I am currently making my post-pandemic return to live, on-stage theatre in several supporting roles for The Lantern Theater’s production of A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS by Robert Bolt at the Plays & Players Theatre in Center City, Philadelphia.
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS holds a rare distinction among plays and movies from the last 100 years. It is one of just 4 works to win both a Tony Award for Best Play of the Year, and also an Oscar for Best Picture, taking the Tony in 1962, and the Oscar in 1966. The Other three are, in order: MY FAIR LADY (Tony in 1957, Oscar in 1964), THE SOUND OF MUSIC (Tony in 1960, Oscar in 1965), and AMADEUS (Tony in 1981, Oscar in 1984).
It seems, at a glance, like it should have happened more than four times. The mediums are certainly different, but the people who work in those mediums have, historically, done a fair amount of crossing over from one format to the other. Especially when you consider that Hollywood is always looking for new source material, you might think that once a new play or musical had proven itself, that it would be ripe to repeat that success on the silver screen. And yet, the Tony/Oscar crown has only been earned four times in the (currently) 95-year history of the Oscars. Why is that? It’s an interesting question.
To be fair, I must point out there are a few extenuating circumstances. For one, the Oscars are older than the Tonys. The first Oscar ceremony was in 1929. Broadway didn’t catch on to marketing advantages of fancy awards shows until 1947. Also, the Tony Awards are only for productions staged in New York City, and then only at a specific collection of venues now known collectively as The Broadway League. You can’t win a Tony Award for a small production staged at a 100-Seat venue on NYC’s Upper East Side, let alone anything produced in somewhere like Chicago or Los Angeles – unless it later earns a Broadway transfer! For example, AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, but it was not eligible, for Tony Awards until it was moved to Broadway in New York. Similarly, HAMILTON debuted Off-Broadway at the Public Theater in lower Manhattan, but was not eligible for Tony Awards until it transferred uptown to the Richard Rogers Theatre, a member of the afore mentioned Broadway League. (It is also worth mentioning that the Oscars are designed to honor movies that are screened, specifically in the United States. They don’t have to be made in the USA, but they must be screened here in some capacity. However, as Hollywood is the world’s dominant filmmaking center, the Oscar’s scope is somewhat more universal.)
The Tony to Oscar thing is really good trivia, but its rare occurrence may also be a useful lens (please, pardon the pun) to consider how the two mediums are different, and how they are similar. With that thought, I decided to peep through the 95-year Oscar history to see how many other Best Picture winners had begun life as a stage play or musical. It has happened 13 times, including our 4 Tony/Oscar winners. Here is the full list:
GRAND HOTEL – play in 1930, Oscar Winner 1932
CAVALCADE – play in 1931, Oscar Winner 1933
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU – play in 1936, Oscar Winner 1938
HAMLET – Play in 1600(ish), Oscar Winner 1948
WEST SIDE STORY – Musical 1958, Oscar Winner 1961
MY FAIR LADY – Tony Award Best Musical 1957, Oscar Winner 1964
THE SOUND OF MUSIC – Tony Award Best Musical 1960, Oscar Winner 1965
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS – Tony Award Best Play 1962, Oscar Winner 1966
OLIVER! – Musical 1960, Oscar Winner 1968
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST – Play in 1963, Oscar Winner 1975
AMADEUS – Tony Award Best Play 1981, Oscar Winner 1984
DRIVING MISS DAISY – Play in 1987, Oscar Winner 1989
CHICAGO – Musical 1975*, Oscar Winner 2002
Four of those films were produced before the Tony Awards existed. Only five of them are musicals. Two of the plays have a heavy musical element; what we often refer to as “Plays with Music”. Two of the plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, but neither of those plays were eligible for Tony Awards. Five of the plays originated in England, and that includes two of our double winners. One is a movie, based on a musical, that was based on a play. Two were derived from Shakespeare.
For the purposes of my musings, I’m going to break them down into three basic groups:
1. THE PRE-TONY WINNERS:
GRAND HOTEL, CAVALCADE, YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU, HAMLET
THE JAZZ SINGER – the first “talkie” – premiered in 1927. Movies that previously could subsist on purely visual storytelling, physical drama, and slapstick comedy now needed real scripts. On the one hand, that’s a problem. On the other hand, WOW, so many more possibilities for storytelling! But you know, movie producers are capitalists, and they really, really don’t want to put their money into risky projects. They want sure things. They need to make a profit. It’s interesting how early Hollywood occasionally made connections to live theatre to try to solve those problems.
Ok, here’s a weird thing: GRAND HOTEL (1932) was a book, that was bought by a movie studio, who then used it to produce a play, and then used the play as a basis for the movie they really wanted to make all along. Yup, MGM had the film rights to Vicki Baum’s novel, “Menschen im Hotel,” but they were not completely sure how to fit all of its interweaving narratives into a single film, so they decided to storyboard the thing by simply turning it into a big, expensive stage play to see how it might work. (Here I am trying to imagine a time when people with a lot of money to create and tell stories considered live theatre a safer financial bet than wide release movie making.) When the 1930 Broadway production of GRAND HOTEL proved a huge hit with audiences, the movie version got the green light.
The play leaned heavily on the spectacle of the hotel itself, building opulent, detailed sets. The movie studio wanted to capitalize on the same device, bringing the lush, three-dimensional feel of the live stage play onto the movie screen. To accomplish this, they devised completely new methods to set up and shoot in the studio, revolutionizing the way movies were made at the time. (The sets, in fact, were so distinctive and remarkable that the MGM Grand Hotel was built as a detailed replica of the set designs from the movie.)
One of GRAND HOTEL’s other lasting affects on the movie industry was its strategy of casting not only one or two of its bankable “stars” in the movie, but five, along with several other notable faces, making it the first “All-Star” film. Its payroll and production costs made it one of the most expensive films ever, but also one of the biggest box office hits. (Hollywood still uses this strategy today, as anyone who has seen AVENGERS: ENDGAME (2019) can tell you.)
Notably, GRAND HOTEL remains the only Best Picture winner that was not nominated in any other category, though, to be fair, the Oscars were still young, and the nature of the categories was still evolving.
A year later, Fox Films exercised a similar research technique for its next film. The source material for CAVALCADE (1933) was not a novel, but an original play written by Noel Coward that was already running in London to great acclaim. Fox, spared the expense of adapting and staging their own live production, simply had to send a film crew to England to record a detailed archive of the live performance to use as a reference for their filmed version.
Coward is still most famous now for his frothy, witty British comedies, but CAVALCADE is of a different ilk. It ventures to tell the story of the first third of the 20th century through the lives of one English family. It also heavily incorporates popular music and songs from throughout those 30 years. It is not, however, a musical. In the live theatre world, we instead refer to this as a “play with music.” It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one. For film, however, popular music quickly became an indispensable element of movie making, from the video montage, to simple underscoring for an important scene. That music can be incidental, or a crucial part of the film’s affect. Though CAVALCADE is not the origin of this device, it is part of what made Coward’s play a bankable gamble for Fox to adapt to the screen. Sixty years later, another Oscar winner, FORREST GUMP (1994) would succeed using an identical formula, from its heavy use of familiar music, to its decades-spanning plot which weaves its protagonists into historical events.
CAVALCADE won three Oscars, for Picture, Director, and Art Direction, but, with apologies to Mr. Coward, was not nominated for its screenplay.
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938) is an interesting outlier. First, because it is one of the very few comedies to ever win the Oscar for Best Picture. Second, because it was the first of only two movies whose source material had previously won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. That makes this our first example of a work to win a significant award for its iterations in both film and theatre.
However, I must point out the Pulitzers are rather specifically an award for writing, not for the overall production of a play. This is similar to winning the Oscar for Best Screenplay as opposed to winning for Best Picture.
Still, you’d think a play that wins a Pulitzer would be ripe for film adaptation, critical acclaim, and Oscar glory, yet still, it’s only happened twice. At a glance, it does seem there have been more movies adapted from books that were previous winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, yet in that category as well, only two went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture: GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) and ALL THE KING’S MEN (1949).
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU won only one other Oscar, for its director, Frank Capra, though it did have seven nominations, including one for Adapted Screenplay.
HAMLET (1948) is yet another outlier, but also a bridge, in a way. The Tony Awards finally appeared in 1947. So, this film would have been conceived before the Tonys, but was released afterwards. It’s also the oldest source material for any Best Picture winner, Shakespeare having written HAMLET in about 1600 or 1601.
The film won four Oscars, the most of any film that year, but I would say it was less a celebration of Shakespeare, and more a celebration of Laurence Olivier, who was the film’s adapter, producer, director and star. Olivier, in fact, holds the rare distinction of having directed himself to a Best Actor Oscar, a feat only repeated once, by Roberto Benigni in LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997).
Unlike Hollywood, the theater community was somewhat lukewarm towards the film. Massive cuts were made to reduce the running time (the full play script can run 4 hours), and much was left behind. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for example, are completely absent from the film. Eileen Herlie, the actress cast to play Gertude, Hamlet’s mother, was 11 years younger than Olivier. And Olivier even added an oversimplified, dumbed-down, opening narration to his film: “This is the tragedy… of a man… who could not… make up… his mind.” Many eyes have rolled at that in the decades since.
But this is indicative of a big difference between live theatre and film. Film makers want to make money. Theatre makers simply hope not to lose money. For films to make real money, they need to appeal to as broad an audience as is possible. To accomplish that, a massive play like HAMLET must be trimmed and somewhat simplified. Further, I believe the tangible energy of live performance is at least capable of carrying an audience through a performance lasting 3 hours or more in a way that is much harder to duplicate with a film on a screen.
Olivier’s film as a whole, though, is a rather extraordinary accomplishment, and Hollywood was certainly dazzled by all of the different hats Olivier wore during the project. But it occurs to me now that what he did was not unlike what many theatre-makers would do and have done for centuries. Either due to limited resources, or, yes, massive ego, they take the whole thing on their shoulders – adapt, direct, perform, build the costumes, raise the money, sell the tickets – and power through until they taken care of all of it. It’s nice to think of Hollywood honoring, in a way, the very essence of old school theatre work.
HAMLET won four Oscars in total, but – don’t tell Mr. Shakespeare – the screenplay did not even earn a nomination. Only a few other movies created as a direct adaptation of Shakespeare’s play have received a sniff from the Oscars, but none have come close to winning a statue for Best Picture. This is not true, however, of material simply based upon his work, as we will soon see.
2. THE MUSICAL DECADE:
WEST SIDE STORY, MY FAIR LADY, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, OLIVER!
The 1940s, 50s, and 60s are the golden age of American Musical Theater. When OKLAHOMA! Debuted on stage in 1943, it completed an evolution of the form and firmly established Musicals as a deep and nuanced storytelling medium. Hollywood soon came to see what they could make of them. They were not disappointed. Stage Musicals are, by their very design, larger than life and hyper-realistic. Dancing ensembles, colorful sets, dazzling costume changes. A kind of “widescreen” experience inside a live theatre. A natural fit for Hollywood movie-making.
It’s an entirely different question as to whether the existence of awards programs help to raise the level of the work being done by the community those awards are created to honor, but it is at least an interesting coincidence that the Tony Awards come in to existence in 1947 at roughly the same time as the rise of the American Musical Theater. Two of these musicals would be the first to ever win both the Tony and the Oscar.
These musicals were incredible creative accomplishments. Their music become American standards on stage, on screen, and on the radio. The stories they told were complex, layered, thoughtful, funny and tragic. Three of the musicals that won Oscars in the 1960s drew their material from some of the greatest English-language writers in history: Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Dickens, and the fourth was a true-life story under the shadow of the Nazis and WWII. The ticket-buying public eagerly consumed them.
Hollywood used a similar formula for each of these four films: Make the movie kinda like the stage show, but make it BIGGER. The primary condition of live theatre is that however you stage it, and whatever happens, it has to happen inside the room of the theatre itself. Even very large rooms, are still very finite spaces. A movie camera, however, can go anywhere, and you can fit so many more things inside its vision. That scope had widened even more by 1960, not just in conceptual vision, but in actual, physical size. HAMLET was shot, in 1948 on 35mm film stock, and the aspect ratio of the screen was 1.37 to 1. By the 1960s, they were shooting the biggest movies in 70mm, with a widescreen ratio of 2.20 to 1. Even the projection screens in the theaters themselves were bigger. Imagine the effect on the moviegoer.
Something not everybody understands about WEST SIDE STORY (1961) is that it is a capital D, Dance-first musical. Jerome Robbins directed and choreographed the original Broadway production and conceived it as a kind of street ballet. It was an almost secondary fact that Leonard Bernstein was hired to write the music, young Steven Sondheim to write the lyrics, Arthur Laurents to write the book (“book” is the term for the dialog script of a musical), after a plot devised by William Shakespeare. No, for Robbins, the primary focus was the dance.
This, in fact, is a reason that WEST SIDE STORY did not win the Tony Award in 1958. The heavy focus on Robbins’ choreography earned the production much respect, but it lost out to THE MUSIC MAN, which had a thinner plot, a jovial score, and a format that depended heavily on the personality and performance of its two leads to carry an audience along, a trait that Broadway and it’s audiences deeply responds to.
Conversely, I think this is exactly what makes WEST SIDE STORY so successful as a film. They shot on location in New York City. The used widescreen, 70mm film stock. They filled the camera with dancing bodies, and as a result the film pulses with energy. The dance hall scene at the center of the film is an easy cross-section of it’s power (and no small reason why two different actress in film history have now won Oscars for their work as Anita).
A year later THE MUSIC MAN (1962) was also adapted for film, but instead of enhancing its power, the effect is distilled. The effect of the lead actors is diminished when they are not busting it out live onstage in front of you, and you have more time to notice the thin and airy plot. It is telling that WEST SIDE STORY just recently got a big screen revival, and at the same time, THE MUSIC MAN was also being revived, but back on Broadway, with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, two big personality stars, on the marquee to carry the show.
The original Broadway production of WEST SIDE STORY in 1958 won two Tonys, for choreography and scenic design. The 1961 film won ten Oscars.
MY FAIR LADY (1964) was the first ever Oscar winner to have also won the Tony Award. The scope of the storytelling is a little smaller, but the movie can thank the source material for its source material offers two compelling lead characters, and one of the best play scripts ever written.
George Bernard Shaw’s play, PYGMALION debuted in 1913 and was an immediate success. The play was adapted to a movie of the same name in 1938, which was also a major success, staring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. In fact, the 1938 movie was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar that year, but lost out, you may remember, to YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU. (Small world, right?) However, Shaw was still alive at the time and helped to adapt his script for the screen. That screenplay was nominated for an Oscar, and won! So, yes, friends, George Bernard Shaw was an Oscar winner.
When MY FAIR LADY was written, Lerner and Lowe, simply transplanted Shaw’s play into their musical, more or less in its entirety. They made only a few minor text changes, and then of course added the songs, which were all original creations for the show. The most significant difference between play and musical is that the musical is a love story, and the play is very much not, but by 1957, Shaw was dead and could no longer object to his material being altered in this way.
So, the musical had a thoroughly proven script. It had an incredible musical score. It had the opportunity for costume drama spectacle, and it had two proven stars…. Ah, yes, about that last bit… Rex Harrison, who had created the role of Higgins on stage, already had movie box office clout. His stage co-star did not. Because in 1964, even though her Eliza Doolittle had caused ripples in the theatre world as an emerging talent, she had never been in a single Hollywood film. So young Julie Andrews – yes, THE Julie Andrews – was replaced as Eliza for the film by Audrey Hepburn, a proven, Hollywood box office draw.
It did, though work out just fine for everyone. MY FAIR LADY won the 1964 Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Costumes, and Best Cinematography. Rex Harrison won for Best Actor and Julie Andrews won for Best Actress – but for her work in MARY POPPINS, which also released in 1964. Audrey Hepburn had not even been nominated as it had leaked that all of her singing in the movie had been dubbed by Marni Nixon, another actress.
On Broadway, MY FAIR LADY won 6 Tony Awards in 1957. The Film took home 8 Oscars. Notably, Shaw’s script was once again nominated for an Oscar, but this time lost to BECKETT, another play that had been adapted for the screen.
THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) the following year, once again bridged all the gaps, becoming the second movie to have won the Oscar and the Tony. It is the only one of these four Oscar winning musicals not to be based on an existing literary classic, but instead on the true story of the Von Trapp family and their escape from Austria and the Nazis at the beginning of WWII.
Despite what may seem like weighty subject matter, the original musical, in 1960, took a fair amount of criticism for being too simple and too sweet. It was, perhaps, an unavoidable consequence of having an army of Von Trapp children singing onstage for much of the show’s run time. (This is not entirely unlike the beef a lot of fans had with RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983) when it spent most of its second half foisting cute, cuddly Ewoks on its viewers.)
Like WEST SIDE STORY, 20th Century Fox took their filming on location, in this case all the way to Austria, and a good portion of the film was shot there, also in 70mm. There is something about the transfer to film, and the widening scope of the camera’s storytelling that grounds the film in a tangible way and goes a long way towards tempering the sweetening effect of the Von Trapp children. The Nazi threat which looms over the family in the final act is also more immediate. They are even able to create a real chase scene for fleeing family which, in a live stage production, could be only muted or suggested.
Most of all, though, the film has Julie Andrews. There is some irony that now, a year later, it was Julie Andrews who had an Oscar and great clout in Hollywood, and was therefore tapped to replace the person who had created the role of Maria on stage, in this case Mary Martin. But, Andrews gives a generational performance in every way, (much as Judy Garland did in THE WIZARD OF OZ 25 years earlier). Christopher Plummer is no slouch either, bringing gravitas and a touch of Mr. Darcy as Captain Von Trapp, father of the family.
The Original Broadway production of THE SOUND OF MUSIC in 1960 won 5 Tonys, including Best Musical. The film won 5 Oscars. Though Mary Martin had won the Tony Award for Best Actress for her Maria in 1960, Julie Andrews did not win another Oscar here for her work. That award, instead went to Julie Christie for her work in DARLING, which I’m sure made a strong impression at the time, but is somewhat forgotten, now. THE SOUND OF MUSIC remains one of the most commercially successful films of all time.
I don’t know if OLIVER! (1968) was truly the most deserving winner, but it did utilize that effective movie musical formula that was now rather clearly established: Widescreen storytelling, large cast production numbers, and it’s source material was the 1838 novel, “Oliver Twist,” by literary titan, Charles Dickens.
The original stage musical benefits from a truly extraordinary musical score by Lionel Bart, and a fun anti-hero in the character of Fagin, but Fagin does not appear until deep into the first act, the central character is a cypher-like 10-year-old boy, and the story is both episodic and built on heavy coincidences. (“Oliver Twist” is a fine novel, but perhaps not Dickens’ best.)
The stage version originated in London where it was a hit. It then came first to the United States as a touring production. By the time it landed on Broadway, the steam behind it was somewhat diminished, and though it was nominated for the Tony award, it did not win, losing out instead to A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM. Lionel Bart did win the Tony for his superior musical score, and the show also won for its scenic design.
It is telling that in addition to the Oscar for Best Picture, it also won (again) for best score, and for Best Art Direction (the film equivalent of scenic design). The Academy presented a special non-competitive Oscar at that year’s ceremony to Onna White for her choreography in the film, one of the rare times the academy has chosen to recognize that discipline. Carol Reed won the award for Best Direction.
Although the film was clearly admired as a massive and successful technical undertaking, there were also plenty of signs that Hollywood was perhaps ready to move on from its decade-long foray into prestige musicals. Indeed, that same year, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY debuted in theaters. It was not nominated for Best Picture, but it was a clear sign of what was soon to come. It would be 34 years until another movie musical would win the award for Best Picture. (One random note: 2001 did win Stanley Kubrick an Oscar that year for his innovative special effects, but that was the only Oscar that Kubrick would ever win.)
3. THE ANTI-BLOCKBUSTER, ACTOR SHOWCASES:
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST, AMADEUS, DRIVING MISS DAISY
Two very significant changes occurred in the movie industry in the late 60s and then mid 70s. First, in 1968, the Hays Code, a list of self-imposed Hollywood censorship guidelines, which had sanitized plots and content for decades, was finally cast aside. Hollywood was free to film grittier, more challenging stories, and they dove right in.
OLIVER! was the first best picture winner to debut under the new MPAA rating system, still in use today. It remains the only Best Picture winner with a “G” rating. The very next year, MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) won the best picture award with a “X” rating, also the only picture ever to win with that rating. As I said, the musical decade was very much over.
The second thing that happened was the debut of JAWS in 1975, and the rise of special effects heavy, wide appeal, “blockbuster” movies.
These developments created a divide in the industry. On the one hand, the “art” of filmmaking, on the other, entertainment fodder for pop culture. In my opinion, both of these things are valid and valuable. I love THE SOUND OF METAL (2020) just as much as AVENGERS: ENDGAME (2019), if in different ways and for different reasons. But there is no doubt that the Oscars have heavily favored what they perceive as the former when it comes to doling out their awards.
Something else is interesting about this change in the industry: in the first 40 years of the Oscars, 9 plays had been adapted for film and won best picture. In the 50+ years since the end of the Hays Code, it has only happened three times - plus a fourth which I consider an outlier and will bring up a bit later.
The first of these three was ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975). In 1963, Kirk Douglas starred in the original Broadway production of the play. It ran for only 82 performances and received no Tony nominations. But this was 1963. The happy American glaze of the 1950s was not yet gone. Music and musicals dominated Broadway. The dystopian tone of the play was not yet welcome.
Kirk Douglas understood its potential as an actor showcase and purchase the film rights for himself hoping to convince a studio to turn it into a film. But ten years later he had failed to do so and turned the film rights over to his son, Michael. A lot had changed in America in ten years. America had failed in Vietnam and was about to pull out. President Nixon was about to be forced out of the White House because of corruption. Now the potential of a story about a man’s slow destruction inside an asylum seemed more bankable. Kirk Douglas was deemed too old, Jack Nicholson was cast instead, and the movie was a massive success.
In stark contrast to its absence at the 1963 Tonys, CUCKOO’S NEST was only the second movie in history to sweep all five of the “major” Oscar categories: Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay. (First accomplished by IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934), and only since repeated by THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)) In addition, one of the nominated movies it defeated for Best Picture was JAWS, illustrating Oscar’s philosophical line between artistic Hollywood and blockbuster Hollywood.
As it turns out, CUCKOO’S NEST exemplifies another industry sea-change as well. Buoyed largely by the reputation of the Movie, the play was revived on Broadway in 2001, and that year it finally won the Tony Award in the category of Best Revival. Intellectual property that once flowed from stage to screen now more often flows in the opposite direction.
AMADEUS (1984) may simply be a case of a script so brilliant it could not fail. It is the fourth, and still final, film ever to have won both the Tony and the Oscar for best work, earning the Tony in 1981. AMADEUS was the crowning achievement of a long career for writer, Peter Shaffer, topping his previous success with his 1973 play, EQUUS (also a Tony winner for best play, and adapted to a movie that received several Oscar nominations). AMADEUS was nominated for six Tony Awards and won five. The film was nominated for eleven Oscars and won eight. Shaffer took home the prize at both ceremonies for his writing.
The plot’s conceit of a possibly murderous rivalry between Mozart and his lesser contemporary, Antonio Salieri is expertly crafted and has won awards or nominations for virtually every actor who has played Salieri, the lead role, including Ian McKellen for the original Broadway transfer from London, and F. Murray Abraham for the film. Even McKellen himself later admitted that, “Salieri may be just one of those award-winning roles.”
With the backdrop of Mozart’s brilliant music, the trappings of a lush costume drama, and two lead characters in an actors’ showcase which magically translates nicely in both mediums, the material is golden in every way.
In a similar vein, DRIVING MISS DAISY (1989) scores in those two vital categories: a superior script, and two powerful lead performances. The stage version did not, originally, play on Broadway. In the late 80s, Broadway was once again dominated by commercially successful musicals. There was lower demand for low-spectacle, non-musical plays. At the same time, smaller, off-Broadway theaters had risen in prominence. Those, more intimate, lower-budget venues proved a more viable fit for a play with only three characters that largely took place with two of them sitting down together in a car.
Though bowing in an off-Broadway theater made it ineligible for the Tony awards, the script did win a Pulitzer Prize, and is only the second ever Best Picture winner to have done so. And like both CUCKOO’S NEST and AMADEUS, the stellar script and superior work earned its lead actors award nominations in every iteration.
When Jessica Tandy won her Oscar for the film, she became the oldest to ever win in the Best Actress category. Though he did not win, Morgan Freeman earned an Oscar nom for the role he originally created Off-Broadway. Even Dan Ackroyd earned an Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor. And, of course, Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize winning script also won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
The same year that DRIVING MISS DAISY debuted in movie theaters, three blockbuster, event films ruled the box office: Tim Burton’s BATMAN, Steve Spielberg’s third installment of INDIANA JONES, and LETHAL WEAPON 2. None of course, were nominated for best picture.
THE MISFITS:
CHICAGO, and A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
CHICAGO (2002) is an interesting case. The Broadway musical debuted in 1975 and was nominated for a handful of Tony awards, but won none of them, as A CHORUS LINE instead dominated that year’s ceremony. However, the production was revived on Broadway in 1996, and that go-round won six Tony awards, including a statue for Best Revival. One could make a very valid argument that the 2002 film was really based more on that 1996 revival than on the 1975 original. This, in a way, makes CHICAGO the fifth production to win both the Tony and the Oscar. BUT, the category “Best Revival” is not the same as the award for “Best Musical”, as the latter is reserved only for new work. I encourage you to apply your asterisks where you will.
Regardless, the film was an undeniable success, winning an additional Oscar for Catherine Zeta-Jones in the same role that earned Bebe Neuwirth a Tony in the stage revival. The reputation of the revival certainly aided the film’s critical reception, and stars Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger, and Richard Gere were all lauded for doing their own dancing and singing for the film. But it’s also true there are few things the Oscars like to honor more than themselves, and it was easy to hold CHICAGO up as both a celebration of, and slick update to the storied movie musical from decades before.
The revival is still running on Broadway, 26 years later, and probably isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Finally, now, we are back around to where I began, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. I’ve saved it for last, as its most relevant to me now.
Robert Bolt was still relatively new to playwriting when he wrote A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, though he had transitioned to writing a little later in his life. He had one earlier success in 1958, but the London debut of SEASONS in 1960 catapulted his career. More plays followed, but his predominant work thereafter was in Hollywood.
David Lean had been attempting to adapt T.E. Lawrence’s autobiographical novel “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom” for the screen for some time, but failed to find a writer who could satisfactorily craft it for film. After he saw A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS on stage in London, he brought the latest draft to Bolt and asked for help. Bolt completed a thorough rewrite, and the end result was LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) starring Peter O’Toole. It remains one of the most successful and influential movies ever made, and won seven Oscars.
Soon after, he won his first Oscar for adapting the screenplay for DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965), winning out over the screenplay for MY FAIR LADY that same year. It only made sense for SEASONS, his previous achievement, to soon find its way to the screen.
As a student, Bolt had majored in history and held a particular affinity for Thomas More. That knowledge informed and elevated his text. The play also benefited from Paul Scofield’s work in the lead role as More.
Scofield had reprised the role when the production transferred from London to New York in 1961, and won the Tony award for Best Actor, as did the play itself.
The movie studio was hesitant to cast Scofield in the film. It was feared he did not have enough fame or box office power to draw audiences. Richard Burton was offered the role, but turned it down, and upon the insistence of director, Fred Zinnemann, Scofield was finally offered the role for the film. Both he and the film won Oscars, taking home six in total, as well as second win in a row for Bolt in the category of adapted screenplay.
There are several key differences between the movie and the play. A key feature of the play is a narrator character who is referred to as “the Common Man”. He introduces the play, offers connective exposition, and plays a handful of supporting characters, all with a subtle wink towards the audience. The character is a very theatrical device, and it’s therefore understandable that he is completely absent from the film, and the supporting characters he played are divided among several different actors.
Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador, a notable supporting character in the play, also failed to survive the adaptation to film. This was most likely a decision to help trim the running time. Bolt’s play employs a good deal of repetitive dialog, the same lines spoken by different characters in slightly different situations to drive home certain points and themes. As Chapuys has a fair amount of those shared lines with Thomas Cromwell, the play’s main antagonist, his role is most easily subtracted.
But there is a cost to these subtractions. In my opinion, the other big difference between the play and the film is one of tone. I think the play offers a lot more levity to its proceedings. This is in no way meant to suggest that the film is diminished, just that it is different. Both the Common Man and Chapuys bring moments of humor that are lost. More himself comes off a bit drier in the film, in my opinion – although it was impossible for me to see Paul Scofield’s original performance in the stage play, so that drier tone may simply be the effect of his accomplished performance. So, on the whole, I think it is fair to say that of the thirteen movie adaptations considered in this article, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS is the one that changed the most from its stage version. And yet the film retains the power of Bolt’s creation.
An interesting final note: Paul Scofield continued to work in film after his success in SEASONS, but he always prioritized his stage work. In 1979, he created the role of Salieri in the original production of Peter Shaffer’s AMADEUS in London. When the play transferred to New York, this time he declined the opportunity to reprise his work. Ian McKellen then assumed the role, and as noted, won the Tony award for his efforts. So, of the four best picture winners that also won the Tony award, both of the plays were first staged in London, and featured lead characters created by Paul Scofield. Quite a legacy.
The Lantern Theater’s production of A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS will continue to play at the Plays & Players Theatre in Center City, Philadelphia through April 9th, 2022.