Seance On A Wet Afternoon

I couldn't understand a word Kim Stanley said in the final scene, because she whispers inaudibly throughout the entire movie.

Oh, OP, you know better - we must always include a reference link in posts such as this.

Here you go, R2

I saw the opera version of this at New York City Opera circa 2011. The score, by Stephen Schwartz, was not amazing. I prefer the film.

r3 Sweetie, no, you'll want your reader to engage from the start. We don't search on behalf of the OP. We established this many years ago. You've failed, which is fine. We've all embarrassed ourselves. Why not take a break, and walk outside for a bit. Contemplate what you've done here. Don't be ashamed, just learn from this.

Stanley is superb, but she doesn't do a British accent for some reason. Attenborough does a dry run of his creepy "10 Rillington Place" performance.

Actually, R5, I assumed that most DLers have enough of a working knowledge of cinema that they don’t need their hands held to that degree. You’re obviously an exception—“special,” let’s say.

Kim Stanley would have gotten my vote for Best Actress at the Oscars that year. Anne Bancroft in ‘The Pumpkin Eater’ was also superb.

I'm not that crazy about Kim Stanley and I didn't care that much for the film, either.

It’s a very good film but a slower and more psychological thriller. It’s not like some “Psychotronic” films, films that have cult followings and feature more expressive acting and more outlandish plot devices. Still, it’s a very interesting film to watch.

Are we sure that Kim Stanley is playing a British woman in the film? I haven't seen it though I did see that NY City Opera version, which was not great.

Love Kim Stanley. Check out "The Goddess" It's up free on Youtube. Justin Root does a deep dive on Kim's life and career.

R8, both Stanley and Bancroft were deserving that year, but the award went to popular favorite, Julie Andrews.

The cinematographer Gerry Turpin was nominated for a BAFTA for the beautiful black and white photography. He won a couple of years later for another great looking Bryan Forbes movie, "The Whisperers." In between he shot "Morgan!," also in gorgeous black and white.

I assumed she was playing an American.

But she talks about living in her house as a young girl, r15, and how the house and furniture were handed down to her in her father's will.

In addition to the performances, the cinematography and sound are magnificent, as they are in Forbes’ The Whisperers (1967) as well.

Jon Krampner’s biography of Kim Stanley is worth a read. Difficult and fascinating person. Some of the anecdotes about the second half of her life are pretty harrowing.

I watched the movie and was so underwhelmed that I remember almost nothing about it.

I do think it’s a great title.

Jean Louise Finch!

“Neighbors bring food with death, flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives. One time Atticus said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough. The summer that had begun so long ago had ended, and another summer had taken its place, and a fall, and Boo Radley had come out. I was to think of these days many times. Of Jem, and Dill, and Boo Radley, and Tom Robinson, and Atticus. He would be in Jem's room all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.“

She did it without credit.

I don't know why I don't like To Kill A Mockingbird but she did great with that narration. It doesn't call a lot of attention to itself. It's like the author is narrating. I never even thought about who it was. (I have heard previously that she did it. I meant when I first saw the movie.)

[quote]Jon Krampner’s biography of Kim Stanley is worth a read.

I'll let you know, r17, I just ordered it.

I met Kim Stanley once. In 1979. Downstairs at the Vandam Theatre in New York. She’d been talking with the head of that theater when I appeared, and we were introduced. We shook hands. She had a small hand. Nicely dressed in an orange suit, she stood out against our casual look. Her face looked like it had had one of those peel things. She had a tentative manner, with widened eyes. After years of experience with similar people, I now believe she may have desperately wanted a drink.

Was she there for any particular reason?

I believe she was trying to promote some kind of one-woman show. But, if it happened, I wasn’t aware of it.

Was Stanley's lack of work in the later 60s and onwards her own choice? Or was she considered difficult? Unreliable?

[quote] Justin Root does a deep dive on Kim

Pics please.

She got fat.

She was amazing in The Right Stuff.

Everyone was—it remains a personal favorite. An essential part of the American story.

Another Oscar nomination

[Quote] I saw the opera version of this at New York City Opera circa 2011. The score, by Stephen Schwartz, was not amazing. I prefer the film.

Totally agree!

JP Miller on Kim Stanley, TV and the stage (good clip--only a few minutes).

R26, Miss Stanley was difficult, unreliable, and an alcoholic, and had several nervous breakdowns by the mid-1960s. She was a devotee of The Method, and her drive to seek truth in every performance drove her to madness.

R33 Any details? How was she unreliable? Did she forget to show up for perfor4mances?

R34, despite her "brilliance" on stage, Kim Stanley developed a reputation for tardiness and missing performances. She even walked out in the middle of the second act of "A Touch of the Poet," leaving co-star Helen Hayes stranded on stage while Stanley's understudy, Nancy Malone, quickly got into costume to finish out the play.

Stanley was a perfectionist and was especially hard on herself. She relied heavily on the immediacy of the moment to inform her performances, and if she wasn't particularly inspired or had trouble finding her character's motivation, her anxiety would kick in and she would opt to skip the show than deliver a mediocre performance.

The friction between Hayes and Stanley was well publicized, and when asked about it, Miss Hayes responded "Kim would have tried the patience of a saint with her striving for an opening-night level of performance—even on rainy Thursdays."

Seems very self-absorbed, to the detriment of the play or the project.

R26 To add on to what R33 and R35 said, she really seems like the type of obsessed Method performer who lived for rehearsal but found very difficult the realities and responsibilities of acting for a paying audience. Some of those folks, like Barbara Harris, eventually turned to teaching. Kim did too, but only after she had flamed out.

The problems with her drinking and unreliability had been apparent since the mid-50s - see the story about her and Helen Hayes above. But 1965 is when it falls apart for her. A year after Seance, she appeared in a London production of Chekhov's The Three Sisters under the direction of Lee Strasberg, an idol and mentor. Also appearing were Sandy Dennis, George C. Scott (who allegedly was beating the shit out of Ava Gardner in between rehearsals), Robert Loggia, and Luther Adler. The production had received a mixed response in New York the year before. It unsurprisingly got savaged by London critics, who were not buying the Method approach to a classic play. Poor Sandy Dennis caught the worst of it, but Stanley was also pilloried. Strasberg responded by blaming his actors, because he was a raging asshole and egotist. The stress and the rejection from a father figure (Stanley had major daddy issues, if I recall correctly) precipitated her breakdown and retirement from the stage. A person with good coping mechanisms, a reputation for professionalism, and a handle on their use of substances could have weathered the storm. Sandy Dennis, neurotic as she was, bounced back from it and won an Oscar. It was the last straw for Stanley.

Fast forward ten years and she's an unreliable alcoholic barely getting by teaching acting in New York, when she could be bothered to show up. One of the stories from Krampner's book that stuck with me: she disappeared for days and when someone (a student?) came for a wellness check, they smelled roasting flesh coming from her apartment; she had passed out drunk on a radiator.

They were familiar with the smell of roasting flesh?

My dear R38, some of us don't have Eileen Atkins preparing meals for us off in the servant's wing and we are thus familiar with the smell of cooking meat.

She was no Jennifer Anniston or Reese Witherspoon.

[quote]She was no Jennifer Anniston or Reese Witherspoon.

She never claimed to be. She was comfortable being in the Yvonne Craig mold.

I saw clips of Stanley's stage performances in PICNIC (as Millie - clip at the link from The Ed Sullivan Show) and as the lead in BUS STOP.

In both cases I thought she overacted but it could be that she didn't know how to moderate her performance for the camera, unlike (for example) Ralph Meeker and Janice Rule as Hal and Madge in the PICNIC clip. That clip included the dance between Hal and Madge, and it's much sexier than the one in the film.

I saw both THE GODDESS and SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON and thought her compelling in both but thought neither film was particularly good. And honest I would have given the Oscar to Bancroft for PUMPKIN EATER, which is a better film than SEANCE.

*3* SISTERS *3*

R5 is that ultra-bitter gay who does nothing but sneer 24/7. It’s beyond tedious.

She dropped out of The Idol (1966) at the last minute ("illness") , and was replaced by Jennifer Jones (who had turned it down originally). It's not much of a story and everyone underacts so much it's very dull. Co-star was James Dean-esque Michael Parks.

She was also let go from A Delicate Balance.

Kate Hepburn saw to that, r46.

Talk about being at opposite ends of the spectrum, r47.

Kim Stanley was cast opposite Katharine Hepburn and Paul Scofield in Tony Richardson's film adaptation of Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance." But at the first table read, Miss Stanley went into Method mode and began to improvise on the text, crawled on the floor, cried, and, as Richardson put it "express[ed] her emotions, her flesh, her bulk... it was almost obscene."

After the read-through, Scofield turned to Richardson and hissed, "How could you have let that happen to us?" while Hepburn threatened to quit unless Kim was fired. Miss Hepburn got her way.

Richardson was in awe of Stanley's impromptu performance and acknowledged that Kim would've given a performance for the ages had this been a film centering on her alcoholic character. However, this was not an appropriate display for someone who was not the star of the show.

Problems with Kim during the rehearsal stage aside, I don't think Tony Richardson had what it takes to craft something intelligible from what Stanley was giving him. I'm a defender of his Oscar win for Tom Jones, a movie I feel gets unfairly maligned. But his direction of A Delicate Balance a decade later is barely cinematic. The two Kates and Lee Remick do what they can (Scofield may have been an acclaimed stage actor, but to me he always comes across as a cipher onscreen), but the whole thing is just leaden.

Even by the standard of the other American Film Theatre productions (Butley, The Maids, The Homecoming, etc.), this one is rough.

At least she didn't get on all fours and bark, like Rachel Roberts

KIm was a friend of my family -- they knew her well. Especially my father....

She was a truly fascinating woman with a severe drinking problem. She was also pretty crazy. Her best acting was on stage in the 1950s but she always wanted to be a Hollywood star, but her stage training made it difficult for her to work with film directors. She also had a problem keeping her opinions to herself. Directors found her difficult but also appreciated her skills. Her looks faded too fast for her to be a lead, and her mind was too addled to become a Shelley Winters type character actress -- which is what she could easily have become. She ended up back home in New Mexico, living in the past.

Like most of us....

Geraldine was eccentric but she got a solid career and an Oscar out of it.

She had three children: one by Curt Conway; one by Brooks Clift (brother of Montgomery Clift), while she was married to Conway; and one by Alfred Ryder (Laurie).During her marriage to Ryder, Stanley converted to Judaism.

Stanley did not act during her later years, preferring the role of teacher in New York City, Los Angeles, and later Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Stanley died of cancer at a hospital in Santa Fe at the age of 76. She was survived by her brother Justin, her children, and three grandchildren.

A mystery to myself—why I find Kim Stanley hard to take in the few things available but I generally enjoy watching Geraldine Page???

Masha, Masha, Masha!

A Young Lady of Property

Directed by Bryan Forbes who always found a part for his wife Nanette Newman.

R29, in a "WTF with Marc Macron" podcast, Jessica Lange revealed that Kim Stanley was unhappy on the set of "The Right Stuff" and described her as "troubled." Kim took a liking to Sam Shepard, however, so Sam was tasked with getting her out of her trailer and escorting her to the set. Maybe she saw in Sam a fellow drunkard.

[quote]r35 The friction between Hayes and Stanley was well publicized, and when asked about it, Miss Hayes responded "Kim would have tried the patience of a saint with her striving for an opening-night level of performance—even on rainy Thursdays."

Stanley kept a waste paper basket to throw up in in the wings during BUS STOP. Elaine Stritch, who was also in the cast, yelled at her, "Save that crap for the Actors Studio!"

Was Elaine being literal?

Nice atmospheric score by John Barry.

It's a simple but amazingly effective score, showcasing John Barry’s rare gift for tapping into the unconscious of a film with utmost subtlety and restraint. He excelled at using intimate, chamber-like ensembles to find the unique sound of each film, always serving the story rather than overshadowing it.

That string of collaborations with director Bryan Forbes stands as one of the great but lesser-known director-composer partnerships, from Séance on a Wet Afternoon to the bleak King Rat, the emotionally devastating The Whisperers, and ending with the underwhelming Michael Caine caper Deadfall, which features a rare onscreen appearance of Barry conducting his Rodrigo-inspired guitar concerto written for the film.

I believe Shelley Winters was offered this film first, and suggested Stanley when she turned it down.

Made by Beaver Films!

I can hear an English accent in her voice.

Original title of SEANCE: "Well Done, Medium Reah!"

Probably a minority opinion on DL but I didn't think Eileen Heckart registered much in the Picnic clip, vs. Roz Russell in the film.

Like Geraldine Page and Uta Hagen, Stanley was too stagey and mannered for film. Film and stage acting are two entirely different animals.

It's been a long time since I saw FRANCES, so I don't recall how effective she was playing Farmer's mother (she got an Oscar nom), but her Big Mama in the cable CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF with Lange was pure ham. I was shocked how bad she was.

R69 I guess Oscar voters disagreed about Page.

Have you ever seen Hondo (1953), with John Wayne and Page? She's not stagey.

I'm not really a fan of hers but I don't think she was usually stagey on film.

[quote]Made by Beaver Films!

Dickie Attenborough's production company, darling

Stanley and Page were of the Actors Studio mentality - Don't just stand there, Act something. Fidgety realism.

Page's SWEET BIRD, SUMMER AND SMOKE, CHRISTMAS MEMORY, INTERIORS. All indelible.

R69 I loved Uta Hagen’s small role in The Boys from Brazil

Kim Stanley, Geraldine Page, and Julie Harris may have been the Actors Studio darlings but Maureen Stapleton was everybody's favorite den mother.

Yes, R73, mid-century realism as opposed to the naturalism of today. That may be true of Stanley’s general style, but in Séance I feel her studied, slightly mannered performance suits the film perfectly and also her character. She's a narcissistic medium consumed by delusion, unresolved grief, and (I suspect) possibly a form of postpartum psychosis. The piano wire tension in Stanley’s body, those off-kilter gestures, the sense that she’s performing for EVERYONE, even for herself, all intensify the film’s claustrophobic, nightmarish feel.

[quote]I'm not really a fan of hers but I don't think she was usually stagey on film.

I should have replaced Page with Julie Harris. Page was fine when she was younger, but she became way too mannered as she got older. Bette Davis suffered from the same affliction as she aged.