Shattered Applause: The Lives of Eva Le Gallienne - Softcover

Schanke, Robert A

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809330083 ISBN 13: 9780809330089

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010

Synopsis

This comprehensive biography of the actress film critic Rex Reed called “a national treasure” draws on Robert A. Schanke’s interviews and correspondence not only with Eva Le Gallienne but also with more than one hundred of her colleagues and friends, including Glenda Jackson, Burgess Meredith, Eli Wallach, Peter Falk, Ellen Burstyn, Anne Jackson, Farley Granger, Jane Alexander, Uta Hagen, and Rosemary Harris. Forty-two illustrations offer highlights of Le Gallienne’s many notable performances in such plays as Hedda Gabler, Liliom, The Cherry Orchard, Peter Pan, Camille, Mary Stuart, The Royal Family,and The Dream Watcher.

Behind her public role as a famous actress and as the founding and maintaining force of the first civic repertory theatre in the United States, Eva Le Gallienne led a private life complicated by her identity as a lesbian. Schanke considers Le Gallienne’s sexuality and how it played a role in the struggles, defeats, and triumphs that combined to inspire her greatness. Shattered Applause, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, tells a fascinating story that also serves as a barometer of the changing values, tastes, and attitudes of American society.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This first full-length biography of stage actress Eva Le Gallienne traces her life from her birth into the troubled but fascinating household of Richard Le Gallienne, British writer and intimate member of the Oscar Wilde circle, to her recent death. This comprehensive biography draws upon Robert A. Schanke's interviews and correspondence not only with Le Gallienne but also with more than one hundred of her colleagues and friends, including Glenda Jackson, Burgess Meredith, Eli Wallach, Peter Falk, Ellen Burstyn, Anne Jackson, Farley Granger, Jane Alexander, Uta Hagen, and Rosemary Harris. Forty-two illustrations offer highlights of her many notable performances in such plays as Hedda Gabler, Liliom, The Cherry Orchard, Peter Pan, Camille, Mary Stuart, The Royal Family, and The Dream Watcher. Behind her public role as a famous actress and as the founding and maintaining force behind the first civic repertory theatre in the United States, Eva Le Gallienne led a private life troubled by her personal struggle with lesbianism. For more than fifty years she lived in shadows. Like many lesbians of her generation, she viewed herself as a man trapped in a female body. Because she was unwilling to compromise and hide her true self in a convenient marriage or to camouflage her relationships in order to boost her career, her sexuality became a nemesis that defined her great need for privacy. Le Gallienne complained that her lesbianism ruined her career. And as Schanke points out, it certainly influenced her selection of scripts, management practices, and style of acting, which ultimately affected her work's critical reception. By presenting for the first time this complete story of the life of oneof the theatre's great talents, Schanke provides his audience with the fascinating story of Eva Le Gallienne, one that serves as a barometer of the changing values, tastes, and attitudes in American society.

About the Author:

Robert A. Schanke, a professor emeritus of theatre at Central College, Iowa, is the author of Eva Le Gallienne: A Bio-Bibliography, “That Furious Lesbian”: The Story of Mercedes de Acosta, and Ibsen in America: A Century of Change.

About this edition

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0809330083
• ISBN 13: 9780809330089
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344