Word: burstyn
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What the world does not need is a middle-aged elf. For ten years Shirley MacLaine has been complaining that writers cannot provide good roles for women, while Meryl Streep, Ellen Burstyn and Diane Keaton have been acting in terrific pictures...
Hanff (Ellen Burstyn) is trying to gain an education by reading the great works, and Frank Doel, the bookstore's chief salesman (Joseph Maher), is the man who finds them for her. A relationship of sorts develops. Britain is still suffering from postwar rationing, and she sends packages of food, which are shared by the other four employees. Some of them also join in the correspondence, telling about their lives and their families, and Hanff chats them up from her 95th Street apartment...
...that, alas, is all there is. Even good acting by Burstyn, Maher and the rest of the company cannot create a play where none exists. The dialogue is sometimes unbearably cloying. Hanff is given to saying things like "thou varlet," but except for the fact that she is single, Roose-Evans tells almost nothing about her, far less than he reveals about her friends in England. Does she have a love life? Not a word. Does she ever leave her apartment? Again, scarcely a syllable. Has she ever explored one of Manhattan's secondhand bookstores? Apparently not. There...
...lesser celebrity here, thank God," Berger says. "Al Pacino moved into town. So did Ellen Burstyn. An actress came to look at our rented house. I'm so out of it, I didn't know who Jessica Lange...
...Ellen Burstyn is called upon to cover a physically and emotionally broad range of acting. While empathetically assuming the pain of an invalid she goes through an impressive series of facial and bodily contortions. Ordinarily possessed of a mild countenance with round, gentle features, her face can grow taut with anger or sadness...