Five reasons why Peter Glenville's 1961 film of "Summer and Smoke," airing Monday, June 23rd at 3:45 p.m. (est) on Turner, fascinate me (besides the fact that it's a solid film):1. It's based on one of Tennessee Williams' lesser-known plays.
2. It was Geraldine Page's follow-up film to her first film "Hondo," which she made eight years earlier. The movie would start Page on an Oscar-nominee roll. Her next assignment was Richard Brooks' film of another Williams play, "Sweet Bird of Youth," in a role she created on Broadway.
3. It was Pamela Tiffin's debut movie, followed the same year by Billy Wilder's "One Two Three."
4. It was Rita Moreno's film immediately prior to "West Side Story."
5. Glenville, who died in 1996 of a heart attack, was a stage director who made only seven films, among them Danny Kaye's lost "Me and the Colonel" (1958); "Term of Trial" (1962) with Laurence Olivier, Simone Signoret and Sarah Miles; "Becket" (1964) with Burton and O'Toole, and Graham Greene's "The Comedians" (1967) with Burton and Taylor.
In "Summer and Smoke," Glenville also directed the great character actress, Una Merkle, and just prior to filming, the two joined forces for the 1959 Broadway musical, "Take Me Along," based on Eurgene O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness," with music and lyrics by Robert Merrill, and starring Jackie Gleason, Walter Pidgeon and Robert Morse.
(Artwork: Geraldine Page, Laurence Harvey and Pamela Tiffin in "Summer and Smoke")
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