Word: ashley
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...film is not an original-cast production. Sly substitutions have been made, notably Fonda for Broadway's Elizabeth Ashley. Jane's performance is the best of her career: a clever caricature of a sex kitten who can purr or scratch with equal intensity. Among the tastiest leftovers from the stage are Redford as the harassed groommate and Mildred Natwick, skittering on the edge of hysteria as she articulates the film's philosophy to her daughter: "Make him feel important. If you do that, you'll have a happy and wonderful marriage, like two out of every...
Hero-Victim. "In the early summer of 1902," begins Wilder, "John Barrington Ashley of Coaltown, a small mining center in southern Illinois, was tried for the murder of Breckenridge Lansing, also of Coaltown. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. Five days later, at 1 in the morning of Tuesday, July 22, he escaped from his guards on the train that was carrying him to his execution...
Expanding from this simple outline, Wilder embarks on a meandering parable of Good (Ashley) v. Evil (Lansing), that reaches into the genealogies of both men and their families as well as giving a detailed geographic and geologic history of the region. Ashley is fearless and worldly; yet he is a simple innocent, a hero-victim in mankind's headlong flight from the primal ooze. Lansing is a Babbitt, successful in business, boastful and bullying-a man who stands in direct contrast to the Ashleys of this world...
Slowly, Wilder traces out the threads in the fabric of Lansing's life and his near-redemption; of Ashley, rescued from his prison train by a mysterious band of unarmed intruders; of the Lansing and Ashley children, and their children, until they are all sewed into meaningful stitches in God's (or Wilder's) design...
Hanging On. And there lies the trouble. The reader is only told, usually as an aside, that Daughter Lily Ashley becomes an opera star, that Daughter Constance Ashley becomes a suffragette, that Son Roger Ashley becomes a great financial success. Wherever the narrative demands a crucial, emotional confrontation, the author turns remote, reverts to brief explorations of life's enduring verities; and the reader is deprived of vital particulars. It is as if, viewing events from Olympus, Wilder sees the marvel of life but not the movement. The people of Coaltown, U.S.A. -Everytown, Universe-love, falter, hate, do good...