Dallas Actors Wonderful Barbara Bel Geddes

[Barbara Fan]

From Follies of God

"I don't know anything about acting. I really don't. I know I come across as difficult when I avoid questions about it, but I just don't know. I just wanted to act, and I had a gift for submitting to it, to writers and directors. I think I have a gift of trust, so I can merge into any company and pick up things from everyone. But methods? I don't know anything. I just show up and soak up, and I have been very lucky. Luck arrives for the open people, I think."--Barbara Bel Geddes/Interview with James Grissom/1990 (Photograph, from 1955, by Arnold Newman.)

 

[Barbara Fan]

From Follies of God

Happy Birthday, Barbara Bel Geddes.
"Every time I played a part, or every time I read a book, or saw a film, I felt that I knew those people, understood them. This was the gift that acting gave me--that imagination gave me. I'm not saying that everyone should act: God, I'm not even saying that most actors should keep acting. But I do think it benefits us all to study and to investigate and to try to understand everybody. Tennessee found nothing alien. He always said that. He never identified a human villain in "Cat [on a Hot Tin Roof]." The villain was time or age or decay or deceit, and all of those things have their way with us. But we can keep living and studying and overcoming, I think. I don't know. What does anybody know? You just keep doing what you think might work."--Barbara Bel Geddes/Interview with James Grissom/1990/Photograph by Frances McLaughlin-Gill/1955/Courtesy of Corbis/

 

[Barbara Fan]

From Follies of God

Happy Birthday, Barbara Bel Geddes.
Smart, stubborn, funny--she fought the concept of an interview for so long, not realizing that our many conversations WERE an interview. I loved her, over the phone: I regret that I never met her in person.
Here she is talking about playing Maggie in Tennessee Williams' CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF:
"Kazan was really brutal to me during 'Cat [on a Hot Tin Roof].' I don't think anyone saw me as Maggie the Cat. Certainly, Roger Stevens didn't: he always looked at me as if I were a rash that just wouldn't clear up quickly enough. Everyone saw Maggie as beautiful and slinky and seductive, and I'm a bit of dumpling, well-meaning, the girl you marry but begrudgingly f**k. I get it. That's me. I can live with that--and have. Kazan, however, told me I was attractive, maternal, and he could see why Brick, a homosexual who marries only to quiet the family, would find me amenable. Kazan also knew that I had been a very fat child and fought my weight at all times. Kazan told me that he had known many former fat girls who had grown into beauties, and no matter how they looked in photographs and no matter how many beaux they gained, they still thought of themselves as fat and ungainly and unloved. 'Use that,' he told me, and again, I was a mess, because not only was I the fat girl, but I was the woman who was married to a gay man who hated her; who was fighting an avaricious and brilliantly manipulative family; who was determined never to be poor again; who was really fighting for her life. Kazan made me really live inside this woman's pathological fear, and it drove me crazy, but it also drove me to a good performance."

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

Truly one of my favourite actors on Dallas, she lit the screen up any time she was in a scene.

Her and Jim Davis made a very believeable couple. She was good with Howard Keel too.

 

[Jock Ewing Fan]

From Follies of God

Happy Birthday, Barbara Bel Geddes.
Smart, stubborn, funny--she fought the concept of an interview for so long, not realizing that our many conversations WERE an interview. I loved her, over the phone: I regret that I never met her in person.
Here she is talking about playing Maggie in Tennessee Williams' CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF:
"Kazan was really brutal to me during 'Cat [on a Hot Tin Roof].' I don't think anyone saw me as Maggie the Cat. Certainly, Roger Stevens didn't: he always looked at me as if I were a rash that just wouldn't clear up quickly enough. Everyone saw Maggie as beautiful and slinky and seductive, and I'm a bit of dumpling, well-meaning, the girl you marry but begrudgingly f***. I get it. That's me. I can live with that--and have. Kazan, however, told me I was attractive, maternal, and he could see why Brick, a homosexual who marries only to quiet the family, would find me amenable. Kazan also knew that I had been a very fat child and fought my weight at all times. Kazan told me that he had known many former fat girls who had grown into beauties, and no matter how they looked in photographs and no matter how many beaux they gained, they still thought of themselves as fat and ungainly and unloved. 'Use that,' he told me, and again, I was a mess, because not only was I the fat girl, but I was the woman who was married to a gay man who hated her; who was fighting an avaricious and brilliantly manipulative family; who was determined never to be poor again; who was really fighting for her life. Kazan made me really live inside this woman's pathological fear, and it drove me crazy, but it also drove me to a good performance."

Just found this thread. Thanks Barbara Fan, great findings!

 

[Jock Ewing Fan]

From Follies of God

Happy Birthday, Barbara Bel Geddes.
Smart, stubborn, funny--she fought the concept of an interview for so long, not realizing that our many conversations WERE an interview. I loved her, over the phone: I regret that I never met her in person.
Here she is talking about playing Maggie in Tennessee Williams' CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF:
"Kazan was really brutal to me during 'Cat [on a Hot Tin Roof].' I don't think anyone saw me as Maggie the Cat. Certainly, Roger Stevens didn't: he always looked at me as if I were a rash that just wouldn't clear up quickly enough. Everyone saw Maggie as beautiful and slinky and seductive, and I'm a bit of dumpling, well-meaning, the girl you marry but begrudgingly f***. I get it. That's me. I can live with that--and have. Kazan, however, told me I was attractive, maternal, and he could see why Brick, a homosexual who marries only to quiet the family, would find me amenable. Kazan also knew that I had been a very fat child and fought my weight at all times. Kazan told me that he had known many former fat girls who had grown into beauties, and no matter how they looked in photographs and no matter how many beaux they gained, they still thought of themselves as fat and ungainly and unloved. 'Use that,' he told me, and again, I was a mess, because not only was I the fat girl, but I was the woman who was married to a gay man who hated her; who was fighting an avaricious and brilliantly manipulative family; who was determined never to be poor again; who was really fighting for her life. Kazan made me really live inside this woman's pathological fear, and it drove me crazy, but it also drove me to a good performance."

Would have been great to see that play. Someone should do a biography of BBG

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

Would have been great to see that play. Someone should do a biography of BBG

That's a thought, is there a book about her life because I'd be very interested in buying such a book.

 

[Jock Ewing Fan]

That's a thought, is there a book about her life because I'd be very interested in buying such a book.

Maybe someone knows of one, or if there is a book about the making of COAHTR

 

[Barbara Fan]

There is no book or bio

her dad had one - see below x

 

[Jock Ewing Fan]

There is no book or bio

her dad had one - see below x

View attachment 41585

That would be an interesting read. Great title, great cover!

 

[Barbara Fan]

Well............................................since it was reprinted and brought out in paperback i just had to buy it

Have still to read it - but have thumbed through it and BBG gets a few mentions near the end, the first i can find as a 6 month old baby bawling her head off!

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

I really wish someone would write a biography of her life.

 

[Barbara Fan]

From Follies of God

"I told her to get on the bed and beg for sex, for love, for affirmation, for some attention like it was candy or a toy. The unhinged and the desperate become childlike, and she became childlike, and she begged from the empty, dry bed."--Elia Kazan on Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie the Cat in "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof"/Interview with James Grissom/

 

[Barbara Fan]

from Follies of God

"Every time I played a part, or every time I read a book, or saw a film, I felt that I knew those people, understood them. This was the gift that acting gave me--that imagination gave me. I'm not saying that everyone should act: God, I'm not even saying that most actors should keep acting. But I do think it benefits us all to study and to investigate and to try to understand everybody. Tennessee found nothing alien. He always said that. He never identified a human villain in "Cat [on a Hot Tin Roof]." The villain was time or age or decay or deceit, and all of those things have their way with us. But we can keep living and studying and overcoming, I think. I don't know. What does anybody know? You just keep doing what you think might work."--Barbara Bel Geddes/Interview with James Grissom

 

[Barbara Fan]

From Follies of God

Barbara Bel Geddes in George Stevens' I REMEMBER MAMA, for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. "That was such a charmed set," she told me. "Stevens was so controlling, and he wanted love on that set, so it was really lovely to be there."

 

[Barbara Fan]

From Follies of God

Barbara Bel Geddes in Jean Kerr's MARY, MARY, 1961. "Pure joy," she told me. "Not a wrinkle anywhere, in anyone.

 

[Barbara Fan]

From Follies of God

"I don't think of myself as sexual--I mean, in appearance. Everyone is sexual. But [Elia] Kazan wanted me to be confident in my sexuality; to flaunt it. I just couldn't do it. So he told me--he's so damned smart--to think of Tennessee's words as jewels. Huge, gorgeous, priceless jewels. My body was dripping with jewels, and it blinded anyone who might look at me. The jewels made some jealous; others dazzled. But you know, Brick can't make love to jewels, so I'm swirling, and the jewels are making me very heavy, and I'm just desperate. I'm literally jumpy. And that came across--to Kazan, at least--as sexually confident. I was perpetually on offer."--Barbara Bel Geddes on the experience of playing Maggie in Tennessee Williams’ CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF/Interview with James Grissom #FolliesOfGod

 

[Barbara Fan]

From Follies of God

Barry Nelson (Dallas Arthur Elrod) and Barbara Bel Geddes in Jean Kerr's MARY, MARY, 1961. "Maggie Smith did it in London. She's a great actress. I'm not a great actress, but I worked well."

 

[Barbara Fan]

From Follies of God

“I was protected. I grew up in New York. My father [Norman Bel Geddes] worked in the theatre, and he knew people. He helped me meet people. There were introductions. But, you know, people didn’t know what to do with me. A film director said I had ‘problematic’ beauty: It came and went. He would tell the whole crew that I was ugly in a scene, then relight and re-stage it. Live with that! There is no easy way. No one can make things happen for you. They can help. I was helped. The work was mine, though. No one did that for me. And remember that no one knows what will work or survive.”—Barbara Bel Geddes/Interview with James Grissom/1990/Photograph by Richard C. Miller, 1960

 

[Barbara Fan]

From Follies of God

"Neither of those women were afraid of being grotesque, of being fighters, of baring their nails. Tennessee always said CAT [ON A HOT TIN ROOF] was operatic, so we staged it as though it were an opera, and it was funny and it was tragic and it was silent and it was dark. The music was provided by his words and the way in which the characters conveyed them. It was wild. And Madeleine [Sherwood] and Barbara [Bel Geddes] were fearless, frightening, far ahead of all of us."--Elia Kazan on Tennessee Williams' CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF/ Interview with James Grissom/1993/Madeline Sherwood was Mae and Barbara Bel Geddes was Maggie