Word: dunnock
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...theme or key neurosis of the play is a matter of personal preference. The incapacity of the unloved for normal love, the introvert hiding from an extrovert world, the destructiveness of possessive motherhood are all possible choices. From the impressive stars of the play, Judith Anderson and Mildred Dunnock, the audience might expect some help in choosing, but even the cast appears unsure of what Mrs. Bowles' characters are meant to express. At the heart of the play are two unnatural mother-daughter relationships. In one, an iron-willed mother has crushed her child's personality, in the other...
Hovering in the background of all this, is Vivian's widowed mother, an alcoholic since the death of the daughter who despised her ("My bird, my bird" . . . "She hopped from the cliff like a cricket"). Miss Dunnock seems uncertain whether she should be tragic or pitifully absurd, as she flings hot-dogs around the stage and talks of the husband who never loved her. In any case, she gets little sympathy, least of all from Mrs. Eastman Cuevas, who tells the widow who clutches her hysterically and begs her not to leave: "Stop brooding!", a line reminiscent of Charles Addams...
Studio One (Mon. 10 p.m., CBS). Mark of Cain, with Warren Stevens, Mildred Dunnock...
...difficult task of stringing the audience along as part of the investigatory committee (while the author constantly emphasizes that it is worthless to search for the truth) falls to the two main characters, played by Mildred Dunnock and Martin Gabel. With no distinctive characteristics other than their separate visions of the family set-up, they still manage to become credible, and one's sympathy switches periodically from one to the other. Miss Dunnock particularly, is excellent, her expressions and voice wavering just on the borderline between madness and sanity...
...only does Frederic March, who plays Willy Loman, talk too much, he talks too loudly. Instead of a disillusioned, broken man, Willy Loman sometimes seems merely a drunk one. Mildred Dunnock, as Willy's wife, is much better. She is able to push through the wordy speeches to show a tired, loving woman who is never really intelligent, but always loyal to her husband...