Word: thompsons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Illinois supporters of the amendment had been beaten nine times since 1972. Last week they tried to lower the proportion of votes in the state senate needed for ratification from three-fifths to a simple majority. The strategy was backed by G.O.P. Governor James Thompson, but only three Republicans in the Democratic-controlled senate went along with him, and the proposal lost, 31 to 24. Accused by ERA supporters of political impotence, Thompson retorted: "I put in my two cents' worth, and my two cents was not enough. Neither was anyone else...
PEOPLE WILL see the new play Strangers for Bruce Dern, but they'll be surprised at how the stage softens him, neutralizing the eccentricities on which he has built a fascinating film career. Sherman Yellen's drama, about the stormy relationship between Sinclair Lewis and journalist Dorothy Thompson, might have been written as a dull screen biography of a famous American, but Hollywood stopped investing in those bland tear-jerkers decades ago. So it winds up on Broadway, with a film star intent on "flexing his acting muscles" in a role that taps a fraction of his considerable talents...
...Strangers has all the individual ingredients for a bring-down-the-house, Tony-award-winning performance, but they never coalesce into a complex, recognizably human character. Yellen hasn't given him any shading; the role is all in the snappy dialogue with nothing in between the lines. Lewis and Thompson (Lois Nettleton) bicker through an interminable "seduction" scene in her Berlin apartment, fly off to Moscow where he gets drunk and insults the Commies, return to Berlin where he gets drunk and insults her, get married and move to Vermont where she misses her journalism and he can't write...
...TRAGEDY, according to Yellen, is that Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson, two brilliant writers and decent, caring human beings, were unable to know each other, to love each other. He attempts to explain Lewis' problem in the final scene, where Dern, who has gotten drunk and become violent, sits strapped in a straitjacket and launches into a lengthy monologue as Lewis's father, revealing the old man's perpetual dissatisfaction with his son. The speech should be a tour-de-force--Dern does a beautiful job with it--but it is so empty in concept, so obvious in construction, that...
Arvin Brown's production takes its time, shuffling and limping through a theatrical desert. The flaccid blocking and extraordinarily ugly sets place the burden of interest on the two leads. Lois Nettleton gives a conventional performance as Thompson, but within the artificial confines of her role she suggests a human being surprisingly often, her voice choked with pain and confusion, then rising with conviction, bearing the weight of her husband's illness as the character and the actress plow on with the strength and courage of an old trooper...