Sandy Dennis's Screen Test for 'Virginia Woolf'

she was one of the greats, That Cold Day in the Park, Three Sisters (Chekov), Up the Downn Staircase, etc.... she played neurotic marvelously !

She made an entire career out a post nasal drip.

But she was brilliantly funny in The Out-of-Towners.

OP here - I posted this late at night, but I know there are at least a few die-hard Sandy Dennis fans on here so this was posted for them.

it won her an oscar honey, bit brilliant was she, one of a kind, I MISS U BABY

I love that woman. Thanks, OP.

I just saw A TOUCH OF LOVE (1969)

look out for a young Ian McKellen!

She managed the English accent very well, a few slips...but Sandy at her most vulnerable and touching. See if you can see it where you are.

It was 1964: Funny Girl was hot, hot, hot that year, and I begged my father to take us to see it, but he couldn't get his hands on a single ticket.

Instead, he took us to see a matinee of Any Wednesday with Sandy Dennis. He said, "Let's go see a woman who's going to be doing the exact same thing for the next 20 years."

But she did it best in Any Wednesday, you have to admit.

She was outstanding in “Another Woman”. Watching her anger simmer until she blows up at Gena Rowlands was electrifying. And it was cool to see her reunited with her “Any Wednesday” costar, Gene Hackman.

Most irritating character in the history of cinema

She passed her mantle to Shelley Long.

She attended high school with Dick Cavett.

Only morons would not appreciate her brilliance.

oscar!!!!

What was "amazing!" about her, OP, is that she wrought a successful career out of biting her lip and sniffing.

She had a thing for cats AKA no children.

OMG.

"After Dennis's death, [bold]she was identified as bisexual[/bold] by Hollywood historians. According to her biographer Peter Shelley, Eric Roberts, upon being asked if Dennis was bisexual, said she had told him about her many lesbian relationships and that she "appreciated the beauty of women. But Sandy also liked and appreciated what a very, very young man could do to a woman, I suppose. This was published more than 20 years after her death."

Sandy Dennis had Eric Roberts? If so, I’ll have to revise my thoughts about her a bit.

It seems A Touch Of Love is called something else in the USA and is available on Amazon Prime

WAOVW is one of the most over rated movies in history. Like anything with that smelly retard James Dean. Sandy Dennis had fucked up eyes and acted retarded in WAOVW. I watched the movie awhile back and was so fucking bored I fell asleep. I love how you queens obsess over terrible movies and terrible actresses.

I always enjoyed her films. She was a great actress.

[quote]I watched the movie awhile back and was so fucking bored I fell asleep. I love how you queens obsess over terrible movies and terrible actresses.

I hated it but its admiration is in no way limited to gays.

It's universally considered a masterpiece.

Richard Burton was a SHIT actor.

I BEAR THE SON OF JAMES DEAN INSIDE ME!

R20 Agreed. I never found him to be all that. His acting was average at best and his face was extremely pock marked. The Taming of the Shrew that he and Liz Taylor financed was probably the worst ever Shakespeare adaptation.

I liked Sandy Dennis very much and I agree she was a one-note actress BUT she hit that note perfectly every time. She was superb in Virginia Wolff and Up the Down Staircase. Also, her performance in The Out of Towners showed she did have comedic range within her limitations. Thanks, OP, for the thread. I need to watch The Out of Towners again!

OMG, that's Roddy McDowall in the screen test with her! Great find, OP.

Who else was being considered for Honey?

R8, I lovee Another Woman and her scene in particular. She was great in it.

"Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" is such a great film. Hard to find on streaming but I did watch it recently on YouTube.

True (if hilarious) Dennis-related factoid: the role of Honey in the film version of “Virginia Woolf” was vigorously pursued by Miss Connie Stevens, who was angry that Mike Nichols and Jack Warner wouldn’t even consider screen-testing her.

r7=Sandra Bernhard

Roddy McDowall would've been better in the George role -- several years later, of course.

i never got that rich burton was so damn good in anythinng !, to me he was the weak link in v woolf,.....

He was BAD in everything he did.

The was the best thing in The Four Seasons. The other characters were insufferable, but the scene where the tells other women about them deserting her after her divorce was very real and honest.

She was the only good, real thing in the synthetic “Four Seasons”.. Her wave to Carol Burnett and Rita Moreno as she walks away from them (and she KNOWS they’re watching her) was a wonderful, true moment!

(I know, MARY!)

The Four Seasons - I'd totally forgotten about, real frau stuff.

And The Americans and their TEETH! Make it STOP!

Roddy reads "light" in the role of Nick. So he would never have been cast.

She's totally spell bounding.

I had no idea she's been dead so long.

I'm glad they changed the "Dance like the Wind" scene to the roadhouse--much more effective. She actually isn't that great here.

The Out of Towners was Neil Simon sit com at its most grating, with Jack Lemmon at his most hammy. She doesn't hold up well in that kind of mileu. Virginia Woolf is a great film and other than Equus, the probably the last decent performance from Burton.

Not to derail the thread, but I like Burton a lot in "Where Eagles Dare."

[quote]Not to derail the thread

Too late. Derailed.

As good as she was on film, she was extraordinary on stage. So inventive and surprising.

I could see her "twitch as an acting style" working better on stage.

She is a bit more abrasive than even her fellow 'fidgety Uta Hagen-trained' girls (Geraldine Page, Kim Stanley, Jess Lange, etc.). So I can see her style not being for everyone. But in the right role like ANOTHER WOMAN, it works wonders.

I go back and forward on her work in 'Woolf', but either way it's cool to see these old screen tests.

Less of a histrionic scenery chewer than Geraldine Page. Least deserved Oscar ever---it was Hollywood making itself seem serious for giving an award to a "serious stage actress".

The lesbian rumors have been around for ages. The relationships with Gerry Mulligan and Eric Roberts have always been described inconsistently---Roberts was supposedly "platonic". and weirdly maternal by some reports. Mulligan may or may not have married to her. I wouldn't be surprised if she was never really intimate with anyone, regardless of who she was fucking.

I thought it was interesting she made no movies between "Splendor In The Grass" and Virginia Woolf?- just TV roles.

^^^Let's face it, she was difficult to cast. Loved her, but she couldn't be shoehorned into just any script.

Can anyone find Sandy Duncan's screen test for Honey?

Sandy and Anthony Newley are a weird couple in Sweet November. Anthony had Joan Collins for a while so I guess he had some hetero appeal.

She was busy on stage winning two Tonys between Splendor and Virginia Woolf. Sandy always elevated any film, play or TV that she did. THE best supporting actress Oscar winner ever.

Found on YouTube — unfortunately starts when she snaps and does not include her anger building, but still — brilliant acting.

I found the complete clip.

Thru the years....

Bump

Her scene in Another Woman blew me to the back of the room the first time I saw it. You could feel every emotion she was channeling. I'd never seen anything quite like it before. Sandy had the habit of being one of the best things in everything she was in. She never seemed to phone in a performance. As others have said, she was hard to cast, but when she was cast well, she was magic.

"Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" is now available on iTunes. It took a while. The author is a nasty bitch though. I saw him in an interview and all he did was complain. Ugh! She is brilliant though. At times she just dissociates and is completely taken over by her character. She was a great actress.

Another Woman has so many great micro-performances. Sandy Dennis, but also Martha Plimpton, Frances Conroy & Blythe Danner. Best of the lot might be Betty Buckley. She only has about 2 minutes of screen time? Almost steals the entire movie. I cringed throughout her entire scene.

Did anybody see Nasty Habits? It was a comedy centred on a group of nuns starring Sandy and a bunch of other veterans (Geraldine Page, Melina Mercouri, Glenda Jackson, Anne Meara, Edith Evans, etc.), and they must have had a riot on set. With her frenetic acting style, as devastating as she could be, Sandy Dennis was probably more 'seamless' when appearing in quirky comedies than serious domestic dramas where sometimes she would stick out like a sore thumb.

Dennis is an actress best taken in smaller doses, which is why she can excel in films like ANOTHER WOMAN, THE FOUR SEASONS, NASTY HABITS, and others. Otherwise she starts grating.

I liked her a lot as Honey, but that was also the first time I saw her in anything. Her career as a leading lady was very short as it became clear that her "pose nasal drip" acting style wasn't going to carry many films or endear her to audiences for long. She is funny in THE OUT-OF-TOWNERS, but even there her shtick wears thin after a while (Lemmon is dreadful).

I watched THAT COLD DAY...a year ago and it's not a good movie, other than some butt shots of cute Michael Burns. Dennis is good, but it's the same kind of performance you've seen before, with a touch of malevolence.

Neither SWEET NOVEMBER nor THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH has much of a reputation, and I believe both were flops. The only good performance in THE FOX is by Anne Heywood.

She's dreadful in THREE SISTERS (doesn't even attempt to act in period) but that whole production is a shit show (Shelley Winters as Nastasha is unbearable) except for Kim Stanley.

R58 I’ve seen Nasty Habits. A women’s take on the Watergate scandal. Nuns no less. I don’t remember much about it other than Dennis telling everyone i will shut this whole thing down in her inimitable way. Her character was based on John Dean.

Has any major actress played nuns in movies more than Geraldine Page? I can thing of three: Nasty Habits, Agnes of God, and Honkytonk Freeway. Honkytonk was a huge bomb but I thought it hilarious, especially Page and Deborah Rush, as her novice nun who becomes a hooker by the end of the movie.

Thank you to the earlier posters who brought up "Another Woman," a film that I had never seen. I watched it last night and was floored by Sandy Dennis's performance. This is the kind of thread that makes following DL worthwhile.

On a personal note, I got to see Dennis on stage in the early 80s, when she was performing in Long Beach, California, with Perry King in "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale." She was perfect in the role of Alma, and I found myself watching her more than King, even though he was probably at the peak of his sexy hotness then.

Geraldine Page did Agnes of God on stage but Anne Bancroft did the movie.

Wasn't there some earlier role where Page played a nun?

Mike Nichols' first choice for Honey was Sandy Duncan. The casting director misunderstood and called Sandy Dennis to audition. The rest is history.

Sandy Duncan wouldn't have had the depth perception to do that interpretive dance sequence.