Goetz, Ruth G(oodman) 1912-2001

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GOETZ, Ruth G(oodman) 1912-2001

PERSONAL:

Born January 11, 1912, in Philadelphia, PA; died October 12, 2001, in Englewood, NJ; daughter of Philip Goodman (a theater producer) and Lily Cartun Goodman; married Augustus Goetz (a writer), 1931 (died 1957); children: Judy Goetz Sanger. Education: Miss Marshall's School, New York, NY and Paris, France.

CAREER:

Story editor, costume designer, and playwright.

MEMBER:

Dramatists' Guild.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Academy Award (with Augustus Goetz), 1949, for best screenplay adaptation, for The Heiress.

WRITINGS:

(With Augustus Goetz) One-Man Show (play; first produced on Broadway, 1945), New York, NY, 1945.

(With Augustus Goetz) The Heiress (play; first produced on Broadway, 1947; based on the novel Washington Square by Henry James), Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 1948.

(With Augustus Goetz) The Immoralist: A Drama in Three Acts (play; first produced on Broadway, 1954; based on the novel by André Gide), Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 1954.

(With Augustus Goetz) The Hidden River (play; first produced on Broadway, 1957); based on the novel by Storm Jameson), Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 1957.

Sweet Love Remember'd, 1959.

(With Augustus Goetz) The Heiress (screenplay; based on their play), 1949.

(With Augustus Goetz) Carrie (screenplay), 1952.

(With Augustus Goetz) Rhapsody (screenplay) 1954.

(With Augustus Goetz) Trapeze (screenplay), 1956.

(With Augustus Goetz) Stage Struck (screenplay) 1957.

(With Bart Howard) Play on Love, produced in London, England, 1970.

Author, with Augustus Goetz and Arthury Sheekman, of produced play Franklin Street; author of Madly in Love. Works published in anthologies, including Best Plays of 1947-1948, John Chapman, editor, Dodd, Mead (New York, NY), 1948; and Best Plays of 1953-1954, Louis Kronenberger, editor, Dodd, Mead (New York, NY), 1954.

ADAPTATIONS:

The Heiress was produced as an audiocassette recording, L.A. Theatre Works (Venice, CA), 1998.

SIDELIGHTS:

Playwright Ruth Goodman Goetz was born in Philadelphia and grew up in New York City, where her father, Philip Goodman, produced plays. Goetz worked as a story editor and costume designer in the 1920s, but her career turned toward writing when she married aspiring author Augustus Goetz in 1931 and the two began a lifelong collaboration writing plays and screenplays.

The play Franklin Street, cowritten with Arthur Sheekman, was the Goetz's first team effort. Borrowing from Goodman's biography, the short-lived production drew lukewarm critical reaction.

Next, the couple penned One-Man Show. Published in 1945, the play had a brief run on Broadway that year. Set in the world of art dealers, the play's story emphasizes the emotional relationship between a father and daughter.

As the literary duo began to brainstorm their next script effort, Ruth Goetz suggested they adapt the Henry James novel Washington Square. The story of an overbearing, psychologically abusive father, his melancholy daughter, and the good-looking golddigger who woos her and betrays her was an international success. But Washington Square does not provide a neatly packaged happy ending, and one producer didn't like it. This producer, upon reading the couple's finished draft, talked the writers into changing the ending to an upbeat one in which the daughter reconciles with her worthless suitor.

This drastic change meant critical failure in Boston, but the couple learned a helpful lesson. They restored the somber ending, renamed it The Heiress, brought on Jed Harris to direct the Broadway production, and cast popular Basil Rathbone and Wendy Hiller in lead roles. Adam Bernstein, writing Goetz's obituary for the Washington Post, said, "The Goetzes reattached their original searing ending and the show was a sensation." A reviewer for the old New York Daily Mirror called the play "a bitter, relentless, absorbing character study."

The production lasted 410 performances; a successful film version, written by the Goetzes and directed by William Wyler, starred Ralph Richardson, Olivia de Havilland, and Montgomery Clift in 1949, and brought an Oscar win for the Goetzes and for de Havilland; among other revivals, in 1974, the play was produced as an opera, and in 1995, The Heiress won an Antoinette Perry—"Tony"—award for best revival (actress Cherry Jones also received a Tony for her performance). Mel Gussow, in his New York Times obituary, said Goetz felt she and her husband had added one important ingredient in adapting the classic Henry James' novel: the daughter's self-discovery through tragedy. (They also compressed the time span of the book.) Judith Flanders, reviewing the 1995 revival for the Times Literary Supplement, remarked, "This reduced time span produces a more dramatic but less interesting denouement."

Stefan Kanfer wrote in New Leader, "What one cannot imagine is James writing a play so tightly constructed or shrewdly cast as the Lincoln Center Theater production of The Heiress. …In essence, the story is a triangle with only two lovers: the shy, unprepossessing Catherine Sloper …and the handsome, unscrupulous Morris Townsend.… The third party is Catherine's father…Dr. Austin Sloper."

The Goetzes produced adaptations after 1954. The Immoralist: A Drama in Three Acts is an adaptation of the novel by André Gide, and the story of a gay man. Brooks Atkinson wrote in New York Times after it opened on Broadway, "Magnificently acted by a company led by Geraldine Page and Louis Jourdan, The Immoralist …retains the integrity of Gide and does credit to the taste of the Goetzes."

Several more film adaptations followed. The pair adapted Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie in a script version titled Carrie; they also wrote the screenplay adaptations Rhapsody, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Trapeze, and Stage Struck, the last directed by Sidney Lumet. Before Augustus Goetz died in 1957, the husband-and-wife writing partners completed a stage version of Storm Jamison's postwar suspense novel The Hidden River.

In 1957 Goetz wrote Sweet Love Remember'd, a story based on her husband. The play was produced in 1959 but experienced a short run due to the suicide death of lead actress Margaret Sullavan during the production's tryout phase.

In the following years, Goetz wrote the play Madly in Love, an adaptation of L'amour fou by André Roussin. Collaborating with Bart Howard, she also wrote Play on Love, produced in London.

Gussow said, "Speaking about the art of playwriting, Mrs. Goetz said, 'Dramatization is imagination made palpable, or visible, or understandable—instantly.'"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Coven, Brenda, American Women Dramatists of the Twentieth Century, Scarecrow Press (Metuchen, NJ), 1982.

Notable Names in the American Theatre, James T. White (Clifton, NJ), 1976.

PERIODICALS

America, April 29, 1995, James S. Torrens, review of The Heiress, p. 26.

Back Stage, November 27, 1981, Jennie Schulman, review of The Heiress, p. 83; March 24, 1995, David Sheward, review of The Heiress, p. 52.

Back Stage West, November 20, 1997, Kerry Reid, review of The Heiress, p. 9.

Booklist, May 25, 1999, Barbara Baskin, review of The Heiress, p. 1714.

Christian Science Monitor, Frank Scheck, review of The Heiress, March 17, 1995, p. 13.

New Leader, March 13, 1995, Stefan Kramer, review of The Heiress, pp. 22-23.

New Yorker, March 20, 1995, Nancy Franklin, review of The Heiress, pp. 108-109.

New York Times, October 4, 1980, Richard Eder, article, "After 33 years, 'Heiress' is an opera," p. 10; July 7, 1985, Howard Thompson, review of The Heiress, p. 20; June 16, 1989, Mel Gussow, review of The Heiress, p. B3; March 5, 1995, William Harris, "The Story behind an American Drama of Passion," p. H7; March 10, 1995, Vincent Canby, review of The Heiress, p. B1; March 19, 1995, Margo Jefferson, review of The Heiress, p. H33.

Times Literary Supplement, June 23, 2000, Judith Flanders, review of The Heiress, p. 22.

Variety, March 13, 1995, Greg Evans, review of The Heiress, p. 61.

Wall Street Journal, March 10, 1995, Donald Lyons, review of The Heiress, p. A12.