Tennessee Williams to me is one of the great playwrights. Even lesser work, such as 'Orpheus Descending', is better than the lesser work of many other playwrights not as influential.
Up until I saw this at age 10 or 11, I thought virtually everything I saw on TV was a fantasy that had no connection whatsoever to real life. Seeing The Glass Menagerie for the first time was a shock.
I love Shirley Booth, and I love The Glass Menagerie, but this version of Tennessee Williams's play just isn't very good. It's one of my favorite plays, with both the male and female leads highly coveted as fantastic parts in the theater.
I was 13 when this Glass Menagerie was first shown on TV, and it seemed like it was the most real thing I had ever seen on TV or in a movie. I remember Hal Holbrook's soliloquies, and I remember thinking Pat Hingle's Gentleman Caller was the nicest man in the world.
It is a wonder this CBS production from 1966 still exists. A lot of the video tape productions from this era got taped over with other programs.
Those proud but shopworn Wingfields are the subject of a CBS Playhouse production of The Glass Menagerie. And we are fortunate to see Shirley Booth in a classic role as she did not make very many big screen appearances during her long Broadway career.
This is about the fourth version of this play I have seen and like all the movie versions I've seen, it lacks something compared to the Broadway version I saw. There is something more intimate in seeing it live...
