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So it went; there was always some crisis, and you never knew who was standing on the outskirts of the crowd, watching intently. Both Boris Kaufman and Charlie Maguire felt the tension, but they behaved magnificently; they knew that the rough circumstances within which we were making the film gave i…

It was with this play that I began to learn not to try to pin a play’s meaning down to a didactic theme. We used to do that in the Group; it was the essence of our work as directors. We were “teaching” the audience with each play. Clifford Odets felt it necessary in his third acts to grab the audie…

I doubt that Budd was affected as personally as I was by the parallel of Tony Mike’s story. His reaction to the loss of certain friends was not as bitter as my own; he had not experienced their blackballing as frequently and intensely as I had in the neighborhood known as Broadway. I believe Budd r…

The artist has his solution; Tennessee exemplified it. It was his way of self-restoration. In a letter I received from Williams, there was this: “For the past five years I have been haunted by a fear which has made it necessary for me to work like somebody running out of a house on fire.” Once when…

I PASSED from a film that dealt with the broadest possible scene, a panorama of human suffering, to a play that penetrated into the most intimate area of all, the soul of an artist. Camino Real is as private as a nightmare. No playwright except Eugene O’Neill in his last plays was as personal as Te…