Word: uta
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With auburn hair, a strong frame and a forbiddingly experienced face, Uta Hagen has the physical force to play Albee's tough, bitter, foul-mouthed woman. There are, in fact, some superficial similarities between the actress and the character she plays, and her friends kid her about them...
Groves of Academe. Albee's Martha is the twice-married daughter of the founder and president of a college. Uta is the twice-married daughter of a German professor who emigrated to the U.S. and founded the art history department at the University of Wisconsin. Her language is sometimes as strong as Martha's. Albee's Martha talks baby talk. When she wants a drink, she says she is firsty. Uta Hagen has a similar idiosyncrasy. Coffee, on her tongue, becomes tossie...
...there the similarities end. Martha, the woman on the stage, has made a fatal wreckage of her life. Uta Hagen has made hers an accomplishment. After a year at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she made her debut as an Óphelia considerably taller than Hamlet, who was played, oddly enough, by Eva Le Gallienne. She became a memorable Desdemona and a fine St. Joan. She followed Jessica Tandy as Tennessee Williams' Blanche DuBois with a performance so good that it was generally conceded to be the better of the two. She won another Tony award...
Right Cross. Playing in summer stock in 1938, she did a scene in which she wore boxing gloves and was supposed to hang one on the leading man. This leading man had a nose like Cyrano de Bergerac's and was not much bigger than Toulouse-Lautrec. Uta flattened him. He got up and, some months later, married her; she became Mrs. José Ferrer...
...Robeson veered more and more loudly to the left and Moscow, this closeness got the Ferrers into trouble. In due course they were called to Washington to explain their political beliefs. Ferrer, who had just won an Oscar for Cyrano, denied any leftist leanings and was not blacklisted. Uta was dismissed without being heard at all. She ended up on TV and Hollywood blacklists nonetheless. She has never made a movie...