Rick McKay's work documenting the Golden Age of Broadway is beyond priceless, and in the process of making THREE films on it (the next is this one -- to be released in 2015), he came to know Marian Seldes very well. After a few comments I will yield to his greater understanding.
Episcopal Cathedral Church St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue in New York is the LARGEST Gothic Cathedral in the entire world.
It was here, that Tennessee Williams was inaugurated into the Poets' Corner in November of 2009 -- but I am getting ahead of myself.
In March of 2008, as I walked through the lobby of one the the grand hotels in New Orleans associated with the Tennessee Williams Festival, I saw Thomas Keith getting up to leave a dining room table, and he walked over to me, said he wanted me to meet Marian Seldes -- and perhaps I could have breakfast with her since he was her escort and had to leave just as she was served.
I approached her table with Thomas, who introduced us, and then after a few words, accepted Marian's invitation to join her, but declined to order food except coffee.
Although my closest friends in college were Theater majors and I worked for Tennessee Williams, I hardly qualify as a true "theater person", and really knew nothing about Ms. Seldes except for info in the program that year. I KNOW I saw her on Broadway in EQUUS, but she was never a big "celebrity" star or known for "scandalous antics". I didn't know enough about her work to discuss it, but the two of us conversed about all kinds of things, including my unfinished memoir on Williams -- and she was very encouraging, really of EVERYTHING, in her unique, liquid way.
When I caught up with her to speak at the Episcopal Cathedral a year and a half later, she did not really seem to remember me, so make of that what you will.
Although my closest friends in college were Theater majors and I worked for Tennessee Williams, I hardly qualify as a true "theater person", and really knew nothing about Ms. Seldes except for info in the program that year. I KNOW I saw her on Broadway in EQUUS, but she was never a big "celebrity" star or known for "scandalous antics". I didn't know enough about her work to discuss it, but the two of us conversed about all kinds of things, including my unfinished memoir on Williams -- and she was very encouraging, really of EVERYTHING, in her unique, liquid way.
I have often wondered HOW I got to be so lucky meeting so many extraordinary people in my life -- I CERTAINLY have done nothing "good" to deserved so many REWARDS!!!
When I caught up with her to speak at the Episcopal Cathedral a year and a half later, she did not really seem to remember me, so make of that what you will.
But I DO also want to say a word about Rick McKay.
http://www.amazon.com/Broadway-Golden-Legends-Were-There/dp/B000649YA2 is the ONE film I would save -- if that's all I were allowed.
I've watched it more than a dozen times, and among OTHER amazing things, is not only its concentration on the work of Tennessee Williams, but a GREAT scene from CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF with Ben Gazzara as Brick Pollitt.
Ben Gazzara with Barbara Bel Geddes in CAT, 1955.
Ben's voice is even better than James Earl Jones's!!!
Ben does a GREAT imitation of the eccentric "patrician actress" Marian Seldes at about minute 3:00 in Rick McKay's Tribute to Marian -- I highly recommend the whole thing. And I met Rick when he was touring through Atlanta showing the movie at art house theaters. Rick and I had begun talking about his lecturing and showing his film here in Puerto Vallarta, when I tried to mount the 100th Birthday Anniversary Festival for 2011, but of course REALITY got in the way -- HA!!!
Let me also say now (again -- but easy to forget after I tell dramatic stories castigating Thomas Elliot Keith), that I have TONS of respect for him too -- even love. He's certainly one of the most INTENSE of the "Williams Scholars", and whatever he's felt he had to do politically, I could not imagine actually trying to jail him.
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