Alternative Visions of Blanche DuBois: Uta Hagen and Jessica Tandy in A Streetcar Named Desire

Alternative Visions of Blanche DuBois: Uta Hagen and Jessica Tandy in A Streetcar Named Desire SUSAN SPECTOR Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the great roles for an actress in the American repertory. Blanche spends more time onstage than any other character in the play; she is also a richly complex protagonist representing both abstractly civilized and basically physical womanhood in a society that rejects any comfortable fusion of these qualities. Like Hamlet for the actor, Blanche encourages an actress to communicate her vision of the artistic temperament in conflict with a hostile environment; individual performers have been able to represent this conflict differently depending on their own sensibilities and styles. The fust two women to play Blanche were Jessica Tandy and Uta Hagen. They offer remarkable examples of the role's potential for allowing different actresses to generate unique characterizations from the same basic material. In 1947 Irene Mayer Selznick was assembling her first production for the Broadway stage - a new play by Tennessee Williams called A Streetcar Named Desire. Jessica Tandy, who had recently given a brilliant performance in Williams's one-act Portrait ofa Madonna in Los Angeles, was Selznick's first choice for Blanche DuBois, a similar role. I When the play opened on December 3, 1947, at the Barrymore Theatre, Tandy was Blanche, Marlon Brando played Stanley Kowalski, Stella was played by Kim Hunter, and Mitch by Karl Malden. Elia Kazan directed. The production drew very positive reviews; many considered it Williams's most mature play to date. By the end of the 1947- 48 season, Streetcar had won the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Donaldson Award for the best play presented that year. Tandy won the Tony Award for the best performance by an actress. Uta Hagen was playing Mrs. Manningham in Angel Street at the City Center in January 1948 while the Streetcar management was casting the national tour scheduled to begin the following fall. Elia Kazan saw Hagen in Angel Street SUSAN SPECTOR and felt he had found the actress to play Blanche DuBois in the second company.2 Irene Selznick agreed: "Uta Hagen was giving an extraordinary performance in arevival ofAngel Street and she became our unanimous choice for Blanche. She had the right looks, was the right age; she just wasn't the right size. A tall cast was the solution, beginning with a hefty Stanley in the person of Anthony Quinn, to tower over her."3 Interpretive and stylistic differences between Hagen and Tandy in the role of Blanche became a constant theme of reviews for the next two theatrical seasons when Hagen played Blanche, first in New York as Tandy's summer replacement, then on the road with the national company, and finally for another run with a second New York company. Both actresses played in what was billed as Elia Kazan's production, they wore identical costumes designed by Lucinda Ballard, and they worked on the same Jo Mielziner set. Tandy's performance was shaped primarily by Kazan in rehearsal and conditioned by the dominating presence ofMarlon Branda. Hagen developed her characterization independently, before entering rehearsal, and then worked with Harold Clurman, who took over as the director of the road company. Kazan drew his interpretation of the play from a letter Williams wrote to him explaining his dramatic design for Streetcar: "There are no 'good' or 'bad' people. Some are a little better or a little worse, but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. A blindness to what is going on in each other's hearts.... I remember you asked me what should an audience feel for Blanche. Certainly pity. .. . and in order to do that, Blanche must finally have the understanding and compassion ofthe audience.... It is a thing (Misunderstanding ) not a person (Stanley) that destroys her in the end. In the end you should feel- 'Ifonly they all had known about each other!'" (A Life, pp. 329- 30). In Kazan's production, however, Marlon Branda's performance of Stanley captured the audience's sympathy and identification. Kazan had hoped Jessica Tandy would play Blanche as "a 'difficult' heroine, not one easy to...