The Country Girl

Country Girl, The (1950), a play by Clifford Odets. [ Lyceum Theatre, 235 perf.] Over the objections of his author and producer, Bernie Dodd (Steven Hill), a young director, hires Frank Elgin (Paul Kelly) to star in a new play. Elgin had long since destroyed a promising career by drinking and blames his problems on his wife, Georgie (Uta Hagen), whom he insists became a suicidal alcoholic after the death of their daughter. When Elgin goads Georgie into seeking a raise and long‐term contract for him from Dodd, the director concludes she is also a meddler and orders her to stay away. But Elgin turns up on opening night too drunk to act and Dodd learns from Georgie that it is Elgin who is the real would‐be suicide. Elgin sobers up in time to make a hit at the New York premiere. Although Georgie has grown to admire and even love Dodd, she realizes she must stay with her weakling husband. Praised by Howard Barnes of the Herald Tribune as “a fiercely affectionate anecdote about backstage doings,” the Dwight Deere Wiman production revealed Odets at his least sociopolitical. The drama has been revived several times, not always with success.

Country Girls, The (1960), the first novel by Edna O'Brien in the trilogy that tells the story of Caithleen Brady and Baba (Brigid) Brennan, the others being The Girl with Green Eyes (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). After years of disaffection at their convent school Baba contrives their expulsion for obscenity and they go to Dublin, Caithleen to be a shop assistant, Baba to do a secretarial course.