Halloween Movie Marathon--The Haunting

The 1963 version of The Haunting, based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House, is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. And yet ... it's all done with dutch angles and music and suggestion. (That was not true of the remake from 1999. I was working at DreamWorks at the time the remake was released and we were shown the trailer during one of our story meetings. The trailer line was, "Some houses are born bad." I laughed out loud, was not the reaction they were looking for.)
I am a big, big fan of the novel, which I believe is flat out the best haunted house story written in the 20th century. If you haven't read it, give it to yourself as a Halloween present. It's a fast read and available used online at a zillion places.  And any reasonably stocked library should have it on their horror shelves as well.
the movie stars Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Russ Tamblyn, and Richard Johnson as the paranormal researcher. Of the four, Johnson had the lowest profile. He was a theater actor who'd mostly done television in England. (He's still working, and had a multi-episode arc on MI-5.) Russ Tamblyn had had a huge hit in West Side Story two years before this movie came out, but he worked mostly in television after that. (One high-profile gig was his role on Twin Peaks.) Julie Harris was a well respected stage actress whose breakout role had been recreating her part in A Member of the Wedding.  She was also in East of Eden and Requiem for a Heavyweight, playing "good girl" ingenue roles.  Like Tamblyn, she then divided her time between television and features and theater. (She was last on-screen in 2009.)
The movie is in black and white, and the lighting is moody and creepy. It was directed by Robert Wise, who also directed the classic The Day The Earth Stood Still, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and the first of the Star Trek movies.
If you're putting together a night of Halloween movies, this movie should be in the mix.

Gender and Shakespeare

In Shakespeare's Women,  a documentary about Claire Bloom and her one-woman show (she calls it a "recital"), the actress muses about the more difficult female roles and wonders just how well equipped the boys of the time were equipped to play them. She points out that the boy-actors playing the women would have all been prepubescent, very young to have the knowledge she believes is needed to pull off some of the roles. (Bloom has a lot to say about sexual power in some of Shakespeare's most famous characters, particularly Juliet, and it's worth tracking down the documentary, which is available used on Amazon and also streaming on Netflix.)

I was thinking about this documentary when I stumbled across the website of the Los Angeles   Women's Shakespeare Company. The company's artistic director is actress/director Lisa Wolpe, who is currently working with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon.  This is their mission statement: 

The Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company (LAWSC) is a nonprofit organization which produces professional productions of Shakespeare's plays with an all-female ensemble. We provide opportunities for collaboration between multiracial, highly accomplished artists who are actors, producers, directors, choreographers, designers and educators. LAWSC contributes to a transformation of the perceptions of women's roles in our society by working to create a deeper, more powerful, unbounded view of women's potential. Our productions illuminate contemporary issues through a classical context, offering a unique political and social perspective. Our ongoing mission is to provide a creative forum for the exploration of violence, victimization, power, love, race, and gender issues, and to provide positive role models for women and girls. 
 
I'm intrigued by the goals of the group because I've always felt that productions where women play male roles were a little ... gimmicky just like white actors playing Othello in black face (like Olivier did back in the day and more recently, Anthony Hopkins). In the context of what the LAWSC is trying to do, though, such productions make sense. I look forward to Wolpe returning to Los Angeles so I can attend one of her productions. Her version of Iago (pictured) won rave reviews.

Here's an interview with Wolpe in Footlights. Interesting stuff.