis Amburn, part of the reason Beatty wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for Splendor was because Warner Brothers was trying to push for Beatty to be nominated as Best Supporting Actor for The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, which was a foolish idea, as anyone who has seen Beatty’s performance in that film can attest. 

An interesting postscript to Beatty and Wood’s relationship is that in 1966, three years after they broke up, Beatty tried to persuade Wood to star in Bonnie and Clyde with him. It was one of the few times when Beatty was not able to get what he wanted from a woman, as Wood turned him down. Beatty said, “I guess I wasn’t too persuasive; at that point I wasn’t getting a lot of offers and Natalie was riding the crest of her career.” Wood said in a 1969 interview, “I loved the script and I loved the part, but I had personal reasons. I didn’t want to go to Texas on location and well, Warren and I are friends, but working with him had been difficult before.” (Both quotes from Natasha, p.313) It’s fascinating to think what Bonnie and Clyde would have been like with Natalie Wood instead of Faye Dunaway.

Splendor in the Grass is a fantastic movie, and I would highly recommend it for any fans of Warren Beatty, Natalie Wood, William Inge, and Elia Kazan.

Movie Review: This Property is Condemned, starring Natalie Wood and Robert Redford, directed by Sydney Pollack (1966)

Robert Redford and Natalie Wood make a gorgeous couple in This Property is Condemned, 1966.

Director Sydney Pollack talks things over with stars Robert Redford and Natalie Wood, while Charles Bronson relaxes in the background.

The stunningly beautiful Natalie Wood in This Property is Condemned, 1966.

A Southern accent lets you get away with a lot. If you’re a movie character from the South, you can be as weird and eccentric as you want, and people will just write it off. If you acted the same way, but were from the North, people would instantly think you’re crazy. That thought came to me as I was watching This Property is Condemned, starring Natalie Wood and Robert Redford. It’s based on a one-act play by Tennessee Williams, who virtually trademarked Southern eccentrics. Early on in the movie, Redford’s character has a short speech where he says, “Do you know there was a cat once who fell asleep in the sun and dreamt that he was a man who fell asleep and dreamt he was a cat. When he woke up, he didn’t know if he was a man or a cat.” What the hell does that mean? Because that speech is delivered in Redford’s Southern accent, it sounds vaguely poetic, as though there’s a deeper hidden meaning in that story. Had that same speech been delivered in a Northern accent, I would have quickly come to the conclusion that Redford’s character was a deranged serial killer, and I would have been shouting at the TV, telling Natalie Wood’s character to get out of his room.

This Property is Condemned plows the same fields as much of Williams’ other work, and it’s not one of his major works. As Gore Vidal wrote of Williams in his excellent 1976 essay, “Some Memories of the Glorious Bird and an Earlier Self,” “Tennessee is the sort of writer who does not develop; he simply continues. By the time he was an adolescent he had his themes. Constantly he plays and replays the same small but brilliant set of cards.” (United States: Essays 1952-1992, p.1146) This Property is Condemned is set in a small town in Mississippi during the Great Depression, and it focuses on Alva Starr, (the luscious Natalie Wood) her domineering mother Hazel (Kate Reid) and Alva’s younger sister Willie (Mary Badham). Hazel runs a boarding house, and she’s basically pimping out the beautiful Alva for dates with men in order to make some extra money. Ironically, Kate Reid was only 7 years older than Natalie Wood, which shows the difference between being a leading lady and a character actress. Things get shaken up when handsome stranger Owen Legate (the super handsome Robert Redford) takes a room at the boardinghouse. Legate is in town to hand out pink slips to some of the railroad men, who all seem to also live at the boardinghouse. (Look for the always creepy Robert Blake in a small part as Sidney.) Legate is at first dismissive of the flirtatious Alva, but he eventually realizes his attraction to her. 

Owen and Alva spend a passionate night together after he’s beaten up by some of the angry railroad workers he laid off. (Being a super handsome guy like Robert Redford means that you get the shit kicked out of you a lot on screen. See also: Tom Cruise.) Alva wants to leave her annoying mother and move to a big city, so Owen buys her a train ticket to New Orleans, where he lives. But then he overhears Hazel telling someone about their plans to move to Memphis with a rich older gentleman and angrily confronts Alva and leaves town in a huff. Knowing she’s lost Owen, a drunken Alva confronts her mother, her mother’s sleazy boyfriend J.J. (Charles Bronson) and Mr. Johnson, (John Harding) the rich older gentleman who wants the Starrs to move to Memphis. It’s one of the best scenes in the movie, and Wood delivers an exquisite performance as she demolishes their hypocrisy. Unfortunately, Alva drunkenly demands that J.J. should marry her that night if he really loves her. Her behavior doesn’t really make much sense, as it’s been clear throughout the movie that she despises J.J.’s attempts to flirt with her. Anyway, they get married, spend the night together, and the next morning Alva steals his money and takes a train to New Orleans. Fortunately, she finds Owen again, and it looks like things will end happily for them. The movie seems to go through a tonal shift once we get to New Orleans. It suddenly feels like the 1960’s rather than the 1930’s, as Alva moves into Owen’s apartment and happily waits for him to come home from work. But then Mother shows up and ruins everything. She tells Owen of Alva’s marriage to J.J., Alva runs out into the rain, catches a cold, and dies. 

The acting in This Property is Condemned is superb, as Wood delivers an amazing performance. I suspect that she probably identified with Alva’s situation, as Wood’s real-life mother was basically the stage mother from hell, and closely controlled Wood’s life as a child actress. Wood was enthusiastic about playing the role of Alva, saying it was “probably the closest I’ll ever get to playing Blanche DuBois.” (Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, by Suzanne Finstad, p.304) Wood is beautiful, sexy, and touching as the hopelessly romantic Alva. Wood’s wardrobe is amazing, and the dresses that Edith Head created for her show off her beauty very well. Wood and Redford make a stunningly attractive screen couple, and their chemistry is obvious. Although the film was not a hit when it was released in August, 1966, Wood was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Drama, but she lost to Anouk Aimee, who won for her role in A Man and a Woman. 

Wood had previously starred with Robert Redford in 1965’s Inside Daisy Clover, and during the shooting of that film she approached him about pairing with her again in This Property is Condemned. At that point in his career, Redford had done a lot of TV work, but he wasn’t yet a big movie star, as his breakthrough roles came in 1967’s Barefoot in the Park and 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Redford said yes to Wood, and he pushed for his friend Sydney Pollack as director, even though Pollack had only directed one movie. This Property is Condemned was the first movie directed by Pollack that Redford starred in, and they would go on to make seven movies together. I always like Robert Redford’s confidence on screen. Of course, I’d be confident too if I looked like Robert Redford. Redford seems to have that confidence in every role he plays, and it works especially well for Owen’s character. If someone else were playing Owen, he might seem like a real jerk. 

The supporting cast is excellent as well, particularly Mary Badham as Willie. Badham is best known for playing Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird and This Property is Condemned is one of her only other acting roles. Pollack’s direction is very good, and he’s helped out by the legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe, who gets to do several of his trademark long tracking shots from helicopters. Perhaps the most impressive tracking shot is the one as Alva is riding the train to New Orleans. The camera starts outside the train, focusing on Natalie Wood’s face, and then pulling back to reveal the entire train as it crosses a bridge. It’s a beautiful shot.

If you’re a fan of the beautiful and talented Natalie Wood or the handsome and talented Robert Redford, or you just need a Tennessee Williams fix, check out This Property is Condemned.