The Glass Menagerie

Producer David Susskind called it his "longest wooing for a part in a lifetime of dealing with stars," but the results were well worth it: Katharine Hepburn is absolutely commanding in her television debut as the desperate, domineering steel magnolia Amanda Wingfield in Anthony Harvey's excellent mounting of Tennessee Williams' classic play. Joined by Sam Waterston as her aspiring writer son (who "goes to the movies" every night to escape his mother) and Joanna Miles as her "crippled" ("we don't use that word"), shy, spinster daughter (whose greatest passion is her menagerie of fragile glass animals), Amanda the determined matchmaker sets the central drama of the play into action by shanghaiing her reluctant son into inviting a fellow warehouse worker (Michael Moriarty) over for dinner. Things do not go quite as planned when the "gentleman caller" arrives, and before he leaves, each member of the Wingfield clan will experience a psychological shock that will either change or cement their futures. While Miles and Moriarty both picked up Emmys, the real attraction here--beyond the mentally probing brilliance of Williams' dialogue--is the magnificent Hepburn (who would lose the Emmy to Cecily Tyson's powerhouse performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman). A landmark play, handsomely presented, this is highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)