View Editor's Note: |
| Adrienne is truly one of our greatest playwrights ("our" as in women, theater, philosophy, writing). Here came this play in 1964 with heart-stopping filmic imagery with so much to say about emerging consciousness, the archetypal power of film, sometimes about being black, mostly about being a woman, aspirations, surroundings, a play demanding attention then, and now. |
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A MOVIE STAR HAS TO STAR IN BLACK AND WHITE
First done as a work-in-progress at the New York Shakespeare Festival in New York on November 5, 1976. Published in the Adrienne Kennedy Reader by the University of Minnesota Press, Copywright 2001.
The movie music throughout is romantic.
Dark stage. From darkness center appears the COLUMBIA PICTURES LADY in a bright light.
She speaks:
Summer, New York, 1955. Summer, Ohio, 1963.
The scenes are Now Voyager, Viva Zapata and A Place in the Sun.
The leading roles are played by Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Jean Peters, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Shelly Winters. Supporting roles are played by the mother, the father, the husband. A bit role is played by Clara.
Now Voyager takes place in the hospital lobby.
Viva Zapata takes place in the brother's room.
A Place in the Sun takes place in Clara's old room.
June 1963. My producer is Joel Steinberg. He looks different from what I once thought, not at all like that picture in Vogue. He was in Vogue with a group of people who were going to do a musical about Socrates. In the photograph Joel's hair looked dark and his skin smooth. In real life his skin is blotched. Everyone says he drinks a lot.
Lately I think often of killing myself. Eddie Jr. plays outside in the playground. I'm very lonely. Met Lee Strasberg: the members of the playwrights unit were invited to watch his scene. Geraldine Page, Rip Torn and Norman Mailer were there. I wonder why I lie so much to my mother about how I feel? My father once said his life has been nothing but a life of hypocrisy and that's why his photograph smiled. While Eddie Jr. plays outside I read Edith Wharton, a book on Egypt and Chinua Achebe. Leroi Jones, Ted Jones and Allen Ginsburg are reading in the Village. Eddie comes every evening right before dark. He wants to know if I'll go back to him for the sake of our son.
(She fades. At the back of the stage as in a distance a dim light goes on a large doorway
in the hospital. Visible is the foot of the white hospital bed and a figure lying upon it. Movie music.
CLARA stands at the doorway of the room. She is a Negro woman of thirty-three wearing a maternity dress. She does not enter the room but turns away and stands very still. Movie music.)
CLARA: (Reflective; very still facing away from the room.) My brother is the same - my father is coming - very depressed. Before I left New York I got my typewriter from the pawnshop. I'm terribly tired, trying to do a page a day, yet my play is coming together.
Each day I wonder with what or with whom can I co-exist in a true union?
(She turns and stares into her brother's room. Scene fades out; then bright lights that convey an ocean liner in motion.)
SCENE I
Movie music. On the deck of the ocean liner from Now Voyager are BETTE DAVIS and PAUL HENREID. They sit at a table slightly off stage center. BETTE DAVIS has on a large white summer hat and PAUL HENREID a dark summer suit. The light is romantic and glamorous. Beyond backstage left are deck chairs. It is bright sunlight on the deck.
BETTE DAVIS. (To Paul.) June 1955. When I have the baby I wonder will I turn into a river of blood and die? My mother almost died when I was born. I've always felt sad that I couldn't have been an angel of mercy to my father and mother and saved them from their torment.
I used to hope when I was a little girl that one day I would rise above them, an angel with glowing wings and cover them with peace. But I failed. When I came among them it seems to me I did not bring them peace - but made them more disconsolate. The crosses they bore always made me sad.
The one reality I wanted never came true - to be their angel of mercy to unite them. I keep remembering the time my mother threatened to kill my father with the shotgun. I keep remembering my father's going away to marry a girl who talked to willow trees.
(Onto the deck wander the MOTHER, the FATHER, and the HUSBAND. They are Negroes. The parents are as they were when young in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia.
The MOTHER is small, pale and very beautiful. She has on a white summer dress and white shoes. The FATHER is small and dark skinned. He has on a Morehouse sweater, knickers and a cap. They both are emotional and nervous. In presence both are romanticized. The HUSBAND is twenty-eight and handsome. He is dressed as in the summer of 1955 wearing a seersucker suit from Kleins that cost thirteen dollars.)
BETTE DAVIS. In the scrapbook that my father left is a picture of my mother in Savannah, Georgia in 1929.
MOTHER. (Sitting down in a deck chair, takes a cigarette out of a beaded purse and smokes nervously. She speaks bitterly in a voice with a strong Georgia accent.)
In our Georgia town the white people lived on one side. It had pavement on the streets and sidewalks and mail was delivered. The Negroes lived on the other side and the roads were dirt and had no sidewalk and you had to go to the post office to pick up your mail. In the center of Main Street was a fountain and white people drank on one side and Negroes drank on the other.
When a Negro bought something in a store he couldn't try it on. A Negro couldn't sit down at the soda fountain in the drug store but had to take his drink out. In the movies at Montefore you had to go in the side and up the stairs and sit in the last four rows.
When you arrived on the train from Cincinnati the first thing you saw was the WHITE AND COLORED signs at the depot. White people had one waiting room and we Negroes had another. We sat in only two cars and white people had the rest of the train.
(She is facing PAUL HENREID and BETTE DAVIS. The FATHER and the HUSBAND sit in deck chairs that face the other side of the sea. The FATHER also smokes. He sits hunched over with his head down thinking. The HUSBAND takes an old test book out of a battered briefcase and starts to study. He looks exhausted and has dark circles under his eyes. His suit is worn.)
BETTE DAVIS. My father used to say John Hope Franklin, Du Bois and Benjamin Mays were fine men.
(Bright sunlight on FATHER sitting on other side of deck. FATHER gets up and comes toward them - to BETTE DAVIS.)
FATHER. Cleveland is a place for opportunity, leadership, a progressive city, a place for education, a chance to come out of the back woods of Georgia. We Negro leaders dream of leading our people out of the wilderness.
(He passes her and goes along the deck whistling. Movie music. BETTE DAVIS stands up looking after the FATHER - then distractedly to PAUL HENREID.)
BETTE DAVIS. (Very passionate.) I'd give anything in the world if I could just once talk to Jesus. Sometimes he walks through my room but he doesn't stop long enough for us to talk - he has an aureole. (Then tot he FATHER who is almost out of sight on the deck whistling.) Why did you marry the girl who talked to willow trees? (To PAUL HENREID.) He left us to marry a girl who talked to willow trees.
(FATHER is whistling, MOTHER is smoking, then the FATHER vanishes into a door on deck. BETTE DAVIS walks down to railing. PAUL HENREID follows her.)
BETTE DAVIS. June 1955. My mother said when she was a girl in the summers she didn't like to go out. She'd sit in the house and help her grandmother iron or shell peas and sometimes she'd sit on the steps.
My father used to come and sit on the steps. He asked for her first "date." They went for a walk up the road and had an ice cream at Miss Ida's Icecream Parlor and walked back down the road. She was fifteen.
My mother says that my father was one of the most well thought of boys in town, Negro or white. And he was so friendly. He always had a friendly word for everybody.
He used to tell my mother his dreams how he was going to go up north. There was opportunity for Negroes up north and when he was finished at Morehouse he was going to get a job in someplace like New York.
And she said when she walked down the road with my father people were so friendly.
He organized a colored baseball team in Montefore and he was the Captain. And she used to go and watch him play baseball and everybody called him "Cap."
Seven more months and the baby.
Eddie and I don't talk too much these days.
Very often I try to be in bed by the time he comes home.
Most nights I'm wide awake until at least four. I wake up about eight and then I have a headache.
When I'm wide awake I see Jesus a lot. My mother is giving us the money for the doctor bill. Eddie told her he will pay it back.
Also got a letter from her; it said I hope things work out for you both. And pray, pray sometimes. Love Mother.
We also got a letter from Eddie's mother. Eddie's brother had told her that Eddie and I were having some problems. In her letter which was enclosed in a card she said when Eddie's sister had visited us she noticed that Eddie and I don't go to church. She said we mustn't forget the Lord, because God takes care of everything -God gives us peace and no matter what problems Eddie and I were having if we trusted in Him God would help us. It was the only letter from Eddie's mother that I ever saved.
Even though the card was Hallmark.
July 1955.
Eddie doesn't seem like the same person since he came back from Korea. And now I'm pregnant again. When I lost the baby he was thousands of miles away. All that bleeding. I'll never forgive him. The Red Cross let him send me a telegram to say he was sorry. I can't believe we used to be so in love on the campus and park the car and kiss and kiss. Yet I was a virgin when we married. A virgin who was to bleed and bleed - when I was in the hospital all I had was a photograph of Eddie in GI clothes standing in a woods in Korea. (Pause.) Eddie and I went to the Thalia on 95th and Broadway. There's a film festival this summer. WE saw Double Indemnity, The Red Shoes and a Place In The Sun. Next week Viva Zapata is coming. Afterwards we went to Reinzis on Macdougal Street and had Viennese coffee. We forced an enthusiasm we didn't feel. We took the subway back up to 116th Street and walked to Bencroft Hall. In the middle of the night I woke up and wrote in my diary.
(A bright light at hospital doorway. CLARA younger, fragile, anxious. Movie music.
She leaves hospital doorway and comes onto the deck from the door her father entered. She wears maternity dress, white wedgies, her hair is straightened as in the fifties. She has a passive beauty and is totally preoccupied. She pays no attention to anyone, only writing in a notebook. Her movie stars speak for her. Clara lets her movie stars star in her life. BETTE DAVIS and PAUL HENREID are at the railing. The MOTHER is smoking. The HUSBAND gets up and comes across the deck carrying his battered briefcase. He speaks to CLARA who looks away. PAUL HENREID goes on staring at the sea.)
HUSBAND. Clara, please tell me everything the doctor said about the delivery and how many days you'll be in the hospital.
(Instead of CLARA, BETTE DAVIS replies. PAUL HENREID is oblivious of him.)
BETTE DAVIS. (Very remote.) I get very jealous of you Eddie. You're doing something with your life.
(He tries to kiss CLARA. She moves away and walks along the deck and writes in notebook.)
BETTE DAVIS. (To Eddie.) Eddie, do you think I have floating anxiety? You said everyone in Korea had floating anxiety. I think I might have it. (Pause.) Do you think I'm catatonic?
EDDIE. (Staring at Clara.) I'm late to class now. We'll talk when I come home. (He leaves.) When I get paid I'm going to take you to Birdland. Dizzy's coming back.
(Movie music.)
CLARA. July.
I can't sleep. My head always full of thoughts night and day. I feel so nervous. Sometimes I hardly hear what people are saying. I'm writing a lot of my play, I don't want to show it to anyone though. Suppose it's no good. (Reads her play.)
They are dragging his body across the green his white hair hanging down. They are taking off his shoes and he is stiff. I must get into the chapel to see him. I must. He is my blood father. God, let me in to his burial. (He grabs her down center. She, kneeling.) I call God and the Owl answers. (Softer.) It haunts my Tower calling, its feathers are blowing against the cell wall, speckled in the garden on the fig tree, it comes, feathered, great hollow-eyed with yellow skin and yellow eyes, the flying bastard. From my Tower I keep calling and the only answer is the Owl, God. (Pause. Stands.) I am only yearning for our kingdom, God.
(Movie music.)
BETTE DAVIS. (At railing.) My father tried to commit suicide once when I was in High School. It was the afternoon he was presented an award by the Mayor of Cleveland at a banquet celebrating the completion of the New Settlement building. It had taken my father seven years to raise money for the New Settlement which was the center of Negro life in our community. He was given credit for being the one without whom it couldn't have been done. It was his biggest achievement.
I went upstairs and found him whistling in his room. I asked him what was wrong. I want to see my dead mama and papa he said, that's all I really live for is to see my mama and papa. I stared at him. As I was about to leave the room he said I've been waiting to jump off the roof of the Settlement for a long time. I just had to wait until it was completed - and he went on whistling.
He had tried to jump off the roof but had fallen on a scaffold.
(Movie music. The deck has grown dark except for the light on BETTE DAVIS and PAUL HENREID and CLARA.)
CLARA. I loved the wedding night scene from Viva Zapata and the scene where the peasants met Zapata on the road and forced the soldiers to take the rope from his neck - when they shot Zapata at the end I cried.
(Deck darker. She walks along the deck and into door, leaving PAUL HENREID and BETTE DAVIS at railing. She arrives at the hospital doorway, then enters her brother's room, standing at the foot of his bed. Her brother is in a coma.)
CLARA. (To her brother.) Once I asked you romantically when you came back to the United States on a short leave, how do you like Europe Wally? You were silent. Finally you said, I get into a lot of fights with the Germans. You stared at me. And got up and went into the dining room to the dark sideboard and got a drink.
(Darkness. Movie music.)
Proceed to Scene II