Download Who`s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, 1966

Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, 1966
Directed by Mike Nichols
Play by Edward Albee
Screenplay by Edward Albee and Ernest Lehman
Presented by Warner Brothers, Not rated.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are ideal as malevolent marrieds George and Martha in
first-time film director Mike Nichols’ searing film of Edward Albee’s Broadway hit Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Taylor won her second Academy Award (and the new York Film Critics, National Board of
Review and British Film Academy Best Actress Awards). Burton matches her as her
emotionally spent spouse. And George Segal and Sandy Dennis (1966’s Oscar winner as Best
Supporting Actress) score as another couple straying into their destructive path. The movie won
five Academy Awards (art direction, costume design and cinematography as well as the acting
pair) and remains after 30+ years a taboo-toppling landmark.
About the production
The five-month shooting schedule was conducted on location at Northhampton, MA, and at
Warner Brothers Studio in Burbank, CA.
The picture can claim several noteworthy firsts: the first motion picture directed by Mike
Nichols, the first film produced by Ernest Lehman and the first true character role for Elizabeth
Taylor.
Lehman opened up the play to the larger scope of the screen, but still kept it a four-character
vehicle, as true to playwright Edward Albee as possible.
So true that Warner Brothers president jack L. Warner established an “adults only” policy for the
film. The film was responsible for the creation of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of
America) rating system.
The policy prohibited theatres from admitting anyone “under the age of 18 unless accompanied
by his parent.”
Making one of the rare instances in which the dialogue of a motion picture was issued as a
recording, Warner Brothers Records released a special deluxe album featuring the entire
dialogue of the movie.
Commentary by Haskell Wexler, Academy Award Winning Cinematographer.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), a famous and shocking black comedy, was based on
Edward Albee's scandalous play (Ernest Lehman's screenplay left the dialogue of the play
virtually intact). It was first performed in New York in October of 1962, and it captured the New
York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Tony Award for the 1962-1963 season.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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The searing film exhibited a fine sense of pacing, comic timing, and gripping buildup in a series
of emotional climaxes. The shocking content - the dramatic portrayal of the destructive, sadomasochistic battles in one couple's tempestuous, love-hate relationship during a late night to
dawn brawling encounter - was thought to be too vitriolic, frank, explicitly blasphemous and
foul-mouthed for the film screen. However, with studio boss Jack Warner's insistence on keeping
the integrity of the play, and the teaming of real-life husband and wife mega-stars Elizabeth
Taylor and Richard Burton, the film was guaranteed success. The two portrayed an on-screen
couple: a sharp-tongued but ineffectual professor (Burton) and his complaining wife (Taylor), in
the company of a new professor (Segal) and his mousy wife (Dennis).
The black-and-white film, masterfully directed by Mike Nichols (in his directorial screen debut),
captured probably the greatest performance ever of Elizabeth Taylor's career (she won her
second Academy Award as well as Best Actress praises from the New York Film Critics, the
Nat'l Board of Review and the British Film Academy).
Woolf won five Academy Awards from its thirteen nominations: Best Actress (Elizabeth Taylor),
Best Supporting Actress (Sandy Dennis), Best B/W Cinematography (Haskell Wexler), Best Art
Direction and Best Costume Design. The other eight nominations included Best Picture, Best
Actor (Richard Burton), Best Supporting Actor (George Segal), Best Director (Mike Nichols),
Best Screenplay (Ernest Lehman), Best Sound, Best Original Music Score, and Best Film
Editing. As compensation for his defeat this year, director Mike Nichols won the Best Director
Oscar the next year for The Graduate (1967) over Norman Jewison, the director of the Best
Picture victor In the Heat of the Night (1967).
Chapter 1: Moonlit walk home (credits).
These scenes under the titles were all shot back east at Smith College, located in Northhampton,
Massachusetts. They had a problem with both fog and rain at this location. The real problem
with dealing with fog is that it reveals where your light source is coming from, your artificial
light source. You can relate to this technique if you watch rock videos or if you attend concerts
utilizing a hazer or fog machine. Works great for those venues, however you don’t want to see
shafts of light when the actors are walking down a street in a movie or on stage.
The street lamps that you see in the background which serve as a source of light, placed there by
Richard Sylbert, the production designer, the leaves in motion, are caused by Ritters, wind
machines, when they did have fog to deal with they would sue the wind machines to clear some
of it out, so that it wasn’t so apparent.
A Missed Opportunity. University-bred and costing 75 cents each, 100 moths blew their chance
to appear in the movie. The moths were obtained from the University of California for a night
scene with stars Taylor and Burton. Their role in the scene was to fly around several lampposts
near a cottage where the characters are. Unfortunately, the fickle moths chose to head for a set
of brighter lights in the vicinity, thus defaulting screen immortality. They were replaced by a
batch of mechanical plastic moths. These, propelled by giant fans, worked out fine.
Notice the gradual focus to focus under the title card of the cinematographer. The street lamps
help at depth of field to the shot.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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They had a certain date to clear out of Smith College; movie crews in those days were not a
welcomed site, as they are today. To the aristocratic New Englanders the film crews were
considered more like a traveling circus, than a benefit to the economy. Hollywood crews
resembled more like a bunch of drinking cowboys at this time period, than respectable citizens.
Chapter 2: “What a dump!”
The film opens under a moonlit sky in the middle of the night on a small New England college
campus (in the town of New Carthage - an allegorical name). Under the credits, an academic
couple walk through the deserted campus - George (Richard Burton), a 46 year old, bespectacled
history professor, and his 52-year-old wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor), a large, boisterous, blowsy
woman with heavy wrinkles. After drunkenly weaving their way home, they enter their home
and switch the lights on.
When you see in a film, a practical light fixture turn on, like the corner lamp that she just flipped
the switch for, there is actually about ten lighting units burning overhead to create that effect.
Most of the film is done in low lights with the use of shadows, so Wexler wanted to make sure
that when they go into the kitchen he could utilize high key lighting. The human eye has a
tendency to fall asleep if it is not given enough light in a movie, so that is another reason for the
various lighting effects that we see in movies. They are placing a silk screen in front of the lights
to get this wash and spread of lights. Still photographers also do this effect when they bounce a
light off of the ceiling.
Martha looks around the living room discontentedly and parodies Bette Davis' mannerisms,
exclaiming:
What a dump! [from Beyond the Forest]
In the sloppy kitchen in a famous sequence in which she munches on a fried chicken leg and
puffs on a cigarette, she repeatedly - with a deep whiskey voice - berates her husband for not
remembering the film the line is from: "What's it from, for Christ's sake?...some damn Bette
Davis picture, some god-damned Warner Bros epic." Exasperated at her criticism of his cocktailparty behavior, he inquires: "Do you want me to go around braying at everyone all night the way
you do?"
They have returned at two o'clock early on a Sunday morning from one of her father's "goddamn
Saturday night orgies," according to George. As they bicker at each other, it is revealed that
George is a tired, defeated teacher, married for twenty years to the daughter of the president of
the college.
Elizabeth was concerned about how many of these chicken legs she would have to eat.
This was filmed with a new black and white film that Kodak came out with at this time. The
studio wanted the film to be made in color, but Mike Nichols the director insisted that it should
be shot in black and white.
Wexler was comfortable shooting in black and white, as he didn’t have a lot of experience
working with color, so he was thrilled with the decision. Richard Burton was not thrilled, he was
very conscious about his pockmarks on his face, and felt that he would not look good in the
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
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black and white medium. A greater concern for Burton was the fact that Wexler had made
documentaries in the past, and he was concerned that Wexler would not know how to deal with
him photographically, and make him look good. Something Wexler didn’t know about until the
publication of Burton’s autobiography.
This was Mike Nichols first experience in directing a movie, previously his directing credits
came from the Broadway stage. The second movie that Mike Nichols directed goes down as an
all American classic film, just like this one, only the second one appealed to a much broader
audience, that being The Graduate. The studio did suggest that Nichols take on his staff a senior
editor to assist with the filming, to make sure that Nichols would shoot a film that could be
logically edited, but that offer was rejected.
Wexler also was the cinematographer for The Graduate, and recalls doing screen tests with
Robert Redford, speaking of which Robert Redford turned down a part in this film, the part of
Nick.
Notice as Elizabeth cleans up she places a dirty plate of food in the nightstand drawer this was
her idea.
Look around this room the art direction and production design is excellent, every little object
enhances the actors’ personality.
Elizabeth’s move from the mirror to the bed is an overhead crane shot, yet it looks like a simple
basic move.
When she suggests that they have a drink, he finds out that they've "got guests coming over" that
Martha invited to join them in an 'after-party' party - a blonde, good-looking, young newlyappointed Math Department member [Martha is mistaken - he is an assistant professor in the
Biology Department] and his wife, described as "a mousey little type, without any hips or
anything."
Disturbed because she always "springs things" on him, she makes light-hearted fun of his
reaction, acting both loving and vicious toward him, singing to the tune of "Mulberry Bush" (or
"Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" from Disney's animation short "The Three Little Pigs"):
Poor Georgie-Porgie, put-upon pie...Awwwwwwwwwww! Hey! Hey! Hey! (She sings)
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Who's afraid of
Virginia Woolf...Ha, ha, ha, HA! (No reaction) What's the matter? Didn't you think that
was funny? I thought it was a scream...You laughed your head off when you heard it at
the party.
When Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor made this movie they were in love with each other,
as a result they can really play with each other, and the chemistry is visible for the audience.
There is a couple of hand held camera shot that sneak in, and this over the bed shot was done
with a bridge built over the bed. Look at all of the set ups and moves the camera is doing here to
catch this natural flow of dialogue.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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The advantage of the bridge was that he could shoot down on his two subjects, and this was an
angle you didn’t see much of in films. The next shot is a tighter angle from the same
perspective. The cameras at this time period were also quite big and heavy, so they had to take
great care to make sure that it didn’t drop on their stars.
The Bicycling Burtons. Though they had no part in the movie, two highly polished red bicycles
lettered in gold were integral to the making. The bikes belonged to stars Elizabeth Taylor and
Richard Burton who used them daily to get around the huge Warner Brothers lot. The Bicycling
Burtons were just about the only Burtons visible to eager studio visitors, because while
performing they were behind closed doors and guarded doors.
“Virginia Woolf” marked the fourth film in which Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starred
together. They teamed earlier in “Cleopatra,” “The V.I.P.’s” and “The Sandpiper.” They
reteamed in “The Taming of the Shrew” and “The Boom!”
You get Elizabeth laying down here, this is when the popularity of widescreen came out in
theatres, and the human figure in relief was appropriate for compositions.
Richard Burton 1925-1984
Height
5' 9"
Spouse
'Sally Hay'
(1983 - 5 August 1984) (his death)
Susan Hunt
(1976 - 1982) (divorced)
Elizabeth Taylor
(10 October 1975 - 1 August 1976) (remarried/redivorced)
Elizabeth Taylor
(15 March 1964 - 1974) (divorced)
'Sybil Williams' (c. 1948 - 1963) (divorced)
Trivia
He took his professional name from his former schoolmaster, Philip Burton.
Richard Burton was banned from the BBC... From the New York Times Arts and Leisure Section, November 23, 1974, in Richard
Burton's article about his experience playing Churchill in a television drama [probably the 1960 series, "Winston Churchill: The
Valiant Years". Although 1974 was also the year he played Churchill in the movie, The Gathering Storm.] comes this: "In the course
of preparing myself...I realized afresh that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. I hate them virulently. They have stalked down the
corridors of endless power all through history.... What man of sanity would say on hearing of the atrocities committed by the Japanese
against British and Anzac prisoners of war, "We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men, women, and children. There shall not be
a Japanese left on the face of the earth"? Such simple-minded cravings for revenge leave me with a horrified but reluctant awe for
such single-minded and merciless ferocity." The BBC response printed in the NY Times on the 30th of November 1974 banned him
from future productions with the BBC. The supervisor of drama productions said, "As far as I am concerned, he will never work for us
again.... Burton acted in an unprofessional way."
Interred at Protestant Churchyard, Celigny, Switzerland.
Together with Peter O'Toole, he currently holds the record for the most Oscar nominations (7) without a single win.
Spoke Cymraeg (Welsh-language) as mother tongue.
Burton reportedly died several weeks into the production of Wild Geese II (1985). The sequel subsequently had no continuity with the
original film (Burton was replaced by actor Scott Glenn, in a different role).
Burton died on Sunday, August 5, 1984, less than a week before he was due to begin shooting Wild Geese II, a sequel to his
successful mercenary thriller The Wild Geese, made in 1978. He was the only actor returning for the film and, as Colonel Allen
Faulkner, would have led a team of crack mercenaries to spring aged Nazi Rudolf Hess from Spandau Prison in Berlin. Burton's death
caused huge problems for producer Euan Lloyd, the man behind the original Wild Geese and its follow-up. With the rest of the cast Scott Glenn, Barbara Carrera and Laurence Olivier, playing Hess - in place, Lloyd had just a handful of days to find a replacement for
Burton. He selected British actor Edward Fox, who joined the cast as Alex Faulkner, Burton's brother. Burton's no-show in the film
was explained by one character telling Fox that they'd heard his famous warrior brother had died. The film was dedicated to Burton's
memory.
Personal quotes
"When I played drunks I had to remain sober because I didn't know how to play them when I was drunk."
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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Cable from Laurence Olivier to Richard Burton at the height of the Cleopatra scandal: "Make up your mind, dear heart. Do you want
to be a great actor or a household word?" Burton replied: "Both."
"I've done the most awful rubbish in order to have somewhere to go in the morning."
"My father considered that anyone who went to chapel and didn't drink alcohol was not to be tolerated. I grew up in that belief."
On adultery, in 1963: "The minute you start fiddling around outside the idea of monogamy, nothing satisfies anymore."
"I've played the lot: a homosexual, a sadistic gangster, kings, princes, a saint, the lot. All that's left is a Carry On film. My last
ambition."
"I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink."
Salary
Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) $1m plus percentage of gross
V.I.P.s, The (1963)
$500,000
My Cousin Rachel (1952)
$50,000
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
A Welsh miner's son who never forgot his roots, Richard Burton gained a reputation as one of the world's finest actors, and then was
criticized for placing fame and money above art and dedication to his craft. Through the help of his schoolmaster, Philip Burton,
young Richard Jenkins received a scholarship to Oxford University (later taking Burton's name as his own), and studied acting; along
the way he developed a distinctive and beautiful speaking voice. He made his first stage appearance in 1943, but his career did not
begin in earnest until after he left the British Navy in 1947. The Last Days of Dolwyn (1948) provided young Burton his film debut,
and he made a striking impression in a stage revival of "The Lady's Not for Burning" in 1949. When Burton came with the play to
Broadway the following year, he registered solidly with American producers, and was chosen to play the male lead in My Cousin
Rachel (1952), a Daphne du Maurier mystery. His success in that film led to a flurry of Hollywood activity in such pictures as The
Robe (1953), The Rains of Ranchipur and Prince of Players (both 1955), but he did not set the box office on fire and subsequently
spent much of his time on the stage both in Britain and in the U.S.
Burton starred in several respectable British films in the late 1950s, including Look Back in Anger (1959), but his elevation to
superstardom began with his casting as King Arthur in the Broadway musical "Camelot" in 1960 (which won him a Tony Award), and
his role as Marc Antony in the 1963 film version of Cleopatra A star-crossed production, it was begun and halted several times in
several different countries with several different directors. During the making of the film, Burton and his costar Elizabeth Taylor
carried on an affair, which led both to divorce their current mates-and become headline fodder around the world.
The Burton-Taylor team became hot box office, and although he played "Hamlet" on stage (which was also photographed for showing
in movie theaters) and Becket in the movies (both 1964), he commanded the most audience attention in slick entertainments with his
wife, such as The V.I.P.s (1963) and The Sandpiper (1965). Art and commerce found a common ground in the couple's Who's Afraid
of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Taming of the Shrew (1967), but audiences grew restive with both his on-again, off-again
relationship with Taylor, and the later films they did together:The Comedians (1967), Dr. Faustus, Boom! (both 1968), Hammersmith
Is Out (1972), and the TV movieDivorce His-Divorce Hers (1973).
In fact, Burton became notorious for appearing in films-always for the money, which he never denied-that wasted his considerable
talents, including Bluebeard (1972), The Voyage (1973), The Klansman (1974), Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Medusa Touch
(1978), Lovespell (1979), Absolution (1981, filmed in 1978), and Wagner (1983). Burton was honored seven times with Oscar
nominations, as Best Supporting Actor for My Cousin Rachel (odd, since he was the male lead) and as best actor for The Robe,
Becket, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), and
Equus (1977), but he never won the gold statue.
His final work was in a well-received 1984 miniseries, "Ellis Island" (which featured his daughter, actress Kate Burton) and the
impressive remake of1984 (1984). He wrote of his relationship with Taylor in the slim but charming volume "Meeting Mrs. Jenkins"
(1966). OTHER FILMS INCLUDE: 1951:Green Grow the Rushes 1956:Alexander the Great 1959:Bitter Victory 1962:The Longest
Day 1964:The Night of the Iguana 1968:Candy 1969: Where Eagles Dare 1971:Raid on Rommel 1973:Massacre in Rome 1978:The
Wild Geese 1980:Circle of Two
Copyright ©1994 Leonard Maltin, used by arrangement with Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor 1932Height
5' 4"
Mini biography
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in London, England on February 27, 1932. Although she was born an English subject, her
parents were American who were art dealers from St. Louis, Missouri. Her father had gone to London to set up a gallery. Her mother
had been an actress on the stage, but gave up that vocation when she married. Elizabeth lived in London for the first seven years of her
life before the family left when the dark clouds of war began brewing in 1939. The family sailed with out her father who stayed
behind to wrap up loose ends of the art business. The family relocated to Los Angeles, California where Mrs. Taylor's own family had
moved. Mr. Taylor followed not long afterward. A family friend noticed the beautiful little Elizabeth and suggested that she be taken
for a screen test. She passed and was signed to a contract with Universal Studios. Her first foray onto the silver screen was in the film,
called a short, THERE'S ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE released in 1942 when she was ten. Universal let the contract drop after the
one film and Elizabeth was picked up by MGM. The first production she made with them was LASSIE COME HOME (1943). On the
strength of that one film, MGM signed her to a full year. Her next two films were minuscule parts in 1944, THE WHITE CLIFFS OF
DOVER and JANE EYRE. The former was on a loan to Fox Studios. Then came the film that made Elizabeth a star, MGM's
NATIONAL VELVET in 1944. She played Velvet Brown opposite Mickey Rooney. The film was a smash hit grossing over $4
million. Now she had a long term contract with MGM and was their top child star. With no films in 1945, she returned in 1946 in
COURAGE OF LASSIE. Being young as she was, Elizabeth didn't have to work as hard as her adult counterparts. In 1947, when she
was 15, Elizabeth starred in LIFE WITH FATHER co-starring with such cinema heavyweights as William Powell, Irene Dunne, and
ZaSu Pitts. Her other film that year was CYNTHIA. Throughout the balance of the 40's and into the early 50's, Elizabeth appeared in
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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film after film with mostly good results. 1954 proved her busiest year to date with roles in RHAPSODY, BEAU BRUMMELL, THE
LAST TIME I SAW PARIS, and ELEPHANT WALK. She was 22 and, now, a beautiful young woman. In 1956, Elizabeth appeared
in the hit GIANT with James Dean. Sadly, Dean never saw the release of the film as he died in a car accident in 1955. The next year
saw Elizabeth star in RAINTREE COUNTY, an overblown film made, partially, in Kentucky. The film was said to be dry as dust.
Despite the shortcomings of the film, Elizabeth was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Southern belle, Susanna
Drake. Unfortunately for her, the honor went to Joanne Woodward for THE THREE FACES OF EVE on Oscar night. In 1958,
Elizabeth starred as Maggie Pollitt, in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. The film received rave reviews from the critics and Elizabeth was
nominated again for another Academy Award for best actress losing, this time, to Susan Hayward in I WANT TO LIVE. She was a
hot commodity in the film world. In 1959, she again appeared in another mega-hit and again another nomination for SUDDENLY,
LAST SUMMER. And once again, she lost to Simone Signoret in ROOM AT THE TOP. Her Oscar drought ended in 1960 when
Elizabeth landed the coveted honor at last. As Gloria Wandrous in BUTTERFIELD 8, Elizabeth performed flawlessly in the role of a
call girl who is involved with a married man and who later dies in an auto accident. Some of the critics blasted the movie but they
couldn't ignore her performance. There were to be no films for Elizabeth for three years. She had left MGM after her contract ran out,
but would do projects for them later down the road. In 1963, Elizabeth starred in the CLEOPATRA, which was one of the most
expensive productions to date as was her salary, said to be a whopping $1, 000, 000. This was also the film where she would meet her
future and fifth husband, Richard Burton. (The previous four were, Conrad Hilton, Michael Wilding, Michael Todd (who died in a
plane crash), and Eddie Fisher). Her next handful of films were lackluster at best, especially 1963's THE VIP'S which was torn apart
by most critics. Elizabeth was to return to fine form with her role of Martha in 1966's WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? The
role as a loudmouth unkempt woman easily was her finest personal performance to date. For this she would win her second Oscar and
one that was more than well deserved. Her films afterward didn't approach the intensity of that one. Since then she has appeared in
several films, both for the silver screen and television. She also has appeared on a number of TV programs. Her last was 1994's THE
FLINTSTONES. In February 1997, Elizabeth entered the hospital for the removal of a brain tumor. The operation was successful. As
for her private life, she divorced Burton in 1974, only to remarry him in 1975 and divorce, permanently, in 1976. She has had two
husbands since, Senator John Warner and Larry Fortensky.
IMDb mini-biography by
Denny Jackson
Mini biography
Liz was a leading child star by the age of 12 after her performance in MGM's "National Velvet". It wasn't long before she was
knocking critics dead as a serious adult actress with films like Giant (1956), 0050882 and BUtterfield 8 (1960). She reigned the box
office from 1958-68 as the quintessential movie star taking the breath away from viewers with her glamorous looks and those velvet
eyes. Her film career floundered in the 1970s with a string of unusual and unsuccessful films. Her personal life has been a tempest of
love affairs, unsuccessful marriages and multiple medical problems. Upon the death of her friend, Rock Hudson in 1985, she began
her crusade on the behalf of AIDS sufferers. In the 1990s, she has also developed a successful series of scents. Her acting career has
been relegated to the occasional tv-movie or TV guest appearance.
IMDb mini-biography by
Ray Hamel
Spouse
'Larry Fortensky'
(6 October 1991 - 1996) (divorced)
John W. Warner
(4 December 1976 - 7 November 1982) (divorced)
Richard Burton
(10 October 1975 - 1 August 1976) (remarried) (divorced)
Richard Burton
(15 March 1964 - 26 June 1974) (divorced)
Eddie Fisher
(12 May 1959 - 6 March 1964) (divorced)
Michael Todd (I)
(2 February 1957 - 22 March 1958) (his death); 1 daughter
Michael Wilding
(21 February 1952 - 30 January 1957) (divorced); 2 sons
'Conrad 'Nicky' Hilton Jr.' (6 May 1950 - 1 February 1951) (divorced)
Trivia
Taylor was bridesmaid for 'Jane Powell' for her first marriage. Powell was bridesmaid Taylor at her first marriage.
(October 1997) Ranked #72 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list.
(26 February 1997) Discharged from hospital, but later rushed back in after a suffering a brain seizure. Said to be comfortable.
(20 February 1997) Underwent successful surgery to remove the benign brain tumor.
(February 1997) Revealed the she has a benign brain tumor. Surgery is scheduled for late February.
Taylor has four children and nine grandchildren.
Mother of Chris Wilding and Michael Wilding Jr.
Her daughter with 'Mike Todd' Liza, is a sculptor. who has two sons, Quinn and Rhys, with her husband artist Hap Tivey
Liz has appeared solo on the cover of PEOPLE magazine 14 times, second only to Princess Diana (as of 1996)
Liz and Richard Burton appeared together on stage in a 1983 revival of "Private Lives."
Elizabeth Taylor's episode of BIOGRAPHY was the highest-rated episode of that series on Arts & Entertainment (thru the end of
1995).
(1993) American Film Institute Life Achievement Award
Liz was a close friend of Montgomery Clift until his death in 1966. They met for the first time when Paramount decided that she had
to accompany him to the premiere of Heiress, The (1949) because they were both to star in the upcoming Place in the Sun, A (1951).
They liked each other right away. Clift used to call her "Bessie Mae". When he had the road accident a few years later that disfigured
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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him, he came from a party at Liz's house. And it was her that found him first, got into the wreck and removed some teeth from his
throat that threatened to choke him.
Elizabeth Taylor's perfumes have been Passion (1987), White Diamonds (1991), Diamonds and Rubies, Diamonds and Emeralds,
Diamonds and Sapphares and Black Pearls (1995).
At one point during Elizabeth's life-threatening illness while filming Cleopatra, the actress was actually pronounced dead.
Was named a Dame by Britain's Queen Elizabeth on New Year's Eve, 1999
(1963) First actress to earn US$ 1,000,000 for a movie role (in Cleopatra (1963).)
(May 2000) Along with Julie Andrews made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II.
(1995) Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#16).
Mother-in-law of Brooke Palance.
Shares a birthday with her son Chris Wilding.
Lives in BelAir house once owned by Frank Sinatra when he was married to first wife, Nancy.
Born at 2:15 AM GMT
Personal quotes
"I think I'm finally growing up - and about time." - Elizabeth Taylor at 53
"I had a hollow leg. I could drink everyone under the table and not get drunk. My capacity was terrifying."
"My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I
was hooked."
(On Cleopatra) "Surely the most bizarre piece of entertainment ever to be perpetrated."
"What do you expect me to do? Sleep alone?"
"I don't pretend to be an ordinary housewife."
When asked if she would get married again: "What? Are you kidding??"
"If not to make the world better, what is money for?" (May 2001, Cannes)
[On her weight fluctuations] "When you're fat, the world is divided into two groups--people who bug you and people who leave you
alone. The funny thing is, supporters and saboteurs exist in either camp."
Salary
Only Game in Town, The (1970)
$1,250,000
Cleopatra (1963)
$1,000,000
V.I.P.s, The (1963)
$1,000,000
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
$500,000
Mirror Crack'd, The (1980)
$250,000
Flintstones, The (1994)
$2,500,000
"North and South" (1985) (mini)
$100,000
Secret Ceremony (1968)
$1,000,000
Sandpiper, The (1965)
$1,000,000
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) $1,000,000
Comedians, The (1967)
$500,000
Boom (1968)
$1,250,000
"North and South" (1985) (mini)
$200,000
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) $1,100,000
Poker Alice (1987) (TV)
$500,000
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Without question one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the screen, and a much better actress than she has generally been
given credit for. Her stormy personal life has overshadowed a substantial career, during the course of which she won two Oscars and
was nominated for three more. Born to American parents living in London, Elizabeth took dancing lessons as a little tyke, and even
performed before the Royal Family with her class. The Taylors returned to America just before the outbreak of World War 2, settling
in Beverly Hills. A strikingly beautiful, graceful child, with raven hair and violet eyes, she broke into movies at the age of 10, teamed
with Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer in a Universal B, There's One Born Every Minute (1942).
At MGM, Taylor appeared with Roddy McDowall (who was to become a lifelong friend) in Lassie Come Home (1943), but made a
greater impression opposite Mickey Rooney in National Velvet (1944), as a young girl determined to enter her horse in the Grand
National Steeplechase race. Her earnest, irresistible performance paved the way to stardom. Loaned to Fox for Jane Eyre (1944), she
came back to Metro for The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), Courage of Lassie (1946), Cynthia, Life With Father (both 1947), A Date
With Judy, Julia Misbehaves (both 1948), and Little Women (1949) before winning her first "adult" role, as Robert Taylor's wife in
Conspirator (also 1949), which she followed with The Big Hangover (1950). She had miraculously bypassed the "awkward"
adolescent phase, going from pretty girl to beautiful woman without the usual coltish stage.
She was adorable as the excitable daughter of Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett in Father of the Bride (1950) and Father's Little
Dividend (1951). Also in 1951, on loan to Paramount, she played the society girl who inflames workingclass Montgomery Clift in A
Place in the Sun George Stevens' remake of An American Tragedy It marked the first time that Taylor was taken seriously by the
criticsand, she has said, the first time she ever thought of herself as an actress. Back at Metro, she was positively radiant in period garb
for Ivanhoe (1952), positively wasted in the musical Love Is Better Than Ever (also 1952), and positively bewitching in The Girl Who
Had Everything (1953), Beau Brummel, The Last Time I Saw Paris and Rhapsody (all 1954). (She was decorative in Paramount's
Elephant Walk that same year, replacing an ailing Vivien Leigh.)
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-9-
George Stevens again gave Taylor a memorable screen assignment as the indomitable wife of oil tycoon Rock Hudson in Giant
(1956), an epic story for which she received favorable reviews. By now a real stunner, whose voluptuous curves perfectly
complemented her flawless features, Taylor had developed her instinct for bonding with the camera lens, an intangible ability reserved
for only a special few performers. As if by magic, she delivered three consecutive Oscarnominated performances, in Raintree County
(1957, as unstable Southern belle Susanna Drake), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958, as the fiery Maggie the Cat), and Suddenly, Last
Summer (1959, as the haunted Catherine), the last two films based on Tennessee Williams plays, and more demanding than anything
she'd done before.
Taylor's offscreen life, which up to this point had included marriages to hotel heir Nicky Hilton, actor Michael Wilding, producer
Mike Todd (reportedly her happiest union, curtailed by his untimely death), and singer Eddie Fisher, made nearly as many show-biz
columns as her screen work. Persistent health problems (and an emergency tracheotomy) sapped her energy and nearly led to her
death. Amid all that turmoil, she won her first Academy Award for the disaffected call girl she played in Butterfield 8 (1960). Absent
from the screen for several years, she resurfaced in Cleopatra (1963), one of the most publicized movies ever, and at that time the most
expensive movie ever made. Its lengthy production schedule had taken its toll on both the Taylor-Fisher marriage (an on-set romance
with leading man Richard Burton didn't help) and on Taylor herself, whose performance was uneven at best.
Taylor was divorced in 1964 and immediately wed Burton. As the most famous married couple in the world, they commanded
unprecedented salaries to costar on-screen, though only a few of their films were really good. The V.I.P.s (1963), The Sandpiper
(1965), The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedians, Dr. Faustus (all 1967), Boom! (1968), Under Milk Wood (1973), Hammersmith Is
Out (1972), and the TV movie Divorce His-Divorce Hers (1973) all take a backseat to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for
which Taylor won her second Oscar as Burton's blowsy, foul-mouthed wife. It was a brave and electrifying performance for a "glamor
queen" to give-and it remains one of her very best. (She and Burton divorced in 1974.)
She also starred in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), Secret Ceremony (1968), The Only Game in Town (1970), X Y and Zee
(1972), Ash Wednesday, The Driver's Seat (1973), and Night Watch (1974). The Taylor of this period was bloated and weary looking,
and frequently delivered lethargic performances. Gueststar appearances in That's Entertainment! (1974), The Blue Bird the prestige
TV movie Victory at Entebbe (both 1976), Winter Kills (1979), and a major role in A Little Night Music (1978) singing "Send in the
Clowns," were duly noted without much enthusiasm, but her performance as an aging movie star in Agatha Christie's The Mirror
Crack'd (1980) at least gave her something fun to do.
She has also starred in several madefor-TV movies, including Return Engagement (1978), Between Friends (1983, perhaps her best,
well matched with costar Carol Burnett), Malice in Won- derland (1985, as famed gossip colum- nist Louella Parsons), There Must Be
a Pony (1986), Poker Alice (1987), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1989). At decade's end she costarred with C. Thomas Howell in Franco
Zeffirelli's unreleased Young Toscanini In her later movies, Taylor's work has ranged from vital to vapid; clearly, a good script and a
good director are necessary to coax from Taylor the kind of performance she's capable of giving.
Over the years Taylor's personal life has continued to make fodder for the press. She briefly remarried Burton in 1976, then wed
Virginia Senator John Warner, then Larry Fortensky, a man some 20 years her junior, whom she met while in a rehab center getting
treatment for substance abuse. She is an indefatigable crusader for continued and expansive AIDS research and care funding, and says
her acting career is behind her. (Nevertheless, she was coaxed into appearing in 1994's The Flintstones-of all things-as Pearl
Slaghoople, Fred's mother-in-law, and gave a deliciously funny performance.) Her efforts on behalf of AIDS sufferers was rewarded
with the prestigious Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1993 Academy Awards ceremony. That same year she received the
American Film Institute Life Achievement Award. An "in- formal memoir," "Elizabeth Taylor by Elizabeth Taylor," was published in
1965.
Copyright ©1994 Leonard Maltin, used by arrangement with Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.
Chapter 3: Late-night guests.
Elizabeth Taylor knew that they were going for the kind of dumpy appearance, which she was
concerned about. She asked the cinematographer not to take it too far out, meaning that she
didn’t want to see any wide-angle lenses or fish eye lenses, used on her face.
Knowing that Martha acts abominable when drunk, he cautions her to behave herself in front of
the guests. She taunts him back, typical of the violent, self-destructive arguments they have had
in their joint lives together: "I swear, if you existed, I'd divorce you." Then, he warns her:
Try to keep your clothes on too. There aren't many more sickening sights in this world
than you with a couple of drinks in you and your skirt up over your head...
When the doorbell rings, George asks her to refrain from mentioning their mythical child while
the guests are there:
George: Just don't start in on the bit about the kid, that's all.
Martha: What do you take me for?
George: Much too much.
Martha: Yeah? Well I'll start in on the kid if I want to.
Martha: Just leave the kid out of this.
George: I'd advise against it, Martha.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-10-
As she explodes and yells "GODDAMN YOU!" at him, he flings open the door and there stand
their younger invited guests arriving for a nightcap. Feeling immediately ill at ease in a socially
awkward and uneasy situation are the 26-year-old plain blonde Honey (Sandy Dennis) and her
husband, a 28-year-old professor Nick (George Segal). George is pleased with himself that they
have unceremoniously heard Martha's hostile remark - coming from a "subhuman monster
yowling at 'em from inside."
They experimented with three different explicatives, as the door is opened here, to see which one
would get by the censors, this one seemed less offensive, “Goddamn.”
The appearance of Sandy Dennis lightens up the mood on the set, because of the character she is
playing. A little trivia here, Sandy Dennis was pregnant at the time of the filming, and suffered a
miscarriage on the set.
As you look at these four actors, every member of the cast received an Academy Award
nomination. The film shares this distinction only with Sleuth 1972.
You might also recognize George Segal from the television show, Just Shoot Me.
George Segal 1934Height
5' 11"
Spouse
'Sonia Schultz Greenbaum' (1996 - present)
'Linda Rogoff'
(1982 - 1996) (her death)
'Marion Sobel'
(1956 - 1981) (divorced); 2 daughters
Trivia
Accomplished banjo player. Arranged and performed on "A Touch of Ragtime" (1985) and performed with the Canadian Brass on
"Basin Street" (1987).
Shortly after his second wife's death, he ran into his high school sweetheart who became his third wife.
Attended Columbia University "Basin Street" (1987). Accomplished banjo player. Arranged and performed on "A Touch of Ragtime"
(1985) and performed with the Candian Brass on
Father of Polly Segal (b. 1966) and Elizabeth (b. 1962)
Where are they now
(6/99) Segal is enjoying a successful turn as Serge in the award-winning comedy "Art" on Broadway.
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Like it or not, many moviegoers will always remember George Segal as the repressed attorney whose senile mom (played by Ruth
Gordon) pulls down his pants and kisses his tushie in Where's Poppa? (1970). This ami- able, wavy-haired leading man is equally at
home in drama and comedy, although he's more often seen in the latter. Originally a stage actor and musician (he plays a mean banjo),
Segal appeared in several nondescript films in the early 1960s before raising eyebrows in 1965 as a distraught newlywed in Ship of
Fools and as a P.O.W. in King Rat He followed with top performances as Nick in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966, for which
he was Oscar-nominated), a Cagneyesque gangster in The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), perplexed police detective Mo
Brummel in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), a bookworm in The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), and in a pair of impressive dramatic
performances, a man laying waste to his marriage in Loving (1970) and a hairdresser turned junkie in Born to Win (1971). He was an
inept burglar in The Hot Rock (1972), a comically unfaithful husband in A Touch of Class a midlife crisis victim in Blume in Love
(both 1973), a suburbanite-turned-bank-robber in Fun With Dick and Jane (1977), and a faux gourmet in Who Is Killing the Great
Chefs of Europe? (1978). Segal was so appealing that too often he was asked to carry a film on his charm alone, especially in the
1970s. His Maltese Falcon spoof, The Black Bird (1975), was a major disappointment, while Lost and Found (1979) reunited him
with Touch of Class costar Glenda Jackson with no discernible sparks. He was relatively inactive in the 1980s, but bounced back as
the sleazy father of Kirstie Alley's baby in Look Who's Talking (1989, and in the 1993 sequel Look Who's Talking Now), and as the
leftwing comedy writer in For the Boys (1991), as well as the long-suffering insurance investigator in the short-lived TV series
"Murphy's Law" (1988-89).
OTHER FILMS INCLUDE: 1961:The Young Doctors 1963:Act One 1964:Invitation to a Gunfighter 1966:Lost Command, The
Quiller Memorandum 1968:Bye Bye Braverman, The Girl Who Couldn't Say No 1969:The Southern Star, The Bridge at Remagen
1974:The Terminal Man, California Split 1975: Russian Roulette 1976:The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox 1977:Rollercoaster
1980:The Last Married Couple in America 1981:Carbon Copy 1985:Stick 1989:All's Fair.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-11-
Copyright ©1994 Leonard Maltin, used by arrangement with Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.
Sandy Dennis was also a favorite with the crew, as she was so laid back and goofy. Elizabeth
Taylor would hangout with her a lot, when not on camera, in fact they were known for having
belching contests. Sandy always won the contests.
The crew was a rough and tumble bunch of guys, that would drink, smoke and party hard.
Wexler commented that it wasn’t terrible unusual for one of the guys to fall down drunk while
working, then the rest of the crew would carry him off and out of the way for him to sleep it off.
At this time in the business you could have an active social life, while making a movie.
Nowadays that is entirely not possible, due to the hours the crew must now put in, usually 12-14
hour days.
Too polite and naive to have refused the party invitation in the first place, Nick and Honey
suddenly find themselves pawn-like in the middle of an intellectual, argumentative war zone in a
most unusual evening resembling an endurance test. After Nick comments on an abstract
painting in the living room, George explains that it is "a pictorial representation of the order of
Martha's mind." Honey is already a bit tipsy from the earlier party and orders more brandy:
"Never mix-never worry." The first indication that Martha is lewdly flirting with Nick, one tactic
in her arsenal of weapons against her ineffectual husband, comes when she rubs her hand on his
knee, telling him that her "Daddy knows how to run things" at the college.
Notice that there aren’t a lot of close-ups being used here. Nowadays you see numerous closeups of the characters, even for reaction shots.
While everyone is drinking the free-flowing alcohol, George tells Martha to help the wilting
Honey find the bathroom in a famous line:
Martha, will you show her where we keep the...eh, euphemism?
After the two women leave, Nick mentions that George has been at the University for quite a
long time. George answers:
What? Oh...yes. Ever since I married, uh, What's-her-name...ah, Martha. Even before
that. (Pause) Forever. (To himself) Dashed hopes, and good intentions. Good, better, best,
bested. (To Nick) How do you like that for a declension, young man? Eh?
Early in the evening, George verbally tests the sparring skills of Nick in one of the evening's first
social games, but Nick is caught off-guard and easily out-matched and outwitted:
All right, what do you want me to say? Do you want me to say it's funny, so you can
contradict me and say it's sad? Or do you want me to say it's sad so you can turn around
and say no, it's funny. You can play that damn little game any way you want to, you
know?
Abruptly after his protest, Nick wants to escape and leave as soon as Honey returns, because he
realizes that he is starting to become embroiled in the middle of marital warfare, but George
merely excuses their behavior as an intellectual exercise:
Martha and I are having...nothing. Martha and I are merely exercising... that's all, we're
merely walking what's left of our wits. Don't pay any attention to it.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-12-
Nick remarks that he prefers not "to become involved in other people's affairs," but George
comforts and cajoles him into lowering his guard and remaining:
Well, you'll get over that - small college and all. Musical beds is the faculty sport around
here.
What you cannot see as you are watching the movie, is that there is numerous lighting areas, and
as the actors move into an area that area is illuminated by the light guy, situated at a dimmer
board. The dimmers go up and down, by the cameraman’s direction. This is something you
cannot do in colored film, since the color temperature would go. So this is a great advantage to
black and white photography is that you can dim lights as you desire.
Chapter 4: “Dashed hopes and good intentions.”
Slight error here, as the character Nick goes to the stairway, the focus point changes, but it
should change back on the character of George earlier than it does. Thus it leaves George out of
focus as he begins his speech.
Stradler was the original person to be the cameraman on this film, however Mike Nichols was in
a screening room with Stradler and Wexler, screening the film 8 ½, Nichols loved the film and
wanted to discuss it, Stradler commented, “I thought it was a piece of shit.” Nichols had Stradler
replaced by the Mr. Warner himself. Wexler was called into Warner’s office and told that he
would be the cameraman on Virginia Woolf. Wexler stated that he had already made a
commitment to work on another film. Warner informed him in the classic Hollywood line,
“You’ll do Virginia Woolf or you will never work in this town again!”
Wexler stated that he wasn’t sure if it was Burton’s acting ability, or his refreshments at lunch
that allowed him to play the drunken husband here. For Elizabeth Taylor’s birthday he
purchased her a Ford Toranado, complete with an eight-track player.
Chapter 5: “Why, Martha! Your Sunday chapel dress!”
After viewing some of the dailies, Mike Nichols stated that the film seemed too dark. So they
boasted some of the fill lights in this room and everyone seemed to be happy after that change.
George notes that Nick's wife is "slim-hipped," but learns that they don't have kids yet: "We want
to wait a little, until we're settled." When Honey joins their company again, she tells George in a
bright voice: "I didn't know that you had a son...A son. I hadn't known...Tomorow is his birthday.
He will be sixteen." George wheels around after the second oblique reference to their son,
asking: "She told you about him." Then, he turns and glares upstairs, angry that she has violated
their life-long pledge of discretion by revealing their make-believe procreation of a fantasy child,
an imaginary son, that they could never have: "OK, Martha, OK....Damn destructive." (The child
was created for self-protection, as a scapegoat, and to provide a common meeting ground for the
warring couple.)
His film is a serious film for adults, for individuals who want to look deeper into the human
condition. This film was always viewed as an important piece, both from the studios perspective
and the production team. Mike Nichols draws a professional quality from the cast and crew, and
a need to please him attitude pervades his teams.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-13-
As you look at these shots you have to realize that this scene was filmed four times just to get the
shots, in other words, filmed once with a separate shot on Richard Burton, then filmed with a
separate shot on Elizabeth Taylor, and so forth. Then with mistakes you have to film again, thus
it would not be terribly uncommon to do these takes of this scene at least twenty times.
When Martha makes her reappearance in the living room, she has changed her clothes into
something more comfortable and voluptuous, slacks and a tawdry, tight-fitting blouse something she rarely does according to George: "Martha is not changing for me. Martha hasn't
changed for me in years. If Martha is changing, it means we're gonna be here for days. You are
being accorded an honor..." George calls her new attire her "Sunday chapel dress." Martha lets
more sparks fly by bawdily insulting her husband's position in the History Department:
George is bogged down in the History Department. He's an old bog in the History
Department, that's what George is. A bog...A fen...A G.D. swamp. Ha, ha, ha, ha, A
Swamp. Hey, swamp. Hey, SWAMPY!
Learning that Nick was both a quarterback and a former intercollegiate state middleweight
boxing champion, Martha makes lascivious, obscene advances toward the attractive young man.
She taunts him: "You still look like you have a pretty good body now, too, is that right? Have
you?...Is that right? Have you kept your body?" Even Honey naively encourages her
observations about his studly body: "Yes, he has a very firm body." Martha describes how her
own "paunchy" husband doesn't like "body talk. 'Paunchy' here isn't too happy when the
conversation moves to muscle."
The shot of Richard leaving the room, was all done with a hand held camera, this allowed for a
quieter movement of the camera and the area was restrictive in size. Again handheld camera as
Richard is walking down the hall.
One of the most dramatic, riveting moments of the film blurs fantasy and reality. Martha brings
up another embarrassing wound from the past, questioning George's manliness. She describes a
public boxing match incident which her Daddy orchestrated in his back yard. When George told
his father-in-law that he didn't want to box, Martha got into the pair of gloves herself and
punched George POW right in the jaw, sending him crashing into a huckleberry bush. During her
story telling, George finds a shotgun in another room, stalks his prey, and takes aim at the back
of Martha's head. When Honey notices the gun, she screams in fright. Martha turns her head to
face him as he pulls the trigger - out blossoms a brightly-striped umbrella, a symbolic display of
his weakness and sexual impotency in another of his games. He adds sound effects: "Pow. You're
dead!" They laugh, mostly from relief and confusion.
Dolly shot of the backs of them on the coach. The shot to Elizabeth’s face was making use of a
new technology of zoom lenses. The zoom lenses was new and it was not used very much in
feature films.
George won't allow Martha to play "blue games for the guests" when they kiss and she moves his
hand down onto her breast: "Everything in its place Martha, everything in its own good time."
Honey asks again about the most sensitive subject of the evening - their son. The feuding couple
use the imaginary son as a weapon in most of their arguments:
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-14-
Honey (giggling and drunk): When is...where is your son coming home?
George: Ohhh. Martha? When is our son coming home?
Martha: Never mind.
George: No, no. I want to know. You brought it out into the open. When is he coming
home, Martha?
Martha: I said never mind. I'm sorry I brought it up.
George: Him up...not it. You brought him up. Well, more or less. When's the little bugger
going to appear? I mean, isn't tomorrow meant to be his birthday or something?
Martha: I don't want to talk about it.
George: But Martha...
Martha: I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.
George: I'll bet you don't. (To Honey and Nick) Martha does not want to talk about
it...him. Martha is, uh, sorry she brought it up...him.
Honey (idiotically giggling): When's the little bugger coming home?
George: Yes, Martha...now that you've had the bad taste to bring the matter up in the first
place...when is the little bugger coming home?
On the “your right at the meat of things,” they strategically placed George’s crotch at Elizabeth’s
head.
Chapter 6: “When is our son coming home?”
The writing of Edward Albee serves studying, there is so much there, it is rather dense. People
will study this again and again and still walk away with new insights into these characters. It
became fashionable for people tot say that George and Martha were really a homosexual couple
and that is why they had this make believe son. In reality it is more of a study on dysfunctional
people and what holds them together, or apart as a couple.
Exasperated, Martha counter attacks and accuses George of having his own problems by
attacking his pride. She brings up more statements, which are either suspect, true, false, or
concocted lies. One fact that is undeniably reinforced is that levelheaded, rational George has
biologically participated in the creation of their son. But they argue over their non-existent son,
she insisting that the boy has green eyes, he claiming the child has blue eyes:
Martha: George's biggest problem about the little...about our son, about our great big son,
is that deep down in the private-most pit of his gut, he's not completely sure that it's his
own kid.
George: My God, you're a wicked woman.
Martha: And I've told you a million times, baby...I wouldn't conceive with anyone else,
you know that baby.
George: A deeply wicked person.
Honey (grieving and drunk): Oh my, my, my, my, my...
Nick: I'm not sure that this is a subject for...
George: Martha's lying. I want you to know that right now. Martha is lying. There are
very few things that I am certain of anymore, but the one thing, the one thing in this
whole sinking world that I am sure of is my partnership, my chromosomological
partnership in the...creation of our...blond-eyed, blue-haired...son...
Martha: ...George, our son does not have blue hair or blue eyes, for that matter. He has
green eyes, like me. Beautiful, beautiful green eyes.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-15-
George: He has blue eyes Martha.
Martha: Green.
George: Blue, Martha.
Martha: GREEN you bastard.
Soon, the constantly harried George wants no more of her vicious humiliation and gross
emasculation, trapped in a marriage with a demanding, shrewish wife and controlled by her highpowered, successful "Daddy." He threatens to get angry over her continuing revelations of their
courtship, marriage, and son, and the insulting contrasts she makes of him to her father. Martha
believes George could never stand up to her father:
George: You've already sprung a leak about you-know-what...about the sprout, the little bugger,
our son. If you start in on this other business, Martha, I warn you.
Martha: I stand warned...So anyway, I married to S.O.B. I had it all planned out. First, he'd take
over the History Department. Then when Daddy retired, he'd take over the whole college, you
know? That was the way it was supposed to be....Until he watched for a couple of years and
started thinking that maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all, that maybe Georgie-boy didn't
have the stuff, that maybe he didn't have it in him!...You see, George didn't have much push, he
wasn't particularly aggressive. In fact, he was sort of a FLOP! A great big, fat, FLOP!
The pacing and ranting by Martha here, was meant to be done in one take, that is the way that
Nichols wanted it to appear.
The shot at the mantle requires a wild wall, where the wall was taken out, in order to get the shot.
On the word FLOP, George startles the guests by breaking a bottle against the portable bar. But
Martha continues her angry tirade:
So here I am, stuck with this FLOP, this BOG in the History Department...
They speak over each other's lines, their voices rising to drown each other out. Having
withdrawn into an inner intellectual world of words and activities, George has numbed and
blocked himself off, losing his "guts":
Martha:
...who's married to the President's daughter,
George:
who's expected to be somebody, not just a
Go on Martha, go on. Martha. Don't Martha,
nobody, a bookworm who's so god-damn
don't. All right, all right. (Singing) Who's afraid
complacent that he can't make anything out of of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia
himself, that doesn't have the guts to make
Woolf. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, so early
anybody proud of him. ALL RIGHT
in the morning.
GEORGE! STOP IT!
Totally soused, Honey joins George in his singing and he swings her around in circles: "Who's
afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf..." But then she rushes toward the
bathroom in the hall, nauseated by the movement, dizzy from inebriation, and upset by Martha's
crude behavior: "I'm going to be sick, I'm going to be sick."
By having the overlapping dialogue here, it was breaking one of the film rules of the day. The
shot of them spinning, Wexler tied a rope around the actor and himself, and then they spun him
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-16-
holding the hand held camera and filming at the same time. That would have been a Point-ofView shot.
Act One Summary: "Fun and Games"
Open on the home of George and Martha, a middle-aged couple in the East coast college town of
New Carthage. We hear a crash in the darkness. The door opens, the lights come on, and Martha
enters followed by George. Martha quotes the line "What a dump!" from a Bette Davis movie,
then proceeds to nag George, demanding he figure out what movie it's from. George at first
humors his wife but clearly doesn't know or care. He accuses her of braying, but when she brays,
"I don't bray!" he quickly recants.
Martha demands George make her a drink and then informs him they've got guests coming.
Martha invited a couple they met at a faculty party that evening - a thirtyish, blond man from the
math department and his mousy, slim-hipped wife - because her Daddy, the president of the
college, said they should be nice to them. George is not happy. It's two o'clock in the morning.
Martha accuses him sulking, then patronizingly acts sympathetic. When she doesn't get a
reaction, she begins to sing, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" to the tune of "Who's afraid of
the Big Bad Wolf?" insisting that George - who continues to ignore her - thought it was hilarious
at the party.
Fed up, Martha begins to rant about George being a "simp." She gets off track saying he "doesn't
even have the - the what?" and George calmly finishes the sentence for her - "the guts." They
share a moment of laughter, and the tension diffuses momentarily. The talk turns to the ice in
Martha's drink - which she always eats - and George reminds her that she'll always be six years
older than him. She demands a kiss, but he refuses, with the excuse that he'll get too excited,
have to take her in the floor, and then their guests will come in. Martha, a heavy drinker, wants
another drink, and George tells her she better stay on her feet and keep her clothes on when the
guests arrive.
The doorbell rings. Martha demands George get it but when he refuses, she just yells, "Come
in!" He moves toward the door, begging her not to do "the bit about the kid." They argue about
it, and just as Martha yells, "screw you" at George, Nick and Honey step inside. Martha covers
with an expression of over-politeness, inviting them in. Nick wonders if maybe it's too late and
they should go, but Martha pushes them to sit down. Nick attempts to comment on a painting but
George mocks him by finishing his sentences with meaningless insights.
Martha offers to get them drinks (brandy for Honey, bourbon for Nick), and George remarks on
Martha's changing taste drinks since they were courting. Martha launches into another rendition
of "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and Nick when pressed says it was funny. When George
remarks on Martha's demand that people who find something funny "bust a gut," Honey pipes up
that she had fun at the party and compliments Martha's father, the college president. George
deadpans that he's a god and remarks on how many faculty parties he's been to. Nick kills the
attempted rapport by describing the poor reception he received when teaching in Kansas. Honey
says she had to introduce herself to the other wives at the supermarket.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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Martha's insistence that "Daddy knows how to run things" prompts George to confide that there
are easier things than to be married to the daughter of the president of a university - to which
Martha declares that for some men, it would be an opportunity. Honey tries to escape by asking
the way to the restroom, and Martha offers to show her the whole house - but not before scoffing
at George's reminder not to shoot her mouth off about "you-know-what."
Left alone, George refills Nick's drink and attempt to make small talk by asking if Nick's in the
math department. He's not. When he starts playing with Nick, turning his answers around, Nick
gets testy. George says he's been here ever since he married Martha - "forever" and demands
Nick comment on his declension: "Good. Better. Bested." Nick calls George on his little game,
and George sincerely tries to calm him down, wrenching the glass out of his hand to freshen it.
Nick wants to leave, assuming that George and Martha are having a fight and not wanting to get
into other people's affairs, but George says it's just exercise. Besides, "musical beds is the faculty
sport around here."
George acts Nick's age (28) and says he's forty something, though he looks older. He asks his
weight and says they should play handball sometime. Honey, Nick says, is 26. George turns back
to the topic of Nick being in the math department, but Nick says that in fact he is in the biology
department. George is "very mistrustful" of the biologists who are going to make everyone
exactly the same by rearranging all the "chromosomes." George, however, is in the History
Department - though Martha would prefer that he be the History Department, that is be the head
of the History Department. He did run it for four years during the war but then everybody didn't
get killed and came back to the university.
Suddenly, George comments that Nick's wife is "slim-hipped," wonders what the women are
doing upstairs, and asks if Nick and Honey have kids. Not yet, Nick says, but hedges that they
are going to have some when George asks. When asked if he's going to be happy in New
Carthage, Nick says he thinks they'll stay, though not forever. George tells him that Martha's
father likes devotion from his staff. One man actually died "in the line of service" in the cafeteria
line at lunch. But the old man is never going to die and according to George is two hundred years
old.
Suddenly George yells for Martha, who howls back. Honey reenters, and George and Martha
keep shouting at each other. Honey says that Martha is changing to be comfortable and remarks
she hadn't known till a minute ago that George and Martha had a son. Tomorrow's his birthday.
He'll be twenty-one. George is strangely flustered and insults the absent Martha. Honey suggests
to Nick that they be getting home, and a preoccupied George asks if they're keeping the
babysitter up. Nick sounds like he's warning George when he reminds him that they don't have
children and tells Honey they'll go in a little while.
George tells Nick that Martha must be changing for him, as she hasn't changed for George in
years. Martha enters looking more comfortable and most voluptuous, showing her body off and
acting flirtatious. There's a seemingly friendly exchange about the men wanting to know what
the women were talking about. Honey has told Martha that Nick got his masters when he was
only 19. Martha doesn't think George is impressed enough, and George says he wouldn't be
surprised if Nick took over the History Department. Martha notices his mistake and proclaims
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-18-
that George is preoccupied with the History Department - and George finishes for her, because
he is not the History Department - and continues that he's bogged down in it, laughingly calling
him swampy.
George restrains his anger with some trouble and offers to get Martha something - saying that he
holds her hand when it's dark and takes her gin bottles out after midnight so no one sees but will
not light her cigarette when she asks. Nick lights Martha's cigarette, and she coos over his
football and boxing experience, as well as his body. George is amazed that Honey acts amused.
George stalks off down the hall.
Martha launches into a story about a boxing match she and George had about twenty years ago, a
couple of years after they were married. It was wartime, and her Daddy was on a physical fitness
kick. He wanted to box with George in the backyard one Sunday, and George didn't want to. So
Martha put on a pair of gloves and snuck up behind George, yelled his name, and punched him
much harder than she expected in the jaw, knocking him down. George advances from down the
hall and pulls a shotgun on Martha. Honey sees it first, then Nick, and just as Martha looks up,
he pulls the trigger. A large parasol blossoms from the barrel of the gun. Honey, who had just
screamed, laughs, as do Martha and George.
As Nick examines the gun, Martha demands a kiss from George, who reluctantly gives it to her,
then pulls away when he places his hand on her breast - accusing her of having blue games for
the guests. She's angry and hurt. He gets drinks for all and shows Nick the gun and parasol.
Honey, looking for attention, keeps insisting that she's never been so frightened in her life.
Martha laughs when George asks is she thought he was going to kill her but he says he might,
some day. Nick sets off for the bathroom. When he sets his glass down, George says that it's
okay, since Martha leaves them all over the house, even in the freezer once. Amused in spite of
herself, Martha insists that she didn't.
Honey, who's still drinking brandy, says she never gets a hangover because she doesn't mix and
doesn't drink much. When George brings up Nick's talk about the chromosomes, Martha insists
that Nick is in the Math Department until Honey quietly contradicts her. Martha says that
biology's even better because it's right at the meat of thing - which she tells Nick when he
returns, launching into her rant about "swampy" George not taking over the History Department.
She compliments Nick on his chromosome work, saying she loves chromosomes.
George complains that they are tweaking chromosomes to make a race of test tube bread men
who are superb and exactly the same. They'll all look just like Nick. The dark side is that
hundreds of "sperm tubes" of the stupid, ugly, imperfect, and infirm will have to be cut, in order
to have this race of glorious men - a race of blond scientists at the middle weight limit. There
will be a loss of liberty and diversity of course. Nick's not happy. George goes on that his field,
history, will lose its unpredictability, and there will be order and constancy. He refuses, however,
to "give up Berlin" - because there is a saloon in West Berlin where the barstools are five feet
high. He will fight Nick, with one hand on his scrotum, to the death. Martha mock laughs.
Honey, drunk, doesn't why Nick never told her this. Nick is furious.
When Martha salaciously asks if everyone is going to look like Nick in this new world, he says
he's going to be a personal screwing machine. Honey doesn't want to hear this and pouts for a
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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second, then giggles insanely, asking George where his son is. Very formally, George asks
Martha when their son is coming home. Martha tries to brush off this topic of conversation, but
George insists, reminding her that tomorrow is the "little bugger's" birthday. Martha announces
that George talks disparagingly about the "little bugger" because he's not completely sure it's his
own kid. Drunk, Honey is blown away by all this. George insists that at the core of his being,
he's certain of his "chromosomological partnership" in the creation of this "blond-eyed, bluehaired" son.
Martha's impressed and says she knows better. She's been to college like everyone else. George
says she's also been a convent when she was younger. Martha says she was an atheist then and
still is - but George corrects by calling her a pagan. There's some relatively good-natured joking,
and Martha calls George a floozie - until Honey corrects that Martha's a floozie and asks for
more brandy. Martha says that their son has green eyes, and they argue about that. Her own eyes
are green - but more like hazel - George's are milky blue, and Daddy's are green. George insists
that her father has tiny red eyes and white hair and is in fact a big white mouse. Martha says that
George hates Daddy for his own - inadequacies, George finishes. George leaves.
Martha tells Nick that George hates her father. Nick tries to make light of it, but she insists she's
not kidding and has no sense of humor Honey's excited when Martha says she's going to say why
"the SOB" hates her father - her mother died early, she grew up with Daddy and worshipped
him. Daddy built the college and is the college. After Martha got back from college, Miss Muff's
Academy for Ladies, where she had been married for a week, her sophomore year, in a "kind of
junior Lady Chatterly arrangement," to a naked landscaper, until Miss Muff and Daddy got it
annulled, she sat around for a while and acted as hostess for Daddy. Then, she got the idea she'd
marry into the college, someone to be groomed to take Daddy's place. This was her idea, not
Daddy's. Then George came along.
George enters and hears this. Honey, who has been pretty out of it, is glad to see him back.
Martha continues that George was young and intelligent - and six years younger than her, George
says - in the History Department, and she fell for him. George plays along, calling her a romantic
at heart, until Martha brings up the idea of succession. He too-patiently tries to get her to stop,
especially now that she's already sprung a leak about their son, and warns her if she continues,
he's going to get angry. Martha continues as George fumes at the bar.
Daddy thought this grooming thing was a good idea until he watched George for a couple of
years and realized George didn't have the stuff - that George was a great big FLOP. George
breaks a bottle against the bar and stands there, almost crying, telling Martha to stop. He drops it
on the floor, as Martha calmly warns them he better not have wasted good alcohol, since he can't
afford that on an Associate Professor's salary. She continues that he was no good at trustees'
dinners, fundraising, and now she's stuck with this flop who's married to the president's daughter
and expected to be somebody. Under her entire speech, George sings "Who's afraid of Virginia
Woolf?" But instead she's stuck with a contemplative bookworm that doesn't have the guts to
make anybody proud. Honey joins in singing with George, then suddenly says she's going to be
sick and runs down the hall. Nick goes after her. Martha goes after them, leaving George onstage
alone at curtain.
Act One Analysis:
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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The action of this act takes place in the home of George and Martha in New Carthage,
Connecticut. In his use of setting, Edward Albee critiques the very subject matter he had first
attacked in his earlier one-act play American Dream. Albee wrote this play in the early 1960's, at
a time when Americans were beginning to question the American dream of the postwar 1950's.
George's critical references to World War Two throughout this act reveal the way the author and
characters' lives have been shaped by twentieth-century American history.
George, who says he was at the college helming the History Department during the war, was
clearly exempt from service. Though we are given no explicit reason why he didn't serve as so
many of the professors did, his lack of participation in the military is one of many reason that he
- and more so, Martha - doubt his manhood. Another example in which manhood is even more
explicitly linked to fighting is the anecdote about Martha's father, who wanted to box with
George. George's recognition that his father-in-law, though old, is stronger than him, and his
refusal to fight demonstrate just how deeply George has internalized his belief in the old man's
power over him.
George's insistence that no one from New Carthage College died during the war exposes the
myth of the American dream as false and empty. The association between manhood and military
service is false; according to George, non of the other New Carthage professors risked their lives
in the war. Ironically, George's temporary success - his temporary position as head of the history
department during the war - comes only as a result of his perceived weakness. Only because he
was not perceived as possessing the requisite strength to prove his manhood in war did he have a
chance to (temporarily) achieve the position he could not achieve through direct action.
George's accomplishment of action through passivity - what might psychologically be labeled
passive aggression - is evident from his very first interaction with Martha. At first, as she rants
about Bette Davis and hounds George to recall what movie she's describing, it seems that George
is simply ignoring her, out of tiredness or apathy. As her anger mounts, however, it becomes
apparent that his vague responses and refusals to engage in a shouting match with her and as
much a power struggle and part of a game as her louder attempts are.
The title of this act is "Fun and Games." In part, this title is ironic. The games Martha and
George play are not fun for them or for their guests. Yet, the interactions in this act are very
much games. Something as little as Martha demanding George answer the door, light her
cigarette, or kiss her became imbued with additional meaning as they're integrated into an
ongoing power struggle. Only gradually does it become clear to the viewer, as well as to Honey
and Nick, that these are games. As real as the emotions that George and Martha feel and express,
the couple also derives a perverse pleasure from their ongoing emotional and psychological
games.
Albee employs a great deal of contrast in allowing his viewer/reader to understand the gameplaying that characterizes George and Martha's interaction. On a character level, there is
immediate contrast between Martha's "braying" aggression and George's passive display of
apathy. Despite the initial appearance, this is not a simply portrayal of strength vs. weakness, as
we see when the power struggle shifts later in the scene. On a larger level, there are immediate
and sudden contrasts between hostility and anger and more amused game-playing. The first
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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example of this occurs when, in the midst of their initial argument, George finishes Martha's
sentence insulting him. For a moment after that, the tension seems to defuse, and George and
Martha share a moment of laughter. From that moment, it is also clear that these arguments are a
common part of George and Martha's interaction.
This is not to say that Albee lessens the emotional important of George and Martha's conflict by
exploring it through the metaphor of the game. This is clearly a brutal, deadly-serious game. The
juxtaposition of the real war with Martha's father's attempts to train the remaining faculty to box
- to punch the Germans should they invade, Martha jokes - demonstrates that what are
considered "only" games can have just as serious consequences as conventional warfare.
The warfare metaphor is continued in George's refusal to surrender Berlin demonstrates the
character and authors' understanding of the very real meaning of symbols in the world. Though
the city of West Berlin itself was very small in comparison to the rest of Europe, it was at the
time a symbolic location during the Cold War. The American government believed that were
they to surrender Berlin to the Communists, other nations belief in American power would
unravel and chaos would ensue. Thus, while Berlin was in many ways a symbol of Western
resistance to Communist power, the destruction of such a symbol was believed to have had
destructive real-life consequences. From his reference, it is clear that George understands the
power of a symbol. This realization foreshadows a significant act George will make in the third
and final act of the play.
One symbolic act George undertakes in this part of the play is the "killing" of Martha with the
Japanese gun. It is significant that he "shoots" her with a Japanese gun. Given his inability to
protect her and the country during World War Two, he now symbolically destroys her with an
instrument of the war. However, it is an interesting contrast and juxtaposition to the violent
subtext that a parasol - an instrument of protection rather than destruction - shoots out. Thus, it
may be inferred that despite his animosity towards her and attempts to destroy his wife, George
has a simultaneous and oft-thwarted urge to protect her.
From their initial shared laughter to Martha's continued demands for kisses, the dialectic of
love/hate becomes clear in this play. Albee demonstrates that love and hate are dialectical - two
sides of the same coin. Hating each other does not preclude George and Martha from
simultaneously loving and needing each other. Martha's story of falling for young George can be
taken seriously, and there are complicated motives behind her demand for a kiss.
Albee wrote in the school of the Theatre of the Absurd, whose earlier writers included Beckett
and Genet. One of the characteristics of absurdist drama is the characters' recognition of the
absurdity of existence. They did not ask to live and they will die without wishing it. Thus
alienated from their surroundings, they seek comfort in illusion. Characters' recognition of this
illusion and struggle to survive the absurdity of existence characterizes Theatre of the Absurd.
Clearly, Martha and George - and to a lesser extent, Nick and Honey - are characters who thrive
on illusions. To deprive them of these illusions is tantamount to a violent act.
George and Martha's entire existence is based on illusion. Martha married George not because of
who he was but because of who she imagined he - and by extension, she - could become. She
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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married the illusion of George-who-would-be-university-president. George too bought into that
illusion, and the realization that it is untrue, that George is in fact a flop, has wrought significant
damage on their lives.
One of the biggest illusions in this play is hinted at from early on in this act, when George begs
Martha not to do the bit about the kid. Though this is not confirmed with certainty until the third
act, their veiled arguments about the kid here foreshadow the revelation that "the kid" is not real.
He does not exist but rather is a shared and private illusion. George and Martha's battle about
who can talk about the kid and their later talk of his parentage makes clear that this is a shared
creation and illusion. George's underlying fear seems to be that by sharing their illusion with
outsiders would threaten to expose it as illusion and destroy the comfort it brings.
To a lesser but no less true degree, Nick and Honey are also creatures of illusion. Certainly, their
little social niceties - pretending not to notice George and Martha's arguments, laughing at things
they don't find funny, changing the subject of conversation - are meant to preserve an illusion of
civility and present the image of a happy couple. While for Nick, the tete-a-tete with George
destroys the illusion to a great degree, Honey's increasing drunkenness and her offstage talk with
Martha only increase her susceptibility to illusion. Seeming only to exist in the moment, she
takes at face value what she hears, eager, for example, to hear Martha's story of how she came to
marry George.
As well as appearing as a parody of the stereotypical young society wife, Honey functions as a
Greek chorus in this play. Her increasingly intoxication functions to make her reactions more
honest and immediate. She is also a childlike figure, the most guileless character in the play, and
therefore susceptible to the illusions woven by the other characters.
Classical mythology also gets referenced in the setting of the play - New Carthage. Classical
Carthage was the home of the mythical tragic lovers Dido and Aeneas, who provide an
unexpected counterpoint to George and Martha. Later, Carthage was destroyed. Here, New
Carthage is the site of the destruction of the American dream.
The New England setting of the play is also significant in Albee's commentary on the American
dream. Simply the word "New" in New Carthage is a suggestion of hope and a second chance.
We learn in this act that George is Martha's second husband, her second chance at a happy
marriage. As a younger counterpoint to George and Martha, Nick and Honey are also a more
hopeful attempt at fixing the mistakes of the past.
The symbolism inherent in George and Nick's chosen departments is obvious. George - already
obsolete, meaningless and powerless - is "bogged" in the history department. He is already a relic
of the past. Nick, in contrast, embodies the future in his youth and his position in the biology
department. George's description of a genetically-altered race of supermen that look just like
Nick emphasizes Nick's very embodiment of the scientist-as-wave-of-the-future. Some critics
have even suggested that Nick's name recalls that of Nikita Khruschchev, who had recently risen
to become Premier of the Soviet Union at the time of the play's writing. Thus, "Nick" succeeds in
destroying illusions like Berlin and the American dream.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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George's description of the "dark side" of chromosomal research is significant. He says that the
ugly, the imperfect, and the stupid would be, in effect, sterilized, and he threatens to fight against
Nick and this future while holding onto his scrotum. Thus, it is clear that George perceives
Nick's position in the biology department not only as a threat to the world at large but more so as
a threat to unman him.
Interestingly, George and Martha's imaginary son embodies the "perfect" appearance of this
equally imagined race of future men. The boy's physical perfection - blond hair, blue eyes foreshadows the fact that he is an illusion. Nick functions as a parallel to the imaginary son not
only in appearance but in George's reference to him. At one time, he accidentally refers to Nick,
who is 28, as being 21 years old - the same age as Martha has said their son will turn tomorrow.
Indeed, throughout this play, George and Martha at times function as albeit dysfunctional
parental figures to Nick and Honey, shaping and molding them, though not necessarily in
positive ways.
George and Martha themselves embody the failure of the American Dream. Their first names, of
course, evoke the country's first president and first-lady. This George has failed to be president
like his namesake. Unlike Washington, who could not tell a lie, George thrives on illusion. And
this Martha, far from being the respectable image presented by Martha Washington, is a floozie
who flirts with other women's husbands in front of them.
The title of this play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, comes from a joking, intellectual take on
the nursery rhyme, evidently told as a joke at the faculty party attended by the foursome. At first,
it seems like only nonsense but gradually becomes an emotional anthem, as when George chants
it, fearful of Martha's revelations about his failure. Not only does the rhyme recall "Who's afraid
of the Big Bad Wolf?" from the nursery rhyme and thus remark on the interior fear of all the
characters but it references Virginia Woolf, a writer who wrote about modern people's alienation
from each other and ultimately killed herself. Edward Albee has said he saw the sentence
scribbled on the wall of Greenwich Village bar.
Chapter 7: Backyard conversation; George’s soliloquy.
Filming like this outside at this time period would require numerous lighting fixtures to do those
cross lights through the trees. Nowadays, we can achieve this shot with the use of high crane and
a moon source light above to provide all of the light needed for the shot, plus film is more
sensitive to light now.
While Martha makes coffee for Honey, Nick joins George in the front yard for more drinks.
There, he shares confidences with George about his own 'shotgun marriage' to Honey:
Nick: ...I married her because she was pregnant...It was a hysterical pregnancy. She blew
up and then she went down.
George: And when she was up, you married her.
Nick: And then she went down. (They share a laugh together.)
Notice as Nick is at the tree that the camera continues to move in to these guys.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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As Richard sits down next to the tree, watch the edges of the frame and you will be able to
perceive a slow dolly move forward. This is known as the Bergin speech.
The script editor was the individual who would help with the matching here. It is not such a
central concern as it is in a colored film that is with makeup but she would check his hair
position, his tie, collar, etc.
This is a character driven film, noting is going to happen here, except the acting of these
characters. Film acting, as an art, is really rare to find these days. This is one of the best
examples of a film that focuses on film acting. Nowadays there is a feeling that in order for an
actor to make things real they have to be less in control. In reality you have controls and they
must function artistically and not in a haphazard way.
They spent three nights outside filming, and the farmers in the area sued Warner Brothers, stated
that their cows did not rest well at night, due to the lights, and as a result did not give much milk.
This is kind of expected. Usually where ever a film company goes there follows some kind of
frivolous lawsuit; one of the main reasons for these suits is the knowledge that film companies
usually just settle with them.
Both couples are childless - incapable of having children, although George and Martha have
invented a son. He admits to the great, private joke of his own marriage: "Martha doesn't have
pregnancies at all," but we do have "just one...one boy...our son...Yeah, well, he's a...comfort,
he's a bean bag...You wouldn't understand." George describes his own "messy" marriage as one
of "accommodation" and "adjustment." Nick responds that his marriage was motivated in part by
Honey's money and family pressure rather than by passionate romance. His father-in-law was a
corrupt evangelical preacher ("man of the Lord") who left his daughter financially rich and
secure.
After their drunken banter has progressed and they appear male-bonded, George shifts alliances
with Nick and states that he is a potential threat:
George: You realize that I've been drawing you on this stuff because you represent a direct threat
to me and I want to get the goods on you...I mean I've warned you, you stand warned...
Nick: I stand warned. It's you sneaky types worry me the most, you know. You ineffectual sons
of bitches. You're the worst.
George: Well, I'm glad you don't believe me. After all, you've got history on your side.
Nick: You've got history on your side. I've got biology on mine.
This shot of the two of them drinking on the ground, was accomplished by digging a hole in the
ground and placing the camera in the hole, with a high hat, with the camera operator laying on
his stomach.
Drinking in films at this time period was routine. It was common for the husband to come home
from work and make a drink for him and his wife to share at the dinner table. This of course
changed American culture and legitimized the social drinking that America is so fond of now.
Films did the same thing with cigarette smoking and there was a tremendous effluence by
Hollywood, on the American public to take up these habits. Hollywood has set clothes and hair
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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fashions, but they also pushed the use of alcohol and cigarettes. Nowadays it is more overt, they
look for tie-in’s of products to sell on screen, and the American public is much more aware of
the soft sell that is going on. Plus with the new pressures of a responsible Hollywood, from both
the political and religious entity’s we are seeing a change in Hollywood, and what they show on
screen.
The sound here was being recorded on 35 mm magnetic film, thus the editor was dealing with 35
mm tape and 35 mm picture.
The lessons of history have taught George that the younger generation, represented by Nick, may
potentially subvert future history with self-serving aggrandizement, including the possibility of
seducing George's wife:
Nick: What I thought I'd do is, I'd sort of insinuate myself generally, you know, find all
the weak spots...become sort of a fact and then turn into a, a what? (gesturing toward
George)
George: An inevitability.
Nick: Exactly, an inevitability. Take over a few courses from the older men, plow a few
pertinent wives.
George: Now that's it. I mean, you can shove aside all the older men you can find, but
until you start plowing pertinent wives, you're really not working. That's the way to
power. Plow 'em all!...The way to a man's heart, the wide inviting avenue to his job is
through his wife, and don't you forget it.
Nick: And I'll bet your wife's got the widest, most inviting avenue on the whole damn
campus. (He laughs) I mean, her father being president and all.
George: You bet your historical inevitability.
Nick: Yessiree. I'd just better get her off into the bushes right away.
George offers his unwilling guest "good advice": "There's quicksand here and you'll be dragged
down before you know it...sucked down...You disgust me on principle and you're a smug son of
a bitch personally but I'm trying to give you a survival kit.." Nick responds vehemently as they
both move toward the house: "UP YOURS!" George delivers a long monologue in response:
You take the trouble to construct a civilization...to build a society based on the principles of...you
make government and art, and realize that they are, must be, both the same...you bring things to
the saddest of all points...to the point where there is something to lose...then all at once, through
all the music, through all the sensible sounds of men building, attempting, comes the Dies Irae.
And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? Up yours.
Another element of this film that attracts people is that it assumes that the audience is mature and
intellectual, that you have the ability to keep up with this banter and at the same time
comprehend all of the nuisances of it. The deep feelings, or people’s fantasies, it doesn’t assume
that you need to have a car crash every five minuets, or somebody pulling out a gun, doing
violence or exercising power. It assumes that each of us is capable of philosophical discussion,
of knowing what drama has been over time.
Chapter 8: Dancing at the diner.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-26-
When their guests insist on leaving, George retrieves the car to take them home. On their short
drive in the car, the subject shifts from Honey's retching to the reason for their son's constant
throwing up - Martha is described as a destructive child abuser:
George: ...the real reason why our son used to throw up all the time, wife and lover, was because
he couldn't stand you fiddling at him all the time, breaking into his bedroom with your kimono
flying, fiddling...
Martha: Yeah, and I suppose that's why he ran away from home twice in one month. Twice in
one month! Six times in one year.
George: Our son ran away from home all the time because Martha here used to corner him.
Martha: I NEVER CORNERED THE SON OF A BITCH IN MY LIFE.
George: He used to run up to me when I'd get home, and he'd say: 'Mama's always coming at
me.' That's what he'd say.
Martha: Liar!
The scene in the car is a processed shot. Wexler and Nichols wanted to shoot this as an actual
shot, but there were too many fans and crowd control to deal with, thus they went back to LA to
shoot these shots in the studio.
When the subject of dancing is raised, Honey sees a roadhouse sign for a restaurant: "Red Basket
Cocktails - Dancing" and expresses her interest: "I'd love some dancing...I want some! I want
some dancing!..I just love dancing. Don't you?...I dance like the wind." George suddenly obliges
Martha's order to stop the car and they go inside. In an overhead shot, Honey spins around
dancing by herself "like the wind" (an "interpretive dance" she later calls it) to the music of the
jukebox, but Nick tries to tell her to stop acting foolish. She lashes back at him: "You're always
at me when I'm having a good time...Just leave me alone. I like to dance and you don't want me
to."
Great transition to Sandy Dennis here dancing, from the foot brake shot. The dancing of Sandy
here was considered very risqué for the time period, choreographed by Herb Ross, who went on
to a very successful directing career himself. Most of the cuts on the dance sequence were
dictated to cover up what was objected to by the censors.
Now with Nick and Martha dancing, and the POV shot we are going back to using the handheld
camera.
While Honey and George watch, Nick dances with Martha, somewhat enjoying sharing Martha's
humiliation and castration of her husband. As their bodies undulate closely together, Honey
thinks: "They're dancing like they've danced before." Using rhymed speech while she dances,
Martha is 'encouraged' to mock George and tell more ugly details about his past, replaying a
story which George had earlier told Nick out on the yard in greater detail:
Well, Georgie-boy had lots of big ambitions
In spite of something funny in his past...
Which Georgie-boy here turned into a novel...
His first attempt and also his last...
But Daddy took a look at Georgie's novel...
And he was very shocked by what he read...
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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A novel all about a naughty boy-child...
Who...killed his mother and his father dead.
And Daddy said, 'Look here, I will not let you publish such a thing...'
In the top right of the frame you can see a movie light, they left it in as they assumed the
audience would think that it was lights in the roadhouse.
The crew loved taking some of these lines and using them, for example Sandy says, “Violence,
Violence,” and when there was any discussion on the set, the crew would shot, “Violence,
Violence.”
Now using a Dutch angle, you have seen a couple previous to this, done to imply the violence
that should be present. As the strangulation takes place you can see the use of the handheld
camera shots.
The man who comes into this scene is Frank Flannigan; he is the gaffer working on this movie,
later his wife will come in as the waitress.
George rises, yells: "STOP IT, MARTHA," and unplugs the jukebox. This ends the dancing
abruptly. After being insulted even more, George declares: "THE GAME IS OVER," but Martha
overextends herself by implying that George's past directly corresponds to the horrifying events
of his unpublished, non-fiction novel - maybe George deliberately murdered his parents:
Just imagine a book all about a boy who murders his mother and kills his father, and pretends it's
all an accident...And do you want to know the clincher? Do you want to know what big brave
Georgie said to Daddy?...Georgie said...'But Daddy, I mean...but Sir, this isn't a novel at all...this
is the truth...this really happened...TO ME!'
As Honey ludicrously applauds the violent outburst, George's emotionally-charged intellectual
warfare soon turns to physical assault. As he strangles Martha, calling her a demonic "SATANIC
BITCH!" Nick struggles to drag George's hands from Martha's throat and tear him away. George
is finally thrown to the floor. When a restaurant worker asks them about all the noise and
announces closing time, George excuses everything as one big game: "We're just playing a
game...Ah, one more round...Just give us one more round and we'll be on our merry way." While
they are served a last round of drinks, George gleefully lists the types of entertaining mindgames that they can still choose from:
Well that's one game. What shall we do now? Come on, I mean, let's think of something else.
We've played Humiliate the Host - we can't do that one. What should we do now?...Let's see,
there are other games, how about uh, how about Hump the Hostess huh?...OK, I know what we
do. Now that we're through with Humiliate the Host...and we don't want to play Hump the
Hostess yet...how about a little round of Get the Guests?
Haskell Wexler received an Academy Award for cinematography for this film, and when he
received it the Vietnam War was still in progress, Wexler was very much opposed to that war.
As Wexler received his Academy Award, he stated, “I hope that we can use or art, for love and
peace.” Both of those words at that time, were considered volatile words, which seems strange
today, they almost seem soupy. He got letters from people saying, you made a film, which had
little to do with peace and love. But beyond that he got hundreds of letters from people saying
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-28-
that the relationship of filmmaking is related to the real world, and his feelings about the
Vietnam war, were appreciated.
Actors do not move anywhere they want on a set. They move from one mark to the next, to one
composition to the next. This is all part of movie making which makes it all work, and seems
impromptu if done properly. When they rehearse a scene, everyone knows where an actor is
going to go, and where the camera is going to move. This organization is part of directing.
“ and had this mouse.” Like this shot of George Segal, which goes from the close-up to the two
shot of Richard and George, revealing Sandy over his shoulder, all planned.
George calls his wife by two invectives: a "book dropper" and a "child mentioner."
With authority over everyone, George brings up more statements which concern the nature of
truth and illusion. He uses ammunition from his earlier outdoor conversation with Nick to "Get
the Guests", telling a story within a story:
Well now Martha, in her own discreet way, told you all about my first novel. True or
False? I mean, true or false that there ever was such a thing. Anyway, she told you about
it, my first novel, my memory book which I'd sort of preferred she hadn't, but hell, that's
blood under the bridge. BUT what Martha didn't do - what Martha didn't tell you, what
Martha didn't tell us all about was my second novel. (Martha looks up puzzled) No,
Martha, you didn't know about that, did you? My second novel, true or false. True or
false?...Well, it's an allegory really, probably, and it's all about this nice young couple
who comes out of the Middle West. It's a bucolic you see. And, this nice young couple
comes out of the Middle West, and he's blonde and he's about thirty, and he's a scientist, a
teacher, a scientist...and his mouse is a wifey little thing who gargles brandy all the
time...and Mousie's father was a holy man, see, and he ran sort of a traveling clip joint,
and he took the faithful...that's all, just took 'em...Anyway, Blondie and his frau out of the
plain states came...and they settled in a town just like nouveau Carthage here...But
Blondie was all in disguise really, all got up as a teacher, because his baggage ticket had
bigger things writ on it. H.I. HI! Historical inevitability...And he had this baggage, and
part of his baggage was in the form of his mouse...But what nobody could figure out
about Blondie was his baggage - his mouse, I mean, here he was, pan-Kansas swimming
champeen, or something, and he had this mouse, of whom he was solicitous to a point
that faileth human understanding given that she was something of a simp, in the long
run...she tooted brandy immodestly and spent half her time in the upchuck...But she was a
money baggage amongst other things. Godly money ripped from the golden teeth of the
unfaithful and she was put up with...Oh, and now we get a flashback to HOW THEY
GOT MARRIED...The Mouse got all puffed up one day, and she went over to Blondie's
house, and she stuck out her puff and she said, look at me...I'm all puffed up. Oh my
goodness, said Blondie...and so they were married...and then the puff went away again
like magic - pouf!
Though Honey encouraged George to proceed with his "Get the Guests" story, she is thoroughly
embarrassed when she becomes aware of Nick's indiscretion, sharing with George their
barrenness and violating their agreement to keep their secret private: "Oh no...You couldn't have
told them, oh nooo!" She runs out of the room, hysterical and sick to her stomach again. George
will not apologize to Nick for telling his "damaging" story:
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-29-
By God, you gotta have a swine to show you where the truffles are. You just rearrange your
alliances, boy. You look around and make the best of things.
Now the camera moves in for a closer two shot of Honey and George, to emphasis their
communication. They also shot scenes of Nick and Martha reacting to their dialogue, but backed
away from using them.
Chapter 9: “Total war!”
As Nick and Honey stumble away from the roadhouse, George tells his loving but vicious wife
mockingly that he meant to entertain her: "You bring out the best in me baby."
Why baby, I did it all for you. I thought you'd like it, sweetheart, it's to your taste, blood,
carnage and all. I thought you'd sort of get excited, sort of heave and pant and come running
at me, your melons bobbling.
As we go into the parking lot you are looking at a long dolly crane shot as they walk towards
their car. The tracks that the camera is riding on are just off to the left, just out of the camera.
As you look at the two shot of these two out at the car and notice the flaring, star and
softening of the lights in the background. Wexler had read in a dime store magazine about
camera tricks, and read about softening an image by placing a window screen in front of the
lens of the camera. That is exactly what Wexler did to get this effect.
In the parking lot, the sparks fly again - it is a sickening, harrowing battle lacking all inhibition
and restraint in a marriage that has lasted too long:
George: ...You can sit around with the gin running out of your mouth, and you can
humiliate me, you can tear me to pieces all night, and that's perfectly OK, that's all right...
Martha: YOU CAN STAND IT!
George: I CANNOT STAND IT!
Martha: YOU CAN STAND IT! YOU MARRIED ME FOR IT!
For decades in their shell-shocked marriage, each of them bring up weapons of destruction that
they wield against each other in a "total war." Martha domineeringly questions his ability to
"wear the pants in the house," ruining him by her continual excessive demands:
Martha: I'm gonna finish you before I'm through with you...
George: You and the quarterback, you're both gonna finish me.
Martha: Before I'm through with you, you'll wish you'd died in that automobile, you
bastard.
George: And you'll wish you'd never mentioned our son...I said 'I warned you.'
Martha: I'm impressed.
George: I warned you not to go too far.
Martha: I'm just beginning.
George: You're a monster - You are.
Martha: I'm loud and I'm vulgar, and I wear the pants in the house because somebody's
got to, but I am not a monster. I'm not.
George: You're a spoiled, self-indulgent, willful, dirty-minded, liquor-ridden...
Martha: SNAP! It went SNAP! I'm not gonna try to get through to you any more. There
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-30-
was a second back there, yeah, there was a second, just a second when I could have
gotten through to you, when maybe we could have cut through all this, this CRAP. But
it's past, and I'm not gonna try.
Martha: I looked at you tonight and you weren't there...And I'm gonna howl it out, and I'm
not gonna give a damn what I do and I'm gonna make the biggest god-damn explosion you've
ever heard.
George: Try and I'll beat you at your own game.
Martha: Is that a threat George, huh?
George: It's a threat, Martha.
Martha: You're gonna get it, baby.
George: Be careful Martha. I'll rip you to pieces.
Martha: You're not man enough. You haven't the guts.
George: Total war.
Martha: Total.
Violence again is handheld, which has been repeated through out the film.
The lights in the background on the roadhouse are movie lights placed there to make the
background not completely black, even the blinking light is the studio’s to give a little action
and movement to the background.
Nice long transition on Richard’s face as we dissolve to the house and the car with the
blinking taillight. Wexler came up with this idea of the taillight blinking, as he thought it
would be good to have something animating the scene.
Martha screeches away in their station wagon without George, picking up Nick and Honey on
her way home. Honey is left in a sickened state in the back seat of the car. When George forces
his way through the latched front door of his own house after walking home, he knocks into the
hanging doorbells inside the hallway, causing them to chime. On the stairs, he finds Nick's
discarded jacket. He picks it up and realizes that Martha has taken Nick up to her bedroom. His
laughter at the thought soon mixes into painful tears as he morosely walks out the front door.
From the front yard below, he looks up pathetically and sees their love-making-in-shadow
through the bedroom window.
Little late on the light cue as they open the car door, the light of course is studio lit, not the
actual car itself. Handheld camera, over the shoulder as we move towards the house with
George.
Chapter 10: “Our son is dead…and Martha doesn’t know.”
Honey is in a delirious dream world reverie, denying knowledge of anything going on around her
and screaming: "I DON'T WANT ANY CHILDREN! I'm afraid, I don't want to be hurt." George
realizes she privately denies and represses everything related to her own barrenness and her
husband's impotency, as she tells her own tale of marital woe. She is terrified of bearing children
- a symbol of her own inauthentic and illusory relationship with Nick:
Does he know that? Does that stud you're married to know about that, huh?...How do you
make your secret little murders? Pills? Pills? You got a secret supply of pills? Or what?
Apple jelly? Will Power?
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-31-
Honey still wants to know about the bells she heard ringing: "What were the bells? Who rang?"
An idea suddenly springs into George's mind - a new illusory fact to ultimately destroy Martha.
Like Honey, Martha also dredged up and confessed a private, intimate, and painful secret from
their past. George is prepared to destroy their imaginary, fantasy son because of it:
...the bells rang and it was a message, and it was about our son and the message was, and the
message was, our son is DEAD!...And Martha doesn't know, I haven't told Martha...(Very softly
in a whisper) Martha? Martha? I have some terrible news. It's about our son. He's dead. Do you
hear me Martha? Our boy is dead.
One of the most important things about movie making, according to Wexler is the ability to take
advice from somebody else, who has experience and talent in the median. Everyone on your
team must participate in this process, in other words the light tech might have information on
doing things a certain way that will enhance the story, and the director needs to be receptive to
that idea. You could write volumes of books about director and crew creative conflicts, but the
important aspect is forming a team that supports that creative vision, that wants to make each
picture the best possible picture.
Today the economics of making a picture can over shadow the creative effort going on. In other
words, the rush to get the film to the market and bring cash back to the pockets of the investors.
Act Two Summary: "Walpurgisnacht":
At open, George is onstage by himself. Nick enters, apologizing for Honey, who gets sick easily.
Martha meanwhile is the kitchen making coffee. Nick says he tries not to get involved in other
people's affairs because it gets embarrassing. George mocks Nick's reserved disgust and faked
sympathy, and Nick disdainfully tells him that he and Martha shouldn't subject other people to
them going at it like a pair of animals. When George tells him that he's smug and self-righteous,
Nick threatens him by saying he's never hit an older man.
George changes the subject by asking if Honey throws up a lot. Nick says that once she starts,
she'll go on for hours. George gets him another drink, and Nick explains that he married her
because she was pregnant. Only it turned out to be a hysterical pregnancy - "she blew up, and
then she went down." George shares a story of his own. When he was sixteen, in prep school, a
bunch of his friends and him got to New York on the first day of vacation. This was during
Prohibition, and they went to a gin mill owned by one kid's gangster father. One boy, who was
fifteen, had completely accidentally killed his mother years before with a shotgun. When it came
his time to order, he asked for "bergin and water." Soon, everybody in the joint was laughing and
ordering bergin and every time the laughter subsided, someone would order bergin, and the
laughter would start again. They drank free that night, bought champagne by the gangster father,
and though they all had hangovers the next day, George says that this was the grandest day of his
youth.
Nick asks what happened to the boy who shot his mother. George says that the next summer, on
a country road, with his learner's permit, he swerved to avoid a porcupine and crashed into a tree,
killing his father, who was in the passenger's seat. When they told the boy this at the hospital, he
began to laugh and didn't stop until they jammed an needle into his arm. When he recovered
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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from his injuries, thirty years ago, they put him into an asylum and has not uttered one sound
since.
After a long silence, George yells for Martha, with no response. George turns the talk back to
Honey, saying that Martha doesn't have hysterical pregnancies - Martha doesn't have pregnancies
at all. Nick asks if they have any other kids, other than they're son, and George makes an odd
comment about the boy being a "comfort, a bean bag," which Nick doesn't understand. He goes
on about the boy behind the apple of their eyes and tells Nick he's being testy. They argue about
that for a moment, and George says he's going to set Nick straight about what Martha said - just
as Martha yells "hey" from the kitchen. She sticks her head in to say they're having coffee and to
exchange a quick series of insults in French with George. She tells George to clean up the mess
he made, and after she leaves, George says that for years, he has been trying to clean up the mess
he made.
When George tells Nick that things are easier for him, marrying a woman because she was all
blown up, Nick says that there were other reasons. George correctly guesses that she has money
too. They simultaneously begin to reminisce about how they met their wives, and George lets
Nick go first. They grew up together - met when they were eight and six and used to play doctor.
Their eventual marriage was taken for granted by their families. There wasn't any particular
passion between them, even at the beginning of their marriage. George refills their drinks, and
talk turns to how much people drink in the US. George asks about Honey's money, explaining
he's fascinated by the pragmatism of the "wave-of-the-future boys" like Nick. Nick explains that
his father-in-law was called by God when he was six and started preaching and became pretty
famous and rich by the time he died. He spent "God's money" on hospitals and churches, but he
saved his own.
George shares that Martha has money because her father's second wife (not her mother) was "an
old lady with warts who was very rich" - a witch who married a white mouse with tiny red eyes
and went up immediately in a puff of smoke, leaving the money to the college, the town,
Martha's father, and Martha. Nick laughs, saying his father-in-law was a mouse too, a
churchmouse. When he says that Martha never mentioned a stepmother, George says that maybe
it isn't true. He tells Nick that he's been drawing these stories out of him because he represents a
threat to his livelihood. Nick laughs, not really believing him, as George says they've decided
he'll take over the history department first, before he takes over the whole game. Playing along,
Nick says that what he does is find weak spots and shore them up until he becomes an
inevitability. That plan includes "plow[ing] a few pertinent wives."
George compares Martha and the faculty wives to the puntas of South American who hiss at
passing men like a gaggle of geese. Nick guesses that Martha's the biggest goose in the gaggle
and he just better get her off in the corner and mount her like dog. George continues to play
along and Nick suspects he may be serious. George offers him some fatherly advice. He says he
disgusts him but has tried to make contact. Nick mocks him, but George continues explaining
that you build a civilization and make art and music and reach the saddest of points, when all the
music sounds the Dies Irae. The justice, after all the years, is a big "up yours."
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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Martha leads a weakly smiling Honey in and demands that George apologize for making the lady
throw up. George denies this and tells Martha that she makes him sick. Honey stops them,
claiming that she gets sick occasionally all by herself for no reason. She claims that before she
got married she developed what the doctors thought was appendicitis, but it turned out to be a
false alarm. Martha claims that George used to make their son sick every time he came into the
room. George says the real reason the boy got sick is that he couldn't stand Martha fiddling with
him all the time. Martha says he ran away twice in one month, six times in one year, which
George explains happened because Martha used to corner him. George says that it their son used
to tell him "Mama's always coming at me," and it was very embarrassing. Nick stops him short
by asking why he's talking about it if it was so embarrassing.
Honey asks for a little brandy, despite Nick's objections, insisting that she likes it. When Martha
notes that George used to drink "bergin," George tells her to shut up, but Nick has already
noticed. Martha wants to know if George started in on his story of how he would have amounted
for something if it hadn't been for Daddy - if he told Nick about how he tried to publish a book
and Daddy wouldn't let him. Nick eggs her on by asking about the book. George begs her to stop
and says he's got to find a new way to fight her. Honey interrupts all this by saying she would
love some dancing, saying she dances like the wind over and over. Martha and George bicker
about who's going to dance with who, and Honey starts dancing by herself, singing along to
Beethoven's 7th Symphony. George turns the music off when Martha calls him a son of a bitch.
Honey's mad at Nick and wants to be left alone. George asks her if she wants to dance with him,
and she says that if she can't do her interpretive dance, she won't dance.
Martha and Nick dance together, on either side of where George and Honey sit, undulating like
their bodies are pressed together. Despite George's objections, as she dances toward and away
from Nick, Martha tells him how George turned something funny in his past into a novel, but
Daddy read it and was shocked by what he read. It was all about a boy who killed his mother and
father. Daddy told him if he published this crap, he'd be out on his ass. George continues to
scream at her to stop. Honey's just amused by the idea of violence. Martha continues imitating
Daddy's rant, at which Nick laughs, until George declares, "The game is over!" Martha won't
stop, saying the boy pretends this is all an accident, and the clincher is that this isn't a novel at
all. She continues, despite George's objections, and he grabs her by the throat to stop her. While
Honey applauds the violence, Nick tears George off of Martha. George, humiliated, drags
himself away. Martha softly calls him a murderer, and Nick stops her.
George regains his composure and nervously announces that the game of "Humiliate the Host" is
over. What will the do next? "Hump the Hostess?" Honey, completely drunk and oblivious, calls
for that. Deciding that Martha wants to save that for later, he calls instead for a game of "Get the
Guests." Nick tries to get away but George calls for silence. His second novel, about which
Martha knows nothing, is an allegory about a nice young couple from the middle west. He's
blond and thirty and she's a mousy type who likes brandy. Nick objects, but Honey says she likes
to hear stories. George continues about Mousie's father, the holy man, who died and all sorts of
money fell out when they pried him apart. Honey, genuinely puzzled, thinks this story is
familiar. They settled in a town like New Carthage, and Blondie was in disguise, with a baggage
ticket that had H.I. written on it for historical inevitability. Part of his baggage was the little
mouse. Honey begins to recognize the story and grows scared. Martha begins to tell George to
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-34-
stop. George flashes back to how the couple got married - when Mousie got all puffed up, and
they got married, and then the puff went away. Honey is horrified that Nick told them, and Nick
tries to apologize. She runs out of the room to be sick again.
Nick tells George he's going to regret this and says he'll be just what George says he is. He
leaves, to look after Honey. Martha compliments George on the most life he's shown in a long
time. He says she brings out the best in him. She calls him bastard and says this is pigmy hunting
and he makes her sick. He mockingly says he did it all for her and her taste for carnage. It's
perfectly okay for her to sit there and tear him apart all night, and he can't stand it. She says he
can stand it, and he married her for it. She's getting tired of whipping him after twenty-three
years, and it's not what she's wanted. He calls her sick. She gets angry, screaming she'll show
him who's sick and more calmly, says that before she's through with him, he'll wish he'd died in
that automobile accident. He says she'll wish she never mentioned their son.
He's numbed enough now to be able to take her when they're alone, bringing everything down to
a reflex so that he doesn't really hear her. But she's begun not only moving her dirty under things
into public but also moving all the way into her own fantasy world. He says he's worried about
her mind and thinks he'll have her committed. Martha tells him their whole arrangement has
snapped. You think you can go on forever, making excuses to yourself, like saying that
tomorrow you might be dead, but suddenly it breaks. She says she's not a monster. There was a
second back there when she could have gotten through to him, but now she's not even going to
try. George says that once a month, they get good, misunderstood Martha, and he believes in it
because he's a sucker. But now he doesn't want to believe in her, and there is no moment
anymore when they could come together. Martha says it went snap tonight when she watched
him at Daddy's party and realized he wasn't there. She says she doesn't give a damn anymore and
is going to make the biggest explosion he ever heard. He threatens that he'll beat her at her own
game. They agree - total war.
Nick returns and tells George and Martha that Honey is resting - on the bathroom floor. She likes
the floor because the tiles are cool. George goes to get some ice, leaving Martha and Nick alone.
As he walks away, George says that he wouldn't be surprised by anything Martha does. He
makes some remark about Honey's being slim-hipped as the reason she and Nick don't have any
kids. Nick remains preoccupied with that as Martha blows kisses at him. As he lights her
cigarette, she slips his hand between his thighs, moving her hand up and down his leg, and
asking for a kiss. Nick's a little hesitant and nervous, but Martha says that Daddy had a party for
them to get to know each other and to consider it an experiment. They kiss, and what begins as a
joke grows serious. George enters and sees them intertwined - sees Nick put his hand on
Martha's breast under her dress. Martha begins to slow him down, and George backs up, singing
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" before he returns. They separate, and he reenters with the ice
bucket, complimenting Martha's radiance with false enthusiasm and making another round of
drinks George says that he passed the bathroom on his way back, and Honey is "rolled up like a
fetus," sucking her thumb. He moves his chair away from them and says he's going to read a
book. This infuriates Martha, who exclaims that they have company and he can't read at four
o'clock in the morning. With George's back to them, Martha moves closer to Nick, suggesting
they amuse themselves. George, without looking, tells her to entertain her guests. Martha and
Nick kiss, and she announces she was necking with one of her guests. She lurches into George's
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line of vision, bumping into the doorbell chimes, and is angry and suspicious when he simply
says "Good for you" and telling her to go back to her necking. George says he doesn't know what
the younger generation is coming to and agrees when Nick suggests he couldn't care. When he
says that Nick's going to throw Martha over his shoulder, Nick calls him disgusting. George
observes that Nick is going to hump his wife and he's disgusting? Martha kisses Nick and sends
him, still glaring at George, into the kitchen.
Martha demands George - who continues reading - to listen to her, near tears, or she'll take Nick
upstairs. When George finally turns and says "so what," she tells him he asked for it and she'll
make him regret the day he came to this college and married her. She leaves. George sits still and
begins to read from the book about the decline of the west, then hurls it furiously at the chimes.
Honey enters, still sick and half-asleep, saying the bells woke her up and frightened her. George
continues to talk to himself, saying he's going to get Martha. Honey continues talking about her
dream, in which she was lying somewhere, and the cold wind slipped the blanket off, and she
didn't want someone there, and was naked. She begins crying, "I don't want any children."
George compassionately says he should have known and asks if Nick knows. He asks how she
makes her "secret little murders" so Nick doesn't find out - pills? Honey says she feels sick and
demands her husband and a drink. Offstage, Martha laughs and dishes crash. George tells Honey
that they're in the kitchen, making a sort of dry run for the future. Honey's miserable and insists
she doesn't understand.
George announces that when people realize they can't abide the present, they either live in the
past, as he has done, or they set about to alter the future. Honey ignores his demands to know if
she doesn't want any children to ask who rang the doorbell. George has a revelation. He decides
that it was someone with a message about their son, and the message is their son is dead. Honey
is sick, and says no. George continues, fully realizing his idea. His son is dead, and he hasn't told
Martha. He repeats it, pushing Honey to tears. He says he'll tell Martha in good time. Honey,
again, says she's going to be sick, then after they hear Martha laugh, that she's going to die.
George tells her to go right ahead. Very amused with himself now, he practices, telling Martha
that their son is dead.
Act Two Analysis:
One of Albee's major themes - the blurring of illusion and reality - takes center stage in this act.
Such a concern is characteristic of the Theatre of the Absurd. In his plays, Albee rejected the
formlessness of 1960's spontaneous artistic "happenings" and simultaneously eschewed the
constrictions of earlier naturalistic playwrights, like Eugene O'Neill. One of Albee's most
immediate predecessors is Tennessee Williams, who in plays like A Streetcar Named Desire
combined naturalistic dialogue with absurdist or lyrical situations.
Albee explores the relationship between illusion and reality in the contrast between his play's
form and content. George and Martha's dialogue, at first glance, seems to be a naturalistic
representation of a modern-day couple's arguments. Meaningless topics and repetition imitate the
sound of real conversation. But there is more to Albee's repetitious dialogue than surface realism.
In addition, this repetition emphasizes the circularity of George and Martha's plight. Despite the
amount of arguing and repeating they do, George and Martha rarely if ever seem to reach an
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
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understanding. That is, there argument is more about the process of arguing rather than any
conclusion or agreement achieved by argument.
For that reason, it is possible to view Albee's portrayal of modern marriage as decidedly
existential. The specifics of George and Martha's history or relationship. What we do know about
the characters' histories - for example, whether or not George is the boy in the story who
accidentally killed both his parents - is never presented decisively as truth or illusion. The subject
of their arguments doesn't matter. It's not important if George and Martha argue about ice cubes
or Bette Davis movies. What matters is how they conduct their argument, how they interact with
each other - how they choose to exist in this situation in which they've found themselves trapped.
The extended metaphor of emotional confrontation as a "game" continues into this act. Within
this metaphor, George is the symbolic ringmaster, announcing that Humiliate the Host is over,
and that it's time for Get the Guests or Hump the Hostess. While this seemingly blasé attitude
towards their personal lives shocks Nick, George and Martha's understanding of "the game"
ultimately does not undercut the emotional significance of their battles. If anything, calling these
emotional clashes a game serves to make the possibility of emotional destruction more random
and uncertain. George says that Martha continually changes the rules on him, and as soon as he
learns them, he plays along.
Whereas George functions as ringmaster in announcing the end of Humiliate the Host, he does
not normally occupy the position of power in the game. Martha, it is oft implied, defines the
game and its rules as she goes along. She is the one in the marriage with the power. The
metaphor of the game, therefore, functions to illuminate the ongoing power struggle between
George and Martha. The incidents in which George takes control of the game - announcing that
Humiliate the Host is over, for example - are significant as his attempts to subvert Martha's
power over him. Even in those cases, however, it is clear that George must struggle to gain
power in a system whose discourse has been defined by Martha. She has already defined the
games. George can only resist by choosing one of her games over another. That is why he
chooses a "game" called Hump the Hostess - only partially resisting Martha's hegemony,
changing the way in which he is humiliated while not eradicating the act of humiliation itself.
The extended metaphor of the "game" gradually transforms itself in this act into a new metaphor
- "war." Whereas a game suggests casual disregard for another's feelings, a war suggests
complete and intentional destruction. The individual games, like Hump the Hostess, in the threering circus become battles in the war. Because war is declared by two opposing parties on each
other, it is possible to read all of George and Martha's actions - whether or not they occur in the
other's presence - as intended to inflict destructive power over the other. Martha's flirtation with
and seduction of Nick, therefore, is not about a sexual desire for Nick, per se. As her frustration
with George's willful ignorance of this act (when he places his chair so that his back is to Nick
and Martha on the couch) and her insistence that he know exactly what she plans to do
demonstrate, Martha's sexual encounter with Nick is deliberate strategy in her war against
George.
The juxtaposition of George's books with Martha's actions emphasizes this war metaphor. He
reads aloud from The Decline of the West by Spengler, deliberately ignoring the chaos around
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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him. That chaos, of course, is characteristic of Albee's statement about the American Dream.
George and Martha's cozy little college town of New Carthage is a microcosm for the West,
threatened and destroyed by conformity (as represented by Nick as biologist) and totalitarianism
(as represented by Nick as Nikita Khrushchev).
George's joke, when telling his story to Nick, about attending prep school "during the Punic
Wars," the wars during which the real Carthage was sacked, further emphasizes this metaphor in
which the chaos in George and Martha's marriage represents the decline of the West. This
presentation of ponderous and sincerely meant statements in the context of jokes occurs
throughout this play. The Theatre of the Absurd is resolutely not frivolous comedy. Rather,
Albee's play finds deep and true meaning in the small and absurd details of life. In those ways, it
echoes and alludes to Jung's The Undiscovered Self.
Nick's name has a polysemous function in this play. Not only does it echo Nikita Khruschchev in
Albee's social commentary, it also has religious implications. That is, Nick's name recalls "Old
Nick," a moniker for the devil. It is interesting to consider the implications of Nick's name in the
light of the title of the second act. "Walpurgisnacht" is a religious allusion to the Satanic black
Sabbath, in which witches enact an orgy.
Ultimately, however, the metaphor of Nick as Satan is not as sustainable as another reading Martha as Satan. George pointedly refers to her as the devil or Satan twice in this act alone. She
is the central focus of the worshippers (George and Nick) in this act. George as the "Host" referring both to his role as master of ceremonies and to the manifestation of the Body of Christ
in the Catholic tradition - performs an exorcism beginning in this act. Further religious imagery
comes in the references to George and Martha's imagined son as a "lamb," making him a Christ
figure.
Sound imagery is very important in this play. The central sound granted multiple meanings in
this act is the bells - doorbell chimes into which Martha twice crashes. The chimes also echo the
Catholic Mass, in which chimes signal the transformation of the host and wine into body and
blood and mark the progress of the service. The chimes here signal an important moment of
progress or movement in this Black Mass. The chimes function as a catalyst for George's
realization of what he must do - "kill" the "son" - perform an exorcism of his and Martha's shared
illusions and thus move forward rather than around in circles.
Indeed, for the most part, George and Martha (and Honey and Nick) move in circles. George and
Martha, in this act, reference moments when they might have connected, when they might have
understood each other, but those moments are always already past and wasted. Again, using
humor to underscore his deeper point, Albee employs cultural clichés about a lack of
communication to express a belief about the impossibility of human connection. Albee readily
admits he has become a caricaturist. George and Martha are unable to connect because they are
unable to listen to each other or themselves.
In this play, especially in this act, that connection is portrayed through the medium of language.
As is clear from their verbal shorthand - "the bit about the kid" - left unexplained to the audience
or Nick and Honey, George and Martha are able to connect the most on the lexigraphical level.
Their games are for the most part verbal. Words have power - Martha is clearly hurt to be called
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a monster, for example - but language remains a closed system in which Martha and George
communicate.
The power of Martha and George's verbal connection to bind each other together is no more
apparent than in Honey and Nick's bafflement in reaction to it. To a great degree, Honey and
Nick function as surrogates for the audience. George and Martha's all-out, unabashed war on
each other is as shocking to this young couple as it is to the audience. They too must gradually
learn to rules of the game and the meaning of the verbal shorthand. Nick's professed
embarrassment at hearing George offer up Martha in Hump the Hostess is the audience's
discomfort too. Albee's simultaneous portrayal of Honey and Nick as empty, conformist
characters is also a statement on his audience as members of contemporary American society. In
response to those who criticized the Theatre of Absurd as lacking the noble intentions of earlier
American drama, Albee replied that the "public will get what it deserves and no more."
What the 1960's public evidently deserved was a blurring and redefining of the lines between
illusion and reality. George and Martha are sustained by an illusion - their imaginary son - that
takes on the power of reality. Much of the "facts" of this act are never proved or disproved.
While we know from something Martha says, that there is some truth to George's
autobiographical novel - reality that becomes illusion - it is unclear just how much. George
himself tells Nick straight-out that none of what he says may be true. In the end, the Theatre of
the Absurd justifies itself through its blurring of reality and illusion. Something can be illusion,
like Martha and George's son, and still have a very real emotional impact. Theatre, which by
definition is illusion, seeks and when successful achieves that same emotional impact upon its
audience.
Chapter 11: “George and Martha: sad, sad, sad.”
Even later in the evening, Martha stumbles out of the house after replenishing her drink,
mumbling to herself and asking where everybody has gone. The ice in her glass jiggles and
clinks loudly, and she repeats the noise several times: "CLINK! CLINK!" Nick joins her on the
front porch steps, thinking everyone's "gone crazy" - his wife is curled up on the tile floor in the
bathroom with a liquor bottle, whispering: "nobody knows I'm here." To his wincing surprise,
Martha thinks Nick is inadequate sexually and "certainly a flop in some departments." He
explains his impotency by blaming his ten hours of drinking:
To you, everybody's a flop. Your husband's a flop, I'm a flop.
Director, Mike Nichols asked Elizabeth to pay attention to and deal with the flashing light.
How they set these shot up, first they would hold rehearsal with the principal actors. Then the
stand-ins would come in and they would rehearse adding the lights and camera angles, third, they
would do dress rehearsals with the principals, and make the changes needed. This fourth step
would allow for adjustments for lights and lenses, and then the final step of filming the scene.
When you are filming professionals you can usually get the take after several rehearsals, when
you are working with non-professionals, you usually need to go with the first or second take.
All the exterior shots were done back east and the interior shots at Warner Brothers.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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Martha divulges the way she has habitually attacked George's weak spots in their tortured
relationship. In a remarkable moment of self-revelation, she acknowledges her deep, authentic,
triumphant love and bond with her soulmate:
You're all flops. I am the Earth Mother, and you are all flops. (To herself) I disgust me. You
know, there's only been one man in my whole life who's ever made me happy. Do you know
that?...George, my husband...George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me
- whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who
can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. Yes, I do wish to be happy. George and
Martha: Sad, sad, sad...Whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and
having said: yes, this will do; who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of
loving me and must be punished for it. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad...Some day, hah! Some
night, some stupid, liquor-ridden night, I will go too far and I'll either break the man's back or I'll
push him off for good which is what I deserve.
Martha insists that Nick be reduced to a "houseboy" or "gigolo" by answering the doorbell,
knowing his opportunistic, "ambitious" nature by sleeping his way up the University ladder:
You're ambitious, aren't you? I mean, you didn't come back here with me out of maddriven passion, did you now? You were thinking a little bit about your career, weren't
you?...Go on, git!...You show old Martha there's something you can do. Huh? Atta boy.
Chapter 12: “Truth and illusion: you don’t know the difference.”
When he opens the door, a bouquet of snapdragons are thrust into his face, and George, using a
falsetto voice, speaks from behind the flowers:
Flores. Flores para los muertos. Flores. [Flowers. Flowers for the dead. Flowers]... (To
Nick) Why Sonny, you came home for your birthday at last!
Nick is kept guessing about more illusory matters and he is exasperated at his peculiar,
unfathomable hosts:
Nick: Hell, I don't know when you people are lying or what.
Martha: You're damned right.
George: You're not supposed to.
Martha: Right.
George and Martha again manipulatively remind Nick that he is an impotent houseboy:
George: Truth and illusion. Who knows the difference eh, toots? Eh houseboy?
Nick: I am not a houseboy.
George: Look, I know the game. You don't make it in the sack, you're a houseboy.
Nick: I AM NOT A HOUSEBOY!
George: Then you must have made it. Yes? Yes? Somebody's lying around here;
somebody's not playing the game straight. Come on, come on; who's lying? Martha?
Come on.
Nick: Tell him I'm not a houseboy.
Martha: No, you're not a houseboy.
George: So be it.
Martha: Truth and illusion, George. You don't know the difference.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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George: No, but we must carry on as though we did.
Martha: Amen.
Chapter 13: One last game.
In the wee hours of the morning, George proposes one last really fun "game to play," although
Martha is exhausted and pleads for no more games. It's called "Bringing Up Baby." George
calmly insists: "One more Martha. One more game, and then beddie-bye. Everybody pack up his
tools and baggage and stuff and go home. And you and me, well, we gonna climb them wellworn stairs."
When she moves her hand to touch him lovingly, he slaps it away, inciting her to get mad for "an
equal battle" - in an escalated war to the death including an ultimately vicious and violent
purging of her inner demons:
Don't you touch me. You keep your paws clean for the undergraduates. Now, you listen
to me, Martha. (He grabs her hair, pulling her head back) You've had yourself an
evening, you've had yourself quite a night, and you can't cut it out just whenever there's
enough blood in your mouth. We are going on, and I'm going to have at you, and it's
going to make your performance tonight look like an Easter pageant. Now I want you to
get yourself a little alert. I want a little life in you...Pull yourself together. I want you on
your feet and slugging, because I'm going to knock you around, and I want you up for it.
He rouses her fury to join in the game, a final dramatic battle to the death:
Martha: All right George. What do you want?
George: An equal battle, baby, that's all.
Martha: You'll get it.
George: I want you mad.
Martha: I'm mad.
George: I want you madder.
Martha: Don't worry about it.
George: Good girl. We play this one to the death.
Martha: Yours.
George: You'll be surprised.
After assembling everyone together, even Honey ("Honey funny bunny!"), George announces a
"last game...a civilized game." He first reviews all the happenings earlier in the evening: "we sat
around and we got to know each other and we've had fun and games, curl-up-on-the-floor, for
example...the tiles...Snap the Dragon...peel the label..."
In this final game, George is again planning to peel the label - this time aiming for the marrow
inside the bone, realizing that it may be the one thing needed to save their crippled marriage and
lives:
...and when you get through the skin, all three layers and through the muscle, and slosh
aside the organs...and get down to the bone, you know what you do then?...You haven't
got all the way yet. There's something inside the bone, the marrow, and that's what you
gotta get at.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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He brings up the uncomfortable subject of their son, setting up for the ultimate purging of her
unconscious fears and attachments which block her from accepting the death of their son: "You
want to hear about our bouncey boy, don't you?"
Chapter 14: “There was a telegram, Martha.”
He's a nice kid, really, in spite of his home life; I mean, most kid's would grow up
neurotic, what with Martha here carrying on the way she does; sleeping 'til four in the
PM, climbing all over the poor bastard, trying to break down the bathroom door to wash
him in the tub when he's sixteen, dragging strangers into the house at all hours...
Martha fortifies herself with a drink and prepares to give her own recitation and somber
recollections about their son - a decades-old illusion and fabrication which has devitalized their
marriage. George offers additional quiet asides during her trance-like delivery of a clearlyremembered birth and childhood:
Our son was born in a September night, a night not unlike tonight, though tomorrow, and
sixteen years ago...It was an easy birth, once it had been accepted, and I was young...and
he was healthy, a red, bawling child...with slippery firm limbs and a full head of black,
fine, fine hair which, oh, later, later, became blond as the sun, our son...And I had wanted
a child...oh, I had wanted a child...And I had my child...Our child. And we raised
him...and he had green eyes...and he loved the sun...and he was tan before and after
everyone and in the sun his hair became fleece...beautiful, beautiful boy...So beautiful, so
wise...Beautiful, wise, perfect.
Very significantly, George adds: "There's a real mother talking," and Honey suddenly and
courageously in an epiphanic moment announces that she is ready to reassess the illusions of her
own barren life and conceive a child with Nick:
I want a child....(more forcefully) I want a child!...I want a child. I want a baby.
In an emotionally climactic point in the film, Martha then makes an abrupt shift in her story,
while George contrapuntally recites a Latin "Mass of the Dead" in a mock funeral service behind
her words:
Of course, his perfection could not last...not with George around....A drowning man takes
down those nearest. And he tried, and oh God how I fought him...the one thing I tried to
carry pure and unscathed in the sewer of our marriage, through the sick nights and the
pathetic stupid days, through the derision and the laughter...God, the laughter, through
one failure after another, each attempt more numbing, more sickening than the one
before; the one thing, the one person I tried to protect, to raise above the mire of this vile,
crushing marriage, the one light in all this hopeless darkness - OUR SON.
And then George tells Martha that he has "a little surprise" for her about their "sunny-Jim." He
drops the final bombshell in an ultimate exorcism, purging and demystification to cleanse her of
her internal demon spirits. George tells her that a telegram was delivered with "bad news." Just
as earlier in his own character's life, he had killed a parent in a car accident, George eliminates
their "son" in a similar car accident:
Sweetheart, I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you, for both of us, I mean. Some rather sad
news...I'm afraid our boy isn't coming home for his birthday...Our son is dead. He was killed late
in the afternoon on a country road with his learner's permit in his pocket, and he swerved to
avoid a porcupine, and drove straight into a large tree...I thought you should know.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
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There are remarkable similarities between George's version of their son's death in a car accident
and the past tragedies of his own life. Martha reacts with emotional and rigid fury and shock, and
then moans, slumping to the floor, with tears running down her mascara-streaked face:
YOU CANNOT DO THAT. YOU CAN'T DECIDE THESE THINGS FOR
YOURSELF! I WILL NOT LET YOU DO THAT!...I WILL NOT LET YOU DECIDE
THESE THINGS... NOOOOOOooooo ...YOU CAN'T KILL HIM. YOU CAN'T LET
HIM DIE.
George chants "Kyrie eleison" after Martha's cleansing, healing and rebirth.
And then in another fictional statement within the new illusion, George tells her that he just ate
the telegram which brought news of their son's death.
After the long night in an epiphanic moment of comprehension paralleling Honey's, Nick
insightfully says to himself repeatedly:
Oh my God. I think I understand this.
Nick realizes that George and Martha's child doesn't live at all and that they had filled the void in
their marriage and existence with a pathological obsession and belief in a fantasy child ("And I
had wanted a child...oh, I had wanted a child...And I had my child...Our child.") George explains
why he has the right to restore sanity by killing their son and stripping away the conceived
illusion governing their lives - Martha had revealed their most-private secret to Honey: "You
broke our rule Martha. You mentioned him, you mentioned him to someone else."
Chapter 15: “The party’s over.”
Chapter 16: “Sunday tomorrow, all day.”
As the sunrises and dawn approaches, George softly declares: "It's dawn. I think the party's
over." Honey and Nick depart. There is an exhausted calm after the game playing is over and the
guests leave - the weary hosts are physically and emotionally exhausted. George turns out the
lights as the sun comes up.
Their final words on a Sunday morning are softly spoken in short, disjointed, monosyllabic
phrases. Liberated after externalizing and crushing the once-comforting son-myth, they must
both be reunited in communion to face life and its emptiness without fear or false illusions (to
not fear 'the big bad wolf'). George gently touches his wife's shoulder during the final dialogue:
Martha: Did you, did you have to?
George: Yes.
Martha: ...You had to?
George: Yes.
Martha: I don't know.
George: It was time.
Martha: Was it?
George: Yes.
Martha: I'm cold.
George: It's late.
Martha: Yes.
George: It will be better.
Martha: I don't know.
George: It will be, maybe.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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Martha: I'm not sure.
George: No.
Martha: Just us?
George: Yes.
Martha: You don't suppose, maybe...
George: No.
Martha: Yes. No.
George: All right?
Martha: Yes. No.
George (singing softly to her):
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Martha: I am George.
George: Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Martha: I am George, I am.
The camera zooms in on George's hand resting gently on her shoulder as Martha clasps her hand
on top of his. It seems they may have found a new sense of compassion to each other's needs.
Virginia Woolf is one of the writers concerned with the mental processes of her characters and
their true nature. In "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?", the song that the characters sing comes
from the song that they heard in Martha's father's party - Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
The significance of this song is that at the end Martha admits that she IS afraid of Virginia Wolf,
which, I think, represents the fact that she is afraid of both realizing the truth and of reality. This
is why her whole life becomes like a game.
Act Three Summary: "The Exorcism"
At open, Martha enters. The stage is empty and she talks to herself, wondering where everyone
is. To amuse herself, she creates a conversation between herself and George, in which he says
he'd do anything for her. She says Hump the Hostess and laughs at that, saying "fat chance."
Martha goes on to create a conversation between herself and her father, in which she says that he
has red eyes because he cries all the time. She says she and George cry all the time too, then
freeze their tears to make ice to put in their drinks. Throughout the entire speech, she periodically
yells to ask where everybody is. She concludes by imitating the ice cubes, "CLINK! CLINK!
CLINK! CLINK!"
Nick enters. He thinks everyone's gone crazy and repeats that assertion several times. Honey is
lying on the floor of the bathroom, peeling the label off a liquor bottle. In response to him calling
her crazy, Martha tells him he's a "flop." In fact, they're all flops, while Martha calls herself the
Earth Mother. She says that she disgusts herself with her would-be infidelities, waiting for a
bunch of impotent lunk-heads with her dress up over her head. George is the only man in her life
who has ever made her happy. Nick can't believe it and thinks she's kidding. But Martha says
that George keeps learning the game as quickly as she can change the rules and makes her happy.
She concludes "George and Martha: sad, sad, sad," repeating that line over and over again.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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Nick remains confused. Martha says that Nick doesn't see anything. When he gets snappish, she
calls him a gelding and imitates a gattling gun. Just then, the doorbell chimes. Martha yells at
Nick to answer it - telling him he can be the houseboy now. Nick gives in and opens the door.
George stands there, his face covered by an enormous bouquet of snapdragons, and says, "Flores
para los muertos." He pretends to mistake Nick for his "sonny-Jim," but Martha tells him that's
the houseboy. Nick tries to get away, but Martha and George join together in mocking him as
houseboy. When George says he picked the flowers by moonlight, it spurs an argument with
Martha, who says that there is no moon - she saw it go down from the bedroom. George says that
the moon came back up - just like it did one time when he was sailing past Majorca. Martha says
that's lie. Nick says he doesn't know when they're lying or not. Martha and George argue about
whether he's been to Majorca, where he says his parents took him as a college graduation
present. When Nick asks if this was after he killed them, Martha and George pause, then say
maybe, maybe not.
George begins tormenting Nick, calling him houseboy, and Nick pleads with Martha to tell
George he's not a houseboy. When Martha tells George he doesn't know the difference between
truth and illusion, he says that they must carry on as if they did. Nick is grateful to Martha when
she does. George, in contrast, starts dancing around, through the snap dragons at Martha and
saying "snap" each time, asking Nick if he is a houseboy and saying he disgusts him.
When Martha asks George if truth and illusion doesn't matter to him at all, George announces he
has one more game to play - bringing up baby. He orders Nick to sit and calls for "SOWWIEE"
for Honey until Nick goes to get her himself. Near tears, Martha pleads with George for no more
games, tenderly moving to touch him. He grabs her by the hair and tells her she can't just go on
and stop when she has enough blood in her mouth. He's going to make her performance look like
an Easter pageant. He wants an equal battle and he wants her mad. She gets mad, and he says
they're going to play this one to the death. Martha says she's ready, as Nick and Honey enter.
Honey is pretending to be a bunny. As George starts the game, saying she doesn't remember
anything and saying "Hello, Dear," to Nick until he embarrasssedly says hello to her. When
George begins to recap the games of the evening, Honey adds "peel the label" to the list. George
says they all peel labels - and when you get down to the bone, there's something still inside, and
you've got to get at the marrow. The marrow is particularly resilient in the young - like their son.
Martha doesn't want to talk about him. George starts describing him, saying he's a nice kid in
spite of his home life - what with Martha's drinking, trying to break into the bathroom to wash
him when he's sixteen, and all. Martha, near tears, takes over the description. George prompts
and echoes her as she goes. Her story is an idyllic recitation. He was born on a September night.
It was an easy birth - after it had been accepted. He was a healthy child with black hair that later
turned blond as the sun. She had wanted a child. And they raised him with teddy bears and
transparent floating goldfish. He was a restless child, who kept arrows with rubber tips under his
bed "for fear." On Saturdays, he ate banana boats. His eyes were deep green. He loved the son,
and was a beautiful boy.
George begins to chant the Requiem mass for the dead as Martha continues speaking. She talks
about how he broke his arm when he saw his first cow. He grew and walked between them, a
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-45-
hand out to each of them, to protect himself and them. She concludes "So beautiful. So wise."
Suddenly, Honey cries out in tears that she wants a child. Martha ignores the interruption and
continues, saying that this perfection couldn't last long with George around. George tried to pull
him down with him, but Martha fought him. When George interjects, asking how he tried,
Martha suddenly insists that their son is fine and is away at college.
George tells Martha she just can't stop a story like that. Martha, he says, has a problem with
liquor and a father who couldn't give a damn whether she lives or dies. Her son didn't want to be
used as a weapon against his father and fought her every inch of the way, unable to tolerate her
braying. Martha calls this lies and says he couldn't stand his father being a failure. She says that
he only writes her letters. George claims he writes him letters at his office. Martha says the son
spends his summers away because he can't stand the "shadow of the man" his father has become.
George says he stays away because there is no room for him with the liquor bottles. As Martha
continues to insist that she has raised her son to be good against all odds in her marriage, George
again begins to chant the Requiem and then Kyrie Eleison.
Honey grows hysterical and screams for them to stop it. Knowing what is coming, she begins
weeping as George tells Martha he has some news for her about "sonny-Jim." While she and
Nick were out of the room, he and Honey were sitting there - and the doorbell rang. It was
Western Union with a telegram. Some telegrams you have to deliver; some you can't phone.
Honey keeps telling George to stop. Finally George tells Martha that their son isn't coming home
for his birthday - he can't. Martha objects, but George continues, slowly telling her that their son
is dead. He was killed late in the afternoon, driving on a country road with a learner's permit in
his pocket, when he swerved to avoid a porcupine and drove straight into a tree.
Martha screams that George cannot do that. She tells him he can't decide for himself. She won't
let him decide these things. George coolly continues, saying they'll have to go around noon to
identify the body. She leaps at him, but he holds her back as she says that she won't let him do
this. She begins moaning "no" and sinks to the floor, insisting he is not dead. George insists he
is. Nick tries to comfort her by telling her it wasn't George's decision, but Martha screams that
George can't kill him - can't have him die. She demands to see the telegram, but George says,
with a straight face, that he ate it. Martha spits in his face. Honey agrees that he ate it. She
watched him.
Martha tells George he's not going to get away with this, but George tells her she knows the
rules. Nick begins to realize what's going on. As Martha insists he is their child, George insists
he has killed him. Nick furiously announces that he thinks he understands. Martha, no just sad,
repeats that George doesn't have the right, but George tenderly tells her that he does have the
right. They never spoke of it, but he could kill him any time he wanted. Martha asks why, and
George tells her that he broke their rule and mentioned him to someone else. Martha demands
whom, and a crying Honey says me. Martha screams that she forgets. Sometimes when it's night
and everyone is talking, she forgets, but George didn't have to kill him. George simply repeats in
Latin the last lines of the funeral service, to which Honey gives the appropriate responses.
After a long silence, George says that it will be dawn soon, and the party's over. Nick quietly
asks if they could have any. George and Martha agree that "we" couldn't. Nick takes Honey's
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-46-
hand, and they get up to leave. Before he goes, Nick says, "I'd like to" but George cuts him off,
saying good night. Nick and Honey exit.
The final section is very quiet. George picks up glasses and asks Martha if she wants anything.
She doesn't. He asks if she's tired. She is. After a long silence, she asks if he had to. He pauses
and says yes. She asks again, and he says yes and adds that it was time. After a pause, Martha
says she's cold. George says it's late. After a long silence, he says it will be better. She says she
doesn't know. He says that it will be - maybe. She's not sure and asks "just us?" He says yes. She
asks if maybe they could -- and he says no. She says, "Yes. No." He asks if she's all right. She
says, "Yes. No." He puts his hand on her shoulder, and she leans her head back. He sings very
softly, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" "I am George I am," Martha says. George nods slowly.
The play ends with this tableau in silence.
Act Three Analysis:
Albee explores the theme of circularity in this final act. He employs the device of contrast not to
demonstrate how much things have changed between the beginning and end of the play but to
show, despite appearances, how little things have changed.
Both the opening and closing scenes of the play feature Martha and George alone on stage. Both
scenes feature one of them singing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" But whereas the first
scene is fast-paced and loud, full of dialogue and frenetic energy, the final scene is quiet and
contemplative. George and Martha speak in short sentences and monosyllables. Whereas Martha
considered the song a "scream" and considered it a humorous means with which to rile George in
the first scene, in the final scene George sings the song as a sort of lullaby to comfort her.
Despite the contrast in energy, however, how much has really changed? Martha and George's
marriage is still miserable. They still desire illusion and eschew reality.
Albee has said that "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" means "Who is afraid to live without
illusions?" At the end, after George sings it, Martha simply says, "I am." Those are the final
words of the play. Albee's ultimate message is that we must live without illusions, however much
comfort they give us. When Martha begins to suggest the possibility of creating another
imaginary child, George says no before she can even finish the sentence.
According to Albee, the song "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wool?" came from words he saw
scrawled on the wall of Greenwich Village restaurant's bathroom. But the reference to Virginia
Woolf, the famous writer, is meaningful in terms of the literary illusions it suggests. For one
thing, Woolf went mad and committed suicide. Her self-destruction can be seen as a commentary
on George and Martha's self-destruction. Also, as a fiction writer, Woolf created beautiful and
elaborate, but ultimately illusory, stories - just as Martha and George have created a perfect, but
imaginary, son.
In this act, as in the rest of the play, Albee continues to explore the problematic relationship
between illusion and reality. When Martha tells Nick that George is the only man who has ever
been able to make her happy, Nick things she's kidding. In response to his disbelief, Martha says,
"You always trade in appearances?" Nick, like most of the audience, believes that what he sees
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-47-
and is told is the truth; only in the last minutes of the play, does Nick come to the shocking
realization that much of what he has been told is not in fact true.
Later, Martha and George both admit that they cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality but it's important to act as if they do. This is the very danger Albee's play functions as a warning
against. Martha's inability to distinguish between illusion and reality is responsible for George's
decision to "kill" their son. In her tearful pleas to him after he announces the boy's death, Martha
explains that sometimes when it gets late, it's hard for her to keep him a secret. George, more
than Martha, sees the danger this blurring causes, and his perspective allows him to make the
decision to end the game.
Along with Nick, the audience is forced to recognize in this act just how tenuous George's and
Martha's grasp of - and Albee's presentation of - illusion and reality has been. When George, in
the midst of another argument, asserts that his parents took him to Majorca as a college
graduation present, Nick coolly asks if this occurred after he killed them. His shock and betrayal
at this assertion and at the revelation that the child is imaginary reveals his assumptions with
regard to appearances and reality.
Honey, who has functioned throughout the play as a Greek chorus, makes some surprisingly apt
remarks here. Her drunken insistence that the group play "peel the label" leads George to make a
significant remark about how it is important to go below the surface, below the bone, right to the
marrow. Killing the son is going to the marrow for George. Though not consciously, Honey is
more deeply attuned to the emotional truth of the situation than appearances-trading Nick. When
she responds appropriately to George's recitation of the Requiem for the dead, she
subconsciously recognizes that the death of this child, even though imaginary, is a painful and
final experience for George.
Albee makes numerous literary allusions throughout the play but here he focuses in particular on
Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. When talking to herself at the beginning of the
scene, she references "The Poker Game," the painting based on the scene in which fragile
Blanche comes in on her animalistic brother-in-law Stanley's poker game. Secondly, when he
comes in with the snapdragons, George quotes a line of dialogue from Williams' play - "Flores
para los muertos," flowers for the dead. In Streetcar, that line foreshadows Blanche's imminent
spiritual and emotional (though not physical death). While George's use of the line foreshadows
his announcement of "sonny-Jim's" death, it also proceeds the spiritual decimation of his and
Martha's marriage.
Another literary allusion in this play is to Hamlet. When George enters with the flowers, Martha
exclaims, "Pansies! Rosemary! Violence! My wedding bouquet!" This line echoes Ophelia's mad
speech in Hamlet in which she offers the other characters imaginary flowers, telling them their
meanings ("Rosemary is for remembrance"). Here, Martha, in another example of the linguistic
cleverness of her dialogue with George, substitutes "violence" for "violets," characterizing her
marriage. Additionally, this literary allusion offers more foreshadowing of death. Ophelia gives
her speech before drowning herself.
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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Though mentioned elsewhere in the play, Biblical allusions take on a central meaning in this act.
Albee entitles this act, "The Exorcism," referring to George's exorcism of the destructive power
of their illusory son on their marriage. From the chimes in the previous act to more explicit
references here, George and Martha's son becomes a Christ figure sacrificed for the good of their
marriage in a Christian allegory. George chants Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy) and the
Requiem (Catholic funeral service) during Martha's monologue about their son. Martha herself
calls the boy a "poor lamb," and Jesus is also known as the "Lamb of God" for his sacrificial
death.
Ultimately, the son is a profoundly ambivalent symbol in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Though he is the source of many arguments between George and Martha, who argue over
everything from his eye color to the letters he writes home from college to which of them has
ruined his life more, he is also a force that brings them together. Martha's final monologue about
his life presents a perfect, idealized child. She describes the boy who "walked evenly between
usŠa hand out to each of us." From this monologue, we finally see what appearances have no
previously shown. We see the importance of this son, even though imaginary, to George and
Martha. Clearly, he has been created of a means of binding George and Martha together. Their
dialogue and Martha's emphasis on "we" when Nick asks if they've never been able to have
children shows us how much their individual son bonded George and Martha together. George's
decision to kill him, therefore, is an incredibly meaningful and significant one. Though he was
imaginary, his impact on their emotions and the future of their relationship is clear from their
reactions to the boy's "death."
Chapter 17: Exit Music.
Mike Nichols
Birthdate: Nov. 6, 1931
Hometown: Berlin, Germany
College: University of Chicago
Most Acclaimed Film: The Graduate
Avg. Gross: $42.94 million
Avg. Adj. Gross: $92.32 million
Mini biography
Invented American improvisational comedy with other University of Chicago students and Elaine May in the 1950s. Worked in
legitimate theater as an actor before entering into a very successful comedy duo with May. The two were known as "the world's fastest
humans".
Spouse
Diane Sawyer
(1988 - present)
'Pat Scott'
(? - ?) (divorced)
'Margo Callas'
(? - ?) (divorced); 1 daughter
'Anabel Davis-Goff' (? - ?) (divorced); 2 children
Trivia
Back in Berlin, Mike's father was part of a young intellectual circle that included Russian emigres such as Vladimir Nabokov's sister
and Boris Pasternak's parents.
Fled from Berlin with his family in 1939
One of Directors Guild of America annual Honorees, 2000.
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Born to Russian Jews who emigrated to the United States just before the outbreak of World War 2, Nichols worked diligently to
educate himself, tak ing several odd jobs while attending the University of Chicago. Bitten by the acting bug, he came to New York
and briefly studied with Lee Strasberg. Back in Chicago, he helped form a landmark comedy troupe (Second City) and, with partner
Elaine May, evolved a clever nightclub act. Nichols and May toured for several years, had their own show on Broadway, and played
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller
Lecture Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
-49-
on TV variety shows before splitting up in 1961. He took up directing, and staged several successful Broadway comedies, including
"Barefoot in the Park" and "The Odd Couple."
Nichols made a highly acclaimed film directorial debut with his 1966 adaptation of another well-known theatrical property, Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, it brought a frank, gritty realism to the screen and earned
Nichols an Academy Award nomination. His next film, The Graduate (1967), broke ground in a number of ways: by giving voice to
disaffected youth of the late 1960s, by treating seduction and adultery with humor, by using a contemporary song score (by Simon and
Garfunkel) to set and amplify the film's tone, and by starring an unconventional-looking leading man (Dustin Hoffman). It was
enormously successful and influential, earning Nichols an Academy Award, and a "golden boy" reputation which he dispelled,
somewhat, by taking on riskier and more offbeat projects in the years that followed.
The Joseph Heller adaptation Catch-22 (1970) was highly anticipated, but proved a disappointment to most viewers. Carnal
Knowledge (1971) turned heads with its startlingly frank examination of sexual mores, attitudes, and behavior. The failure of The Day
of the Dolphin (1973) and the only moderate success of the farcical The Fortune (1975) made Nichols a lot choosier about his film
projects, and he spent most of the next decade working with great success on Broadway (where he won six Tony awards) and
directing an occasional television special. He also served as coexecutive producer of the highly regarded TV series "Family" (197680). Nichols' films since the 1980s are no longer groundbreakers-they blend into the mainstream-but they are marked by intelligence,
top-quality craftsmanship, and high-caliber talent on both sides of the camera.
OTHER FILMS INCLUDE: 1980: Gilda Live 1983: Silkwood (for which he was Oscarnominated); 1986: Heartburn 1988: Biloxi
Blues, Working Girl (another Oscar nod); 1990: Postcards from the Edge 1991: Regarding Henry 1993: The Remains of the Day (coexecutive producer only); 1994: Wolf
Copyright ©1994 Leonard Maltin, used by arrangement with Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.
Box Office Record
Film & Year
Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? (1966)
The Graduate (1967)
Catch-22 (1970)
Carnal Knowledge (1971)
The Day of the Dolphin (1973)
The Fortune (1975)
Silkwood (1983)
Heartburn (1986)
Biloxi Blues (1988)
Working Girl (1988)
Postcards from the Edge (1990)
Regarding Henry (1991)
Wolf (1994)
The Birdcage (1996)
Primary Colors (1998)
What Planet Are You From? (2000)
Major Awards & Nominations
Award
Academy Award Nom.
Golden Globe Nom.
Academy Award
Directors Guild Award
Golden Globe Award
Academy Award Nom.
Golden Globe Nom.
Academy Award Nom.
Golden Globe Nom.
Gross
Adjusted
$32.2* m
$159.2* m
$104.4 m
$468.9 m
$25.8* m
$89.7* m
$28.6 m
$93.4 m
$12.3 m
$37.5 m
N/A
N/A
$35.6 m
$60.9 m
$25.3 m
$36.8 m
$43.2 m
$56.7 m
$64.0 m
$84.0 m
$38.0 m
$48.5 m
$43.0 m
$55.0 m
$65.0 m
$83.8 m
$124.0 m
$151.2 m
$39.3 m
$45.2 m
$6.3 m
$6.3 m
Grosses with an * are estimates based on the amount
of the gross that went back to the distributor.
Opening
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
$1.2 m
$5.8 m
$7.1 m
$4.7 m
$7.9 m
$6.1 m
$17.9 m
$18.3 m
$12.0 m
$3.0 m
Budget
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
$8 m
N/A
N/A
N/A
$18 m
$22 m
N/A
N/A
$70 m
N/A
$65 m
$50 m
Film & Date
Best Director - Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? (1966)
Best Director - Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? (1966)
Best Director - The Graduate (1967)
Best Director - The Graduate (1967)
Best Director - The Graduate (1967)
Best Director - Silkwood (1983)
Best Director - Silkwood (1983)
Best Director - Working Girl (1988)
Best Director - Working Girl (1988)
Albee, Edward Franklin (dramatist) (1928- ), American playwright, who’s most successful, plays focus on familial relationships. He was born in
Washington, D.C., and adopted as an infant by the American theater executive Reed A. Albee of the Keith-Albee chain of vaudeville and motion
picture theaters. Albee attended a number of preparatory schools and, for a short time, Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He wrote his first
one-act play, The Zoo Story (1959), in three weeks. Among his other plays are the one-act The American Dream (1961); Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf? (1962); The Ballad of the Sad Café (1963), adapted from a novel by the American author Carson McCullers; Tiny Alice (1964); and A
Delicate Balance (1966), for which he won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize in drama. For Seascape (1975), which had only a brief Broadway run, Albee
won his second Pulitzer Prize. His later works include The Lady from Dubuque (1977), an adaptation (1979) of Lolita by the Russian American
novelist Vladimir Nabokov, and the Man With Three Arms (1983). In 1994 he received a third Pulitzer Prize for Three Tall Women (1991).
Albee's early plays are marked by themes typical of the theater of the absurd, in which characters suffer from an inability or unwillingness to
communicate meaningfully or to sympathize or empathize with one another
Primary source cinematographer’s commentary by Haskell Wexler, compiled from other sources, Copyright © 2004 by Jay Seller