Stapleton, Maureen (1925—)

views updated

Stapleton, Maureen (1925—)

American actress who won an Emmy, an Oscar, and a Tony. Born Lois Maureen Stapleton in Troy, New York, on June 21, 1925; graduated from Catholic Central High School, Troy, New York; studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Acting School, New York; married Max Allentuck (a producer), in 1949 (divorced 1959); married David Rayfiel (a playwright), in May 1965 (divorced); children: (first marriage) Cathy Allentuck ; Danny Allentuck.

Selected theater:

New York debut as Sarah Tansey in The Playboy of the Western World (Booth Theater, October 1946); appeared as Iras in Antony and Cleopatra (Martin Beck Theater, November 1947), Miss Hatch in Detective Story (Hudson Theater, March 1949), Serafina in The Rose Tattoo (Martin Beck Theater, February 1951, followed by a tour); appeared as Flora in Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton (Playhouse Theater, April 1955), Lady Torrance in Orpheus Descending (Martin Beck Theater, March 1957), Ida in The Cold Wind and the Warm (Morosco Theater, December 1958), Carrie in Toys in the Attic (Hudson Theater, February 1960), Amanda Wingfield in a revival of The Glass Menagerie (Brooks Atkinson Theater, May 1965); had three roles in Plaza Suite (Plymouth Theater, February 1968); appeared as Evy Meara in The Gingerbread Lady (Plymouth Theater, December 1970), Georgie Elgin in The Country Girl (Billy Rose Theater, March 1972), Birdie in a revival of The Little Foxes (1981).

Selected filmography:

Lonelyhearts (1959); The Fugitive Kind (1960); Vu du Pont (A View From the Bridge, Fr.-It., 1962); Bye Bye Birdie (1963); Trilogy (1969); Airport (1970); Plaza Suite (1971); Interiors(1978); The Runner Stumbles (1979); Lost and Found (1979); The Fan (1981); On the Right Track (1981); Reds (1981); Johnny Dangerously (1984); Cocoon (1985); (voice only) The Cosmic Eye (1985); The Money Pit (1986); Heartburn (1986); Hello Actors Studio (doc., 1987); Sweet Lorraine (1987); Made in Heaven (1987); Nuts (1987); Doin' Time on Planet Earth (1988); Cocoon: The Return (1988); Passed Away (1992).

Having built her reputation playing unglamourous down-to-earth character roles, actress Maureen Stapleton has always been aware that she could not rely on her beauty to get by. "People looked at me onstage and said, 'Jesus, that broad better be able to act,'" she once remarked. And act she did, winning an Emmy, an Oscar, and a Tony in a career that has spanned almost five decades. Stapleton has always slipped easily between drama and comedy, displaying a remarkable range and impeccable control of her craft.

Born in Troy, New York, in 1925, Stapleton attended Catholic Central High School, where

she performed in all the school plays. Most afternoons, when school was out, she made her way to the local cinema, staying until closing time. It was only later, after she had scraped up enough money to study with Herbert Berghof in New York City, that she realized acting was not just about glamour and money. "It was a whole new world," she told Helen Ormsbee of the New York Herald Tribune in February 1951. "In Troy I used to go to movies and dream of being a star, with money and lovely clothes. But in this new world I learned other values—integrity in acting, for instance…. Herbert Berghof gave us all a love of the theater."

Stapleton got some of her early experience in a summer stock company that 22 of Berghof's students started in Blauvelt, New York, in the summer of 1945. The following summer, she joined a stock company in Mount Kisco, New York, refining her skills further. Returning to New York City, she snagged a small role in The Playboy of the Western World, then after understudying the larger part of Pegeen Mike, she played it for a week opposite Burgess Meredith. Afterwards, she took any small roles that came her way and also became a charter member of the Actors Studio, where she studied with Robert Lewis and Lee Strasberg.

In 1951, after a lengthy audition process, Stapleton was chosen to play Serafina, the widowed Sicilian-American heroine of Tennessee Williams' play The Rose Tattoo. (Williams had written the role for Anna Magnani , but she was unable to master English well enough for a Broadway production. She did play the role in the later movie.) The part, for which Stapleton mastered an Italian accent, signaled her true arrival in the theater. "Maureen Stapleton's performance is triumphant," proclaimed The New York Times. "The widow is unlearned and superstitious and becomes something of a harridan after her husband dies. Miss Stapleton does not evade the coarseness of the part. But neither does she miss its exaltation. For Mr. Williams has sprinkled a little stardust over the widow's shoulders and Miss Stapleton has kept the part sparkling though all the fury and tumult of the emotion." For her performance, Stapleton won a Peabody Award and a Tony as Best Actress. The role became a classic of her repertoire and was revived several times in her career.

Following appearances in The Emperor's Clothes, The Crucible, and The Sea Gull during the 1953–54 season, Stapleton created exquisite characterizations in two additional Tennessee Williams plays: Flora in Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton, which Richard Watts, Jr., of the New York Post called "a masterpiece of acting," and Lady Torrance, the proprietor of a drygoods store in Orpheus Descending. Although the critics were not wild about the latter play, they were overwhelmingly positive about Stapleton's performance. "Her fiercely intelligent eyes always carry conviction," declared Walter Kerr, "you're sure that she does know and feel everything the author says she knows and feels."

In 1960, Stapleton appeared as Carrie in Toys in the Attic, the last major play by Lillian Hellman and the winner of that year's New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. Toys concerns two unmarried sisters (the other played by Anne Revere ) and their brother (Jason Robards, Jr.), whose marriage tears the family apart. Stapleton, whom critics called "comic, discerning, awkward and pathetic," admitted that the part was difficult for her.

Stapleton launched her film career in 1959, winning an Oscar nomination for her first movie performance, in Lonelyhearts (1959), and for her work in Airport (1970) and Interiors (1978). She finally won the golden statue for her portrayal of Emma Goldman in Reds (1981). Television has also proven to be a creative outlet for the actress, who won a Sullivan Award for her performance as Sadie Burke in a production of All the King's Men (May 1958) and an Emmy Award for her performance in Save Me a Place at Forest Lawn (1967).

Stapleton's earliest comedy success was in the role of the matchmaking aunt in S.N. Behrman's autobiographical play The Cold Wind and the Warm (1959), which she played with "uproarious, upholstered aplomb," according to Kenneth Tynan. Walter Kerr also found her delightful. "It is an expansive and honest pleasure to watch Maureen Stapleton, as matchmaker for a Jewish neighborhood and foster-mother to practically everyone in sight, turn a speculative eye on an attractive and available spinster, invent a handful of splendid lies to account for the failure of a promised suitor to show up, and, in a burst of breathless efficiency, hustle the lass off to the corner drugstore where there are prospects with every milk shake."

In 1968, Stapleton took on the challenge of three roles in Neil Simon's comedy Plaza Suite and in 1970 appeared as Evy Meara in his The Gingerbread Lady, which chronicles the demise of a once-popular singer who turns to the bottle. Critics had problems with both Stapleton's performance and Simon's play, dismissing it as a series of one-liners. Critic John Simon lauded her "timing and emphasis" but thought she was miscast. Allene Talmey , writing for Vogue, also thought Simon's plot was weak, but found Stapleton's character well drawn and brilliantly acted.

While Stapleton's career hummed along, her personal life was shaky. In an interview on Mike Wallace's Night Beat in 1957, she said that she had been undergoing psychiatric treatment for over two years because she felt her life was "so disorganized." In her feisty 1995 autobiography A Hell of a Life? (written with Jane Scovell ), she disclosed earlier problems with alcohol and also took the blame for her two failed marriages, one to theater producer Max Allentuck, with whom she had two children, and another to playwright David Rayfiel. Although Stapleton never drank before a performance, she apparently made up for lost time after the curtain came down. In her book, she writes that her son Danny would shout at her when she started slurring her words: "Stop talking German, Mom. I hate it when you talk German!"

One of Stapleton's later stage appearances was a revival of The Glass Menagerie at New York's Circle in the Square in 1975. (She had first played the role in 1965.) The actress continued to make occasional films throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, including Cocoon: The Return (1988) and Passed Away (1992). Having long since made peace with her demons, Stapleton resides in Lenox, Massachusetts, and is still on the lookout for a good role.