Perhaps the movie going public wasn't ready for Our Town as its author Thornton Wilder envisioned it. If so, another screen version was just the ticket with Paul Newman now presenting in the role of Stage Manager that Frank Craven created.
Frank Craven, Martha Scott, and Doro Merande recreated their stage roles when independent producer Sol Lesser bought the rights to Our Town and filmed it independently for United Artists. The play takes one back to the turn of the last century to Calvin Coolidge rural New England as seen through the eyes of the town druggist who doubles as Stage manager.
As he so eloquently puts it nothing much changes in this town, the new immigrants who work in the mill are pretty separate from the Yankee pioneer stock who we look at. Going through the graveyard you see the tombstone names are the same from generation to generation.
We're primarily concerned with the Gibbs and Webb families and the budding romance between George Gibbs and Emily Webb. Martha who made her Broadway debut as Emily makes her screen debut also. The fast rising William Holden plays the nice kid George Gibbs and was good in it. So good in fact that he fought that kind of type casting for years until Sunset Boulevard.
Unfortunately in this version the ending was radically changed and really did cheapen the production. Thornton Wilder's message about the quiet moments of life holding the most dear memories does not quite come across.
One thing that wasn't in Our Town as Wilder wrote it was the explicit gayness of the choirmaster Stinson as played by Philip Wood. It's almost axiomatic that the music in just about any church, organist or choirmaster is usually a gay man. Stinson is gay, no question about it and as the stage manager says, some are not cut out for small town life. It's why he drinks and why he hangs himself, there aren't any kindred spirits for him in tiny Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. Stinson would have appreciated Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, he would have known exactly what Jonah Blechman was going through there.
If Wilder were writing it post Stonewall, Our Town would have been more explicit on that point. And maybe it will be in future interpretations.
Frank Craven, Martha Scott, and Doro Merande recreated their stage roles when independent producer Sol Lesser bought the rights to Our Town and filmed it independently for United Artists. The play takes one back to the turn of the last century to Calvin Coolidge rural New England as seen through the eyes of the town druggist who doubles as Stage manager.
As he so eloquently puts it nothing much changes in this town, the new immigrants who work in the mill are pretty separate from the Yankee pioneer stock who we look at. Going through the graveyard you see the tombstone names are the same from generation to generation.
We're primarily concerned with the Gibbs and Webb families and the budding romance between George Gibbs and Emily Webb. Martha who made her Broadway debut as Emily makes her screen debut also. The fast rising William Holden plays the nice kid George Gibbs and was good in it. So good in fact that he fought that kind of type casting for years until Sunset Boulevard.
Unfortunately in this version the ending was radically changed and really did cheapen the production. Thornton Wilder's message about the quiet moments of life holding the most dear memories does not quite come across.
One thing that wasn't in Our Town as Wilder wrote it was the explicit gayness of the choirmaster Stinson as played by Philip Wood. It's almost axiomatic that the music in just about any church, organist or choirmaster is usually a gay man. Stinson is gay, no question about it and as the stage manager says, some are not cut out for small town life. It's why he drinks and why he hangs himself, there aren't any kindred spirits for him in tiny Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. Stinson would have appreciated Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, he would have known exactly what Jonah Blechman was going through there.
If Wilder were writing it post Stonewall, Our Town would have been more explicit on that point. And maybe it will be in future interpretations.