Chicago has been pretty lucky with its Miss Daisies so far.
Alfred Uhry`s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, ”Driving Miss Daisy,”
opened last April at the Briar Street Theatre, featuring, in the title role, Sada Thompson, an actress whose stage work has earned plenty of critical acclaim over the years and whose television series, ”Family,” won her popularity.
This month, (beginning Wednesday) Thompson will be replaced by Ellen Burstyn, whose many credits include her Oscar-winning role in ”Alice Doesn`t Live Here Anymore,” her Oscar-nominated one in ”The Last Picture Show” and her part in ”The Exorcist,” one of the most successful films of the `70s. In the `80s, Burstyn`s roles include sensitive portrayals in ”Resurrection”
(which garnered her her third Oscar nomination) and ”Twice in a Lifetime,” as well as admired work in the television films ”Pack of Lies”
and ”Into Thin Air.”
For an actress of Burstyn`s fame and reputation to replace someone in a role already played by another actress is almost unprecedented.
”It is odd, but it has to do as much with the writers` strike as anything,” she says. ”I haven`t worked in seven months, and this is the first time in years I`ve gone that long without doing something. It`s not just the money, but you have to do work after a while, or you get stale.
”But I haven`t done a play in a couple of years, either, and I can just go so long without doing a play,” she adds. ”They offered this, and I thought, `What an exciting idea. I`ve never done anything like that, advancing into the future that far.` I`m the youngest actress to play Miss Daisy so far.”
In Uhry`s play, about an elderly Jewish widow in Atlanta and her relationship with her black chauffeur of many years, Miss Daisy ages from 72 to her late 90s. Burstyn has to start more than 20 years beyond her current age and then proceed through 20 years more.
”In `Same Time, Next Year` (which Burstyn performed both on Broadway and in the film version), I aged 25 years, but I started younger than my own age, about 15 years younger, and advanced to be 10 older. This is a lot more challenging. But, of course, the way Alfred wrote it, nobody the right age could play Miss Daisy. They wouldn`t have the strength. Or the memory. How many 72-year-old actresses can you think of who could do it? I`ve been trying.”
Burstyn studied for many years with Lee Strasberg, and even helped run his Actors Studio for six years after his death. She is well-schooled in his famous method, and, as proof, she conducted her entire interview-from first introduction to farewell-with the Southern accent she`s using in the play. Southern rhythms even have worked their way into her informal speaking patterns.
”I went down to Atlanta before I came (to Chicago),” she says. ”My brother lives there, and the author`s family, too. I went to all the places that appear in the play, including the house where the real Miss Daisy, who was Alfred`s grandmother, lived. Actually, his mother and his cousin`s mother were sisters, and each claims Miss Daisy was her mother. Apparently, she`s really an amalgam.”
In the play, Miss Daisy is driven at one point to an actual grocery outlet called Piggly-Wiggly. ”I went to the spot where the Piggly-Wiggly had been, but it`s not there anymore,” Burstyn says. ”It`s a funny name, isn`t it? It always surprises me when people use the word `pig` in connection with food. I remember when I came to the 1968 Chicago convention, and on the way from the airport, I saw this meat-packing company with a sign saying, `We use all the pig but the whistle.` I thought who on earth would want to eat all the pig, and what is the whistle?”
The talk turns to Southern character and temperament. ”I think Southerners believe in individuality, just like in England,” Burstyn says.
”It`s not considered a bad thing to be an eccentric. I had the most shocking experience when I worked on Blanche (from Tennessee Williams` `A Streetcar Named Desire`) for a while at the Actors Studio. I never actually did the part, but while I was working on it, I started to think, `There`s something funny here. We have an aging beauty and her younger sister who is pregnant for the first time. But they`re talking about being children together, so they must be close together in age.`
”So I looked up the ages, and do you know what they were when Tennessee Williams wrote it? Stella was 21 and Blanche 24. Back then, you were a fading beauty at 24. I almost fell over. That`s how far we`ve come.
”I`ve looked at the film many times. It`s astounding, just the lighting. You don`t see lighting like that anymore. Scenes where the shutters from the windows make stripes across the face. It`s like a flower-when it`s
photographed in color, it`s just a flower. When you see it in black and white, it`s a work of art.”
One bit of research Burstyn definitely did not allow herself was to catch Thompson in her final days as Miss Daisy.
”I`m so impressionable that I know if I see anyone else do it, I`ll just go in and do an imitation of them,” she says. ”I wouldn`t want to do that. I remember once, years ago, `Any Wednesday` was playing on Broadway. Sandy Dennis was doing it, and they were looking for a replacement. I got an audition, and I went in to see the show the night before.
”The next day I did my audition, and when I finished, the director said, `Have you seen the show?` ” Burstyn continues. ”And I told him I had. He said, `I thought so.` I realize I`d gone in and done a total impersonation of Sandy. Nobody wants that. I didn`t get the job. And they were right.”
Not surprisingly, Burstyn thinks highly of Uhry`s play. ”It`s a great play,” she says. ”But I have to be careful not to give to an interviewer what I have to give to the play. I`m at an early stage, and I`m finding all kinds of wonderful things. It`s like, `Don`t show what`s behind the mirror.`
It`s all subtext.”
Burstyn did a stint in the late `60s on a soap opera, ”The Doctors,”
playing for a time Kate Bartok, head of a hospital research lab. She was studying with Strasberg then in New York, and the television work offered a great paycheck for a student actress. In 1971, ”Last Picture Show” provided her first big break.
”I made a film before that which wasn`t very well known, `Tropic of Cancer,` based on Henry Miller`s book,” she recalls. ”It`s not very successful, and ridiculous to try and film that novel. But it was a wonderful experience, because Henry was there when we were filming. We became good friends and kept up our friendship until not long before he died, and I always treasure that. Rip Torn played Henry. That was 1969.
”One of my favorites from the same period is `The King of Marvin Gardens.` It was Bob Rafelson`s second film, right after `Five Easy Pieces.`
Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern were also in it. The critics panned it, and it wasn`t a success. But it has a cult following, and it`s still shown at libraries and universities.”
There`s almost inevitably an earthy, grounded quality to most of the characters Burstyn plays-she`s not usually seen as a flighty, flirty woman.
”But in `The King of Marvin Gardens` I was,” she says. ”It`s really fun to see the film now, and another reason it`s fun is that Jack Nicholson plays a character unlike any other in his career. It`s almost hard to recognize him. Rafelson`s artistic journey is really about brothers, just as
`Five Easy Pieces` is about brothers. This is another brothers` story, and originally it was written with Dern playing the brother Nicholson ends up playing and Nicholson playing the one you`d expect, the flamboyant character. ”But at some point, during early discussions about it, Jack said `Why don`t we switch parts?` And, of course, Bob always loved anything that was spontaneous and eccentric. He loved to go with the unexpected. So he said right away, `Let`s do it.`
”So they played characters that were really written for each other. Jack plays a very shy, introverted intellectual. It gives a flavor to the picture that I think really shows the actor Jack Nicholson is. Now everybody uses his flamboyant nature to extreme, they cast him in those parts. Meanwhile, I play a very flirtatious, coquettish person with a lot of false personality and put- on behavior.”
After winning the Oscar, Burstyn made an odd choice. She played in a movie called ”Providence,” directed by Alain Resnais and also starring John Gielgud, Dirk Bogarde, Elaine Stritch and David Warner. ”William Friedkin
(who directed `The Exorcist`) introduced me to Resnais and respected him highly,” Burstyn says. ”I was always susceptible to Friedkin`s advice, and partly did the film for that reason. It won awards in Europe, but wasn`t very successful here.
”But I just took a class in filmmaking in New York,” she continues.
”You wouldn`t think I`d have to take a course after all the years I`ve spent on a set, would you? But I`m interested in directing, and I just didn`t know anything about lenses or all that, and I`m glad, because I`ve found a whole new career-I`ve fallen in love with filmmaking. I`m working on a directing project.
”But, anyway, my teacher, when he met me, said the only film I`d made that meant something to him is `Providence.` And he told me he shows it in his film class quite often and that to him, it`s one of the great films of all time.
”I made another odd choice about that time, `Dream of Passion.` It was directed by Jules Dassin, with Melina Mercouri, and has a `Medea` theme. It`s a very odd film, but I think I did some of my best work in it.”
