Pictured Director Victor Fleming (left, Rob Riley) and producer David O. Selznick (right, Ron Orbach) convince writer Ben Hecht (William Dick) to write the last scene for Gone With the Wind in Goodman Theatre's world premiere production of Moonlight and Magnolias.
How What Ever Happened To Baby Jane Happened and Moonlight And Magnolias
Within the last 10 years or so, Broadway producers, finding themselves in an increasingly risky financial climate, started backing shows that began as movies and were already familiar to audiences. Kiss of the Spider Woman, Hairspray, The Producers, and Sunset Boulevard are just a few notable examples of the trend. The genre isn't limited to musicals either: last season saw a play version of the independent film Enchanted April on Broadway, for example.
Now two new plays making their Chicago debuts are at the cusp of what could easily become another trend: shows based on the making of the movies themselves. David Cerda's How What Ever Happened To Baby Jane Happened and Ron Hutchinson's Moonlight And Magnolias share a similar fascination with what went on behind the camera. Baby Jane gives us the battling titans of divadom Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as they make their only film together while Magnolias recounts the five-day period in which Gone With The Wind producer, the megalomaniac David Selznick, hired legendary script doctor Ben Hecht to complete his unfinished screenplay for the Civil War saga.
In tone, production and approach, the works are miles apart but both authors point to their hunches that audiences are eager to go behind the scenes as creative inspiration. 'I think that division between audience as the passive herd and the creative team who supply the meat seems to be breaking down,' Hutchinson says in a phone interview from his home in Los Angeles, 'Yeah, we love looking behind the scenes. Especially with something like one of the icons of popular culture and yet few of us realize how close it came to not being made.'
'Things were much more high drama back then,' Cerda says in a separate interview, 'Bette Davis and Joan Crawford had careers that held up five decades! Celebrities are the closest thing we have to royalty and these characters are larger than life. It all plays into our fascination with celebrities. Audiences want the dirt and I want to explore it, too.'
Beyond realizing that audiences have developed a healthy appetite for this kind of play, both authors have a personal interest in their subject matters. Hutchinson, who went to Hollywood over 20 years ago and has written for films and television, has always seen Hecht as a writing mentor: 'My Bible of how to survive in Hollywood was his memoir, 'Child Of The Century,' Hutchinson recalls, 'He wrote about how screenwriters were treated then and I found that not too much had changed. There's still this insane emphasis on getting the movie produced before the script is finished. This (play) was also a way for me to write about Hollywood then but also write about Hollywood now. I've got 20 years of scar tissue!' he laughs.
Cerda, who has written and starred in many parodies of movies, Female Trouble, Valley of the Dolls, The Birds, and last year's hit musical Poseidon!, among them, has finally gotten a chance at what he has calls the ultimate behind-the-scenes movie. 'Bette and Joan were rumored to have this legendary feud; they were supposedly arch rivals,' Cerda says, 'You have these two, huge egos, these women groomed to believe they were gods and nobody wanted them anymore. This was their last chance.'
The opportunity to explore what went on during the filming (there are many differing published accounts) and what author Shaun Considine called 'The Divine Feud' was irresistible to Cerda. 'I think parodying the film itself would be boring,' he explains, 'I really wanted to dig into the behind-the-scenes stuff. I wanted to step into that world and explore it. I was also interested in Bette and Joan's relationship with Bob Aldrich, their director, the crew, and their co-stars.'
As Baby Jane the film and the play hilariously progresses in 1962, Cerda moves beyond the surface personalities of the control freak Crawford and the slovenly Davis and brings forth the underlying similarities between the two aging, lonely, women. 'I think the play stands on its own merits,' he maintains, 'These two women are archetype characters. Besides, who doesn't like seeing a good catfight?'
Moonlight And Magnolias is a bit more genteel but contains its share of Hollywood dirt. It begins after Selznick has fired director George Cukor from Gone With The Wind in 1939. Clark Gable, star of the film, was unhappy with Cukor, a renowned 'woman's director.' The macho Gable was also allegedly uncomfortable with Cukor because during his early lean Tinsel Town days he'd allowed Cukor to service him. Director Victor Fleming, just finishing up The Wizard Of Oz where he quickly gained notoriety for slapping the giggly Judy Garland on-set, was much more to Gable's liking. Selznick gathers Fleming and Hecht in his sumptuously appointed office for a five-day marathon script-rewrite. As Selznick and Fleming act out the characters, Hecht types away and hilarity, very much in the style of slapstick comedies from the 1930s, ensues. Along the way playwright Hutchinson points out the rivalry between the liberal, Jewish Hecht and the conservative Fleming.
Both playwrights based their works on lots of research. Hutchinson visited Selznick's office and talked with Fleming's daughter, while citing Hecht's published version as his primary source. But he cautions, 'Did Hecht exaggerate? He was a screenwriter!' Cerda's script takes more obvious liberties: 'You have to do that,' he insists, 'You have to also entertain people at a certain point. I think people expect that from me. Most of the things that you can guess aren't true are outrageous. I wouldn't have Joan kill someone, for instance—but if she were around today, you might believe it.'
Returning to the subject of celebrity for a moment, Cerda adds, 'The celebrities we have now are so lame and boring. Britney and Madonna kiss each other and that's all they talk about for a week in the news? Celebrities represent a way of life that most people will never have. That much at least has stayed the same.' Hutchinson adds, 'This play was a wonderful chance to get stuck into that Golden Age of Hollywood stuff—not a bad place to be by all accounts.'
How What Ever Happened
To Baby Jane Happened
Runs Thursdays-Sundays
Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont
773-327-5252, Closes June 26
Moonlight And Magnolias
Runs Nightly (except Mondays)
Goodman Theatre (in the Owen)
170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-5151
Closes June 13
Extensive theater listings at www.windycitymediagroup.com/theateropenings.html
