Word: stapletons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Maureen. Thank God, she can cope with anything, just by being a bundle of nerves," drawled Playwright Tennessee Williams, 61, after watching Maureen Stapleton star in the umpteenth production of his masterwork, The Glass Menagerie. Though Williams criticized...
Delicious Tremors. On the whole, Hound is a quite respectable adaptation of the most evocative of the four full-length Holmes novels. To be sure, the villainous Stapleton, who sets loose the title hound in order to rid himself of the two men who stand between him and the Baskerville fortune, was somewhat softened for celluloid. A romantic interest was added so that Richard Greene, as the last direct heir to the estate, has something to do besides express amazement and gratitude at Holmes' power. It must also be admitted that the movie is more pokily paced in reality...
...Still, Stapleton's damnable dog, trained to kill, roams menacingly over the picturesque moors and prehistoric ruins that the art department enthusiastically ran up on the Fox back lot. Moreover, Director Sidney Lanfield was careful to keep his fog machines rolling, never permitting the sun to rise on this peculiar corner of the British Empire. The result, for viewers of a certain age anyway, is a sort of double-edged nostalgia: not merely for two beloved characterizations but for a whole vanished style of moviemaking, in which menacing shadows lay over every scene and divinely dumb people blandly insisted...
...being given a splendid revival in Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum Theater, with Walter Matthau in the role of the vainglorious Captain Boyle, Jack Lemmon as his bar "butty" Joxer, and Maureen Stapleton as his earth mother wife Juno. How did this particular production come about? Matthau and Lemmon had wanted to do the play for some tune, preferably with Stapleton. They approached Gordon Davidson, the energetic artistic director of the Mark Taper, and gave him a commitment for a five-week limited run, which was sold out by opening night...
...actors are up to the challenge. Though he sometimes seems about as Irish as chopped chicken liver and onion on rye, Matthau is full of baleful Gaelic braggadocio as Captain Boyle. As Joxer, Lemmon is as spry and cunning as a soiled city sparrow, and for once, Maureen Stapleton acts from her heart rather than her frazzled nerve ends. Let loud praise for all be heard, for it is much merited...