Follies of God by James Grissom

Author:James Grissom [Grissom, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-101-87465-3
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC
Published: 2015-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

Kim Hunter was a young mother overseeing a hectic household, but she always made time and space for Tennessee, inviting him for meals and holding him up when he doubted his talent. “She was, I guess, a sort of sister,” Tennessee said. (illustration credit 10.5)

Both Tenn and Hunter conceded that her performance grew incredibly under Kazan’s tutelage. “There was an unabashed amateurishness to Kim’s performance in the early days,” Tenn remembered. “She had it in her head that Stella was nervous, jumpy, and so she remained—one note and one dimension—for the length of the play. I admired her tenacity and her ability to concentrate on that one aspect, but the performance was abrasive and thin. Whatever Kazan did, it worked.”

“He spoke to me as an adult,” Hunter revealed. “He sat me down and explained the full text of the play, and he compared the four [major] characters in the play to people we knew in common. Kazan believed that there were a limited number of people, or archetypes, in the world, and our individual personalities determined how we lived and how our personalities were revealed. He allowed me to see that I shared a great deal in common with Stella. I also came to see some similarities I shared with Blanche. He led me to realize that no one, and no action, could or should be alien to me.”

The conversations I had with Hunter were very much like the phone calls Tenn shared with her when he called “deep in the blues” and needed some balance. “He wanted to hear that he was a good writer,” Hunter said, “and he wanted me to know that I had meant something to him, that he meant something to me. He wanted to talk about our human bond, the world being connected by our similarities, our shared fears and dreams. I think he called me when he had gotten a bad review or he had been rejected by a lover. He needed to hear from someone who looked up to him, who wouldn’t judge him. He needed to hear from someone who had grown up—grown in every way—right in front of him, and because of one of his plays.”

Kim Hunter openly addressed the issue of her not having a sense of liftoff, in Tenn’s eyes. “I would have to agree with him,” she confessed, “but let’s look at the facts.” After the Broadway production of Streetcar, Hunter gave a praised performance in Darkness at Noon, Sidney Kingsley’s adaptation of Arthur Koestler’s novel, and another in the film version of Streetcar, for which she won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress. “There was a good and clear line going,” Hunter recalled. “And then the bottom fell out of everything.”

The event to which she referred was the blacklist: Hunter’s name appeared in Red Channels, and film producers were urged to reconsider casting her. In 1953 alone, she knew of seven film roles for which she was wanted (including the one ultimately played by Donna Reed

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