The Corn Is Green seems to be a play for acting legends only. In America it debuted on Broadway in 1940 with Ethel Barrymore starring as Miss Moffat. Then Warner Brothers bought this property for Bette Davis who delivered a powerful performance and yet free from all the shtick that we've come to know from Bette Davis. Strangely enough she did not get one of her 10 Oscar nominations for it. Finally we have this version that stars Katharine Hepburn done in 1979 when she was close to the age of Ethel Barrymore.
I was not around when Barrymore did The Corn Is Green on Broadway and I would love to have seen what she did with it. I do love what Bette Davis invested in Miss Moffat and I would be hard pressed to say whether Davis or Hepburn, which was the better.
I think those two buddies from Boston, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, might have seen The Corn Is Green and might have come up with Good Will Hunting. Hepburn has been left a nice large house in the Welsh coal mining district and being a person of social conscience she opens a school for the kids who usually go into the mines at the same time they hit puberty. She spots her Good Will Hunting in the person of Ian Saynor and she resolves to make him realize his potential.
It's an uphill battle against cultural conditioning and Saynor's own doubts and fears. And some very human emotions throw up a big roadblock just as he's realizing a scholarship to Oxford.
The Corn Is Green marked the end of a collaboration between actress Hepburn and director George Cukor which began with her big screen debut in A Bill Of Divorcement. For a film director Cukor was far less successful in eliminating the stage origins of the play than Warner Brothers was with Bette Davis. But he and Hepburn after almost 40 years of collaboration were perfectly in tune in her performance.
The Corn Is Green is an autobiographical work from author Emlyn Williams who did lift himself from the Welsh coal mines and gave the world some wonderful writing and acting. It's a timeless story that begs for another remake. I hope Meryl Streep reads this and considers doing yet another revival.
I was not around when Barrymore did The Corn Is Green on Broadway and I would love to have seen what she did with it. I do love what Bette Davis invested in Miss Moffat and I would be hard pressed to say whether Davis or Hepburn, which was the better.
I think those two buddies from Boston, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, might have seen The Corn Is Green and might have come up with Good Will Hunting. Hepburn has been left a nice large house in the Welsh coal mining district and being a person of social conscience she opens a school for the kids who usually go into the mines at the same time they hit puberty. She spots her Good Will Hunting in the person of Ian Saynor and she resolves to make him realize his potential.
It's an uphill battle against cultural conditioning and Saynor's own doubts and fears. And some very human emotions throw up a big roadblock just as he's realizing a scholarship to Oxford.
The Corn Is Green marked the end of a collaboration between actress Hepburn and director George Cukor which began with her big screen debut in A Bill Of Divorcement. For a film director Cukor was far less successful in eliminating the stage origins of the play than Warner Brothers was with Bette Davis. But he and Hepburn after almost 40 years of collaboration were perfectly in tune in her performance.
The Corn Is Green is an autobiographical work from author Emlyn Williams who did lift himself from the Welsh coal mines and gave the world some wonderful writing and acting. It's a timeless story that begs for another remake. I hope Meryl Streep reads this and considers doing yet another revival.