Eleanor D. Wilson Movies
Though her film credits are slim, Tony-nominated actress Eleanor Wilson molded a successful career on Broadway in addition to being a noted contributor to the Berkshire Playhouse in Stockbridge, MA. A native of Chester, PA, who majored in chemistry at Hollins College before studying at Boston's Museum of Fine Art and New York's New School for Social Research, Wilson may have seemed an unlikely candidate for a career on-stage before shifting her focus to acting at Pennsylvania's Hedgrow Theater. Following her Broadway debut in Watch on the Rhine, Wilson would continue to appear both on and off-Broadway in numerous productions throughout the 1950s. One of the first actresses to perform for troops during World War II, Wilson's later role as the landlady in Alice's Restaurant (1969) endeared the actress to those unfortunate enough to miss her numerous stage performances. Her sole other screen credit came as the mother of Warren Beatty's character in the 1981 film Reds. Retiring in 1984 to concentrate on mathematical abstract paintings, Eleanor Wilson died of lung cancer in her Williamstown, MA, home in May 2002. She was 93. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Few filmmakers other than Warren Beatty would have had the courage and vision to fashion an epic film from the life of famed American Communist John Reed (who is the only US citizen buried in the Kremlin). The film is an effort to humanize a political movement that has previously been depicted on screen in a series of unsubtle and prejudicial broad strokes. The film begins in 1915, when Reed (Beatty) makes the acquaintance of married Portland journalist Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). So persuasive is Reed's point of view--and so charismatic is Reed himself-- that Bryant kicks over the traces and joins Reed and his fellow radicals. Among the famous personages depicted herein are Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton), Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson) and Max Eastman (Richard Herrmann). The second half of this nearly-200-minute film skims through the years when Reed, now a Russian resident, becomes disillusioned by the harsh realities of Bolshevism. Despite the celebrity line-up of real-life "witnesses" to the events depicted in the film (ranging from novelist Henry Miller to comedian George Jessel!), historians took Reds to task for its oversimplification of events and its laundering of the notoriously promiscuous Louise Bryant. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, (more)
Intrigued by the counterculture tale of Arlo Guthrie's epic 1968 talking-blues record The Alice's Restaurant Massacree, director Arthur Penn, co-scripting with playwright Venable Herndon, adapted the song into the 1969 feature Alice's Restaurant. Hippie outsider Arlo (Guthrie, playing himself) encounters suspicion from the straight world; visits his dying father, renowned leftist activist/singer Woody Guthrie (Joseph Boley), in the hospital along with friend Pete Seeger; and hangs out in the title converted church/commune created by his friends Alice (Pat Quinn) and her husband Ray (James Broderick). After Alice's "Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat," Arlo is arrested for littering by rule-following Officer "Obie" Obanhein (William Obanhein, playing himself). That littering arrest helps Arlo avoid the Vietnam draft, but the commune is threatened after more personal, old-fashioned conflicts over sex and partnerships permeate Alice and Ray's alternative world. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Arlo Guthrie, Pat Quinn, (more)
