Word: burtons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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STAIRCASE. Rex Harrison and Richard Burton portray two bickering homosexuals struggling to stave off old age and loneliness in this unobtrusive film that never yields to the temptation to play its two deviate characters for laughs...
...idea that two actors with such well-authenticated heterosexual credentials as Richard Burton and Rex Harrison would portray a pair of middle-aging homosexuals is calculated to strain, and simultaneously tease the imagination. From the time that the filming of Staircase was announced, cinemagoers wondered whether it was a stunt, an acting challenge or another bold foray into the territory of the taboo. The danger was that the pair would nance it up and produce a heterosexual parody of homosexual mannerisms-a kind of male pseudo-female impersonation act. It is to the credit of all concerned that Staircase...
...bickering domestic comedy. It could just as well have been about a pair of maiden aunts or bachelor brothers who in some 30 years have become fussily attuned to each other's quirky habit patterns. Charlie (Rex Harrison) is a peacock with a peckish tongue. Harry (Richard Burton) is a broody, sentimental mother hen with a semi-articulate cluck. Both men have auditioned for life and failed. Running a barbershop in a moldering district of London, they are each other's consolation prize. No hint of lust knits them together, only a saturating fear of loneliness. A special...
Adapted to the screen by Charles Dyer from his play, Staircase is a static, placid film in which the camerawork is subdued. Its strength is in its two key players. Each being determined, perhaps, to do his best acting before a peer, Burton and Harrison give firmly disciplined, finely delineated performances of undeviating honesty. Burton has rarely immersed himself in a part to the extent that one could forget he was Richard Burton, but he does it this time. Harrison has often seemed to be acting before a mirror rather than a camera. In Staircase he is acting before...
...make the potential for corrupting athletes great. Even if he does not succeed in fixing a game, the Cosa Nostra agent finds information about a team's morale or physical condition priceless in helping him to set odds. On just such an information hunt, a scout for Chicago Handicapper Burton Wolcoff wangled his way into the clubhouse of the Los Angeles Dodgers a few years back. Learning that Sandy Koufax, who was scheduled to pitch that day, was having even more arm trouble than usual, the agent flashed the news to Wolcoff, who put down $30,000 against the Dodgers...