Product Description

After what producer David Susskind called "the longest wooing for a part in a lifetime of dealing with stars," four-time Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn (On Golden Pond) made her television dramatic debut as the indomitable, overbearing matriarch, Amanda Wingfield, in Tennessee Williams' poignant 1945 memory play, which reteamed her with director Anthony Harvey (The Lion in Winter). "The Glass Menagerie" portrays a mother whose preoccupation with her past as a Southern belle and her unrealistic dreams for her children's futures threaten to smother her painfully shy daughter (Joanna Miles) and her aspiring writer son ("The Killing Fields'" Sam Waterston). Michael Moriarty plays the gentleman caller whose visit offers false hope and disrupts the family's precarious balance. 1973-74 Emmy Awards - Best Supporting Actor, Michael Moriarty; Best Supporting Actress, Joanna Miles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13565 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-02-11
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com
Katharine Hepburn, one of the great American actresses, stars in this film adaptation of one of the greatest American plays, Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. Hepburn plays Amanda Wakefield, a faded Southern belle now living in a small urban apartment, where she suffocates her two children--her restless son Tom (a very young Sam Waterston) and her painfully shy daughter Laura (Joanna Miles)--with her incessant mixture of insistent cheer and guilt. After much prodding from Amanda, Tom finally brings home a friend from his workplace, in the hopes that he might strike up a romance with reclusive Laura. The result is one of the sweetest and most heartbreaking scenes ever written. Hepburn's steely will and sudden vulnerability make her ideal for the domineering mother, but the entire cast--including Michael Moriarty as the "gentleman caller"--is superb; Moriarty and Miles deservedly won Emmy awards for their performances. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

A FAMILY TURNS ON ITSELF
Tennessee Williams rightfully takes his place as one of the premier playwrights in the history of the American theater. He relentlessly turned out high quality plays (and other short literary expositions) on subjects that in an earlier day before the 1950's would have not found nearly so receptive an audience. Here Williams, studying a willfully dysfunctional family, relies on a seemingly autobiographical presentation of the life of a faded Southern Belle mother and her two captive children who are fodder to her dreams of renewed grandeur and style when things `get better'. The gist of the better is a suitable husband for her distracted daughter. That those `things' do not get better drives the dramatic tension of the work, as it almost always does in a Williams play.

Williams has a magic knack for getting to the core of human relations, unpretty as they are some times. The mirror, in many cases, may be harder to take than the reality. Here the son's desire to `help' his obviously unworldly sister at the arm twisting behest of Mother by bringing a co-worker to dinner triggers a trail of events that make Sis fall further and further in the battle with reality. Someone once said that in a Williams's production no good turn ever gets rewarded. And that is the case here. While this is not the most compelling of his plays it is well worth looking at or better, reading.

UP CURTAIN-THE BEST BEGINS
KAtharine at her best. If you like Hepburn, you'll love this Live on broadway classic. An overly ambitious Mother in a quandary on ow to move a very shy daughter on the road o matrimony, (Son-In-Law wanted) in the meantime sonny boy Waterman'sets a record for chain smoking and off to the movies every night. Finally things are looking up, when Brother brings home a co-worker to dinner. Boy meets girl, Mom likes Boy, but Oops boy already spoken for. Mothers upset, Daughters upset, and Brother leaves home for the life of a Sailor. All ends well, except the Fish got away. O well what famiy doesn't have its ups and downs ?

Not ideal, but the best of what's out there so far on DVD
I have seen several versions of this play on DVD, and I would say that this is the best of what I know to be currently available, mainly because I think Katharine Hepburn is the best Amanda Wingfield. However, I wish Joanna Miles had portrayed a less robust Laura. She doesn't limp; she wears stylish shoes while dashing athletically out the door to the store; she demonstrates no more than an occasional interest in the glass animals that are supposed to be her obsession; under her subdued demeanor I felt enough personal strength from her to deny the sense of despair about her future that is supposed to hang in the air at the end of the play. Perhaps Jane Wyman's Laura should have been in this production rather than being stuck in the 1950 version, with its own lamentable ending. Perhaps this play is too dated to be believable today and they don't make helpless females any more. (TV has sent such types into therapy.) Nevertheless, this is a great late-career performance for Katharine Hepburn, and that's the best reason for owning this DVD, a good companion to "Lion in Winter" and "On Golden Pond." She was born to play this faded Southern belle who has no talent for sales except as the determined purveyor of a lost culture. Her physical fragility plus the trademark Hepburn patrician accent and mannerisms are simply perfect and utterly priceless (whereas Joanne Woodward in the same role is too perky and liberated). Those two veteran "Law and Order" ADAs are also very good in their roles -- Sam Waterston as Laura's restless, henpecked brother and Michael Moriarty as the cheerful and clueless Gentleman Caller.