A star known for her stellar beauty hides it under a wig, unflattering makeup and 30 extra pounds. A fiery actor signs on to play a milquetoast, broken man. A first-time director strips away the work of an Oscar-nominated writer – who also happens to be the producer – and then fights with the studio and fires the cinematographer. And the language in the script? Shocking, even scandalous.
What could go wrong?
In “Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage and the Making of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,’” which is in stores Feb. 13, Philip Gefter deftly depicts all of that, but also everything that went right in the making of this American classic.
In a recent video interview, Gefter noted that when Edward Albee sold the rights from his hit play he joked about having a gentleman’s agreement with studio chief Jack Warner to cast Bette Davis and James Mason, but “For all I know, it would end up being Rock Hudson and Doris Day.”
Instead, Albee’s play got Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, possibly the most glamourous couple on earth at that point. On the surface, neither were right for the parts of George and Martha but they produced career-defining performances under Mike Nichols’ astute direction.
Gefter captures the larger-than-life personalities of all involved and the drama that went into the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. What surprised you in your research?
Elizabeth Taylor’s level of entitlement was proportional to her fame — she was a kind of American royalty. Warner Brothers issued a kind of list of do’s and don’ts for dealing with the Burtons on the set – don’t talk to them unless they talk to you first. So she was profoundly spoiled, but her willingness to work when she was focused and the depth with which she reached for this character was impressive.
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor pose with the awards they won during the 20th annual British Film Academy Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, England, April 25, 1967. (Photo credit AP Photo/Calvert)
Also, she was brought up making movies – she had already made 34 films – and she understood the nature of filmmaking. Haskell Wexler, the cinematographer, talked about how she understood what the camera would do before even he did. So she had a kind of professionalism that was impressive, even though she violated it often enough.
And Nichols was brash, but also both an idealistic and sophisticated guy going to Hollywood where he is confronted with a way of working and a set of standards that are, to his mind, inferior and that present innumerable obstacles to his vision. Warner thought black-and-white was old-fashioned and the movie wouldn’t make money. Nichols says black-and-white is a metaphor, it’s not literal and that’s what this film is, a metaphor about life. But he also had a good argument to Warner that if the movie was in color, you would see too much of Elizabeth’s prosthetics and makeup. And Nichols could have walked off and gone back to New York — it might have even elevated his reputation with the New York press and the New York intelligentsia. So he had that in his back pocket.
Q. You note that the film broke ground on how movies tackled marriage, paving the way for everything from “Scenes from a Marriage” to “Marriage Story.”
American culture had been fairly anodyne before Albee; marriages in the media were Ricky and Lucy, the Cleavers, Ozzie and Harriet. Most of what came out of Hollywood and on television was kind of a caricature of what life is really like. It was a culture in which all underlying tensions were swept under the carpet.
People were longing for their lives to be represented authentically. I think that’s why it was a phenomenon.
And it became a dividing line. Movies made over the next five years started to have a kind of psychotherapist’s eye view of marriage, like “Diary of a Mad Housewife.” The thing I discovered about “Scenes from a Marriage” is that, earlier, Ingmar Bergman was the first director of the European version of Albee’s play, so “Scenes” has “Virginia Woolf” DNA all over it.
Q. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” was part of the shift from the 1950s to the 1960s.
This movie exemplifies that shift; it both anticipated and precipitated the tumult of the ‘60s. I’m not saying it did so single-handedly, but when you look back you see this movie was right on the brink of the sexual revolution when life was getting to be more open and less conventional. The movie helped open things up.
Q. The other 1967 Oscar nominees —“A Man for All Seasons,” which won, “Alfie,” “The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming,” and “The Sand Pebbles” – are largely forgotten and feel more dated. Why is the black-and-white play adaptation the one that still resonates?
There’s something in Albee’s play that is so true to human nature. It’s true beyond its time. It’s a film about a marriage, but it’s really a film about marriage, and that’s why it endures.
The dialogue is brilliant – one minute, you gasp and the next you laugh out loud. It’s witty, but also devastating in terms of the psychological battles that are fought, the kind of verbal sadism and the character assassination that I think is just part of the territory of marriage. It’s extreme, but it’s recognizable behavior.
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It’s an X-ray vision of marriage. It’s what happens beneath the surface. Couples maintain a certain kind of decorum in front of the people for the most part but George and Martha punctured that so you’re seeing what people feel but would never say in front of other people.
Q. How do you think your take on the play and the movie has shifted over the years of your life and your marriage?
I’ve been married for 27 years. My experience and George and Martha’s are sort of aligned. I don’t mean we have arguments like that necessarily – I mean, it does happen occasionally – but the movie gives me a sense a relief: “Oh, it’s not just us. This is a human dynamic.”
So it’s actually helpful.
Philip Gefter joins New York Times writer Alexandra Jacobs, author of “Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch” for the celebrity biography episode of Bookish on Friday, Feb. 16 at 5 p.m.
