Long Day's Journey into Night (1962): See the movie version, starring Kate Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell

Re-posted by N.S.

Eugene O'Neill was long recognized as America's greatest dramatist. Of his many plays, a trilogy of masterpieces was comprised by The Iceman Cometh (1946), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1957) and this play, both of which were staged posthumously, with Journey being staged in 1956, and winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Iceman runs about four hours long, and is an answer to the question, "What does man do without God?" Dostoevsky had famously stated, "Without God, anything is possible," but he meant that in the worst possible way. Without God, you kill your wife.

According to ibdb, A Moon for the Misbegotten was staged in 1973 and 1984, which would mean my mom and I saw it in 1974, starring Jason Robards Jr. and Colleen Dewhurst. This play was about the "Tyrone" (read: O'Neill) family.

The father's (James Sr.) a drunk, the mother's (Mary) a drug addict, one son is a drunken mischief-maker, and the one is dying of consumption. In this version, Jason Robards, who was O'Neill's alter ego (or simply, O'Neill), played Jamie, while Dean Stockwell played the consumptive son, Edmund.

Kate Hepburn was up for Best Actress for this version, but lost out to Anne Bancroft (real name: Anna Italiano) in The Miracle Worker, in which Bancroft played the world's greatest teacher, Annie Sullivan. Patty Duke played the young Helen Keller, who was born deaf, dumb, and blind. Duke won the Oscar for Best Supporing Actress.

There is no pure production of Journey. There is always a big star headlining it, and the director or dramaturg works on the script, making the headliner's role relatively larger, and his counterpart's role smaller. Thus, Hepburn's role was huge, while Richardson's role was diminished. Conversely, when my late mom and I saw the Broadway revival featuring Jack Lemmon in 1986, Lemmon showed poor judgment in having his role made sweet and huggable. Meanwhile, as Mary Tyrone, the legendary Bethel Leslie, herself a severe, statuesque, WASP stunner, had very little to work with. But the supporting cast was stunning: Kevin Spacey, who would rise to the heights as one of America's greatest actors AND impressionists, played Jamie, while Peter Gallagher played Edmund. (By the way, have I told you that just last week, Kevin Spacey raped me?!)

Jack Lemmon was one of the greatest actors in the history of pictures. If you see only one Lemmon of a picture, make it Save the Tiger (1973), which won him his second Oscar, about Harry Stoner, a man in the rag trade suffering a nervous breakdown, just as the yearly industry convention, which he's hosting, gets under way.

GRA will recommend, instead, The Apartment (1960), about a lonely schlemiehl crunching numbers for an insurance company who is in love from afar with Fran Kubelik, the beautiful, sweet, elevator girl played by Shirley MacLaine. Both characters are being used by insurance executive Fred MacMurray, et al. Shoiley got cheated out of her Oscar, because Lizzie Taylor suffered one of her periodic near-death illnesses at the beginning of the Oscar voting period. (Thus, did Shoiley--who was also brilliant--cheat Debbie Winger out of her Oscar for Terms of Endearment (1983), when the Academy gave her her make-up Oscar. But why was Taylor even nominated for her awful performance for Butterfield 8, in the first place?

The Apartment was certainly the greater picture. Either way, Jack Lemmon, a WASP, revolutionized American pictures and revived Billy Wilder's career, by playing a Jewish type. If Lemmon hadn't come along, someone else would have played the schlemiehl--someone inferior to him.


Long Day's Journey into Night (1962)
Boomer Channel
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"At the end of a long and hot summer day, members of one family gather in a large house. Everyone has something painful and offensive to say, and their silence is even worse.

Long Day's Journey Into Night
Director: Sidney Lumet
Writer: Eugene O'Neill
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, Dean Stockwell and Jeanne Barr

"Release Year: 1962

"This 1962 film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play unfolds a tense family drama within a large house. The Tyrone family's simmering resentments and painful secrets emerge through sharp dialogue and strained silences. Expect intense conversations and simmering conflict throughout this emotionally charged period piece.