Main Cast: Robert Preston, Dorothy McGuire, Eve Arden, Angela Lansbury, Shirley Knight
Release Year: 1960
Country: US
Run Time: 123 minutes
Plot
Robert Preston plays the flip side of his eternally ebullient Professor Harold Hill in Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Preston portrays an early 20th-century harness salesman, fully aware that his product is rapidly becoming obsolete. He tries to compensate for his own lack of self-esteem by cheating on his patient wife Dorothy McGuire; Preston's "other woman" is played by Angela Lansbury. Meanwhile, daughter Shirley Knight falls in love with Jewish boy Lee Kinsolving, who kills himself in the face of relentless bigotry. And McGuire's sister Eve Arden is stuck in a loveless marriage with spineless Frank Overton. Robert Eyer plays the young alter-ego of William Inge, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning play on which this film is based. Eyer's fear of the "dark at the top of the stairs" is meant to be symbolic of the other characters' inner demons, a fact that Inge drives home every three minutes or so. In typical Inge fashion, an unlikely happy ending is reached just before "The End." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Although generally derided today, for about a decade William Inge was one of the hottest playwrights in America. The Dark at the Top of the Stairs was the last of Inge's four major dramas to make the transition to the screen, and despite the datedness and sometimes obvious mechanics that pervade the playwright's work, it is still a powerful and moving experience. Modern audiences may find the symbolism too obvious and may feel cheated by a tacked-on happy end, but they will also be pleasantly surprised at the powerful change-of-pace performance from Robert Preston. Preston is in top form here, creating a believable and touching portrait of a man in crisis, albeit one who doesn't understand that the real crisis lies in his inability to communicate openly and honestly. Angela Lansbury, getting the chance to play a sympathetic character, also turns in fine work, and Dorothy McGuire provides the proper mixture of neediness and love to make her character real. Delbert Mann has directed with his usual careful attention to wringing optimum meaning from the simplest of moments, although he occasionally goes a bit too far in this direction. Inge, who did not write the screenplays for this or previous adaptations of his work, would emerge as an Oscar-winning scenarist the next year for his Splendor in the Grass. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Lee Kinsolving - Sammy Golden; Frank Overton - Morris Lacey; Robert Eyer - Sonny Flood; Penney Parker - Flirt; Paul Birch - Jonah Mills; Helen Brown - Mrs. Haycox; Paul Comi - Jenkins; Ben Erway - Joseph Moody; Peg La Centra - Edna Harper; Nelson Leigh - Ed Peabody; Ken Lynch - Harry Ralston; Mary Patton - Mrs. Ralston; Addison Richards - Harris; Charles Seel - Percy Weems; Emerson Treacy - George Williams; Helen Wallace - Lydia Harper; Robin Warga - Harold; Dennis Whitcomb - Punky Givens
Credit
Leo K. Kuter - Art Director, Marjorie Best - Costume Designer, Russell Llewellyn - First Assistant Director, Delbert Mann - Director, Folmar Blangsted - Editor, Max Steiner - Composer (Music Score), Gordon Bau - Makeup, Harry Stradling - Cinematographer, Michael Garrison - Producer, George James Hopkins - Set Designer, Stan Jones - Sound/Sound Designer, Harriet Frank, Jr. - Screenwriter, Irving Ravetch - Screenwriter, William Inge - Play Author
Dark at the Top of the Stairs, The (1957), a play by William Inge. [ Music Box Theatre, 468 perf.] The Floods are a lower‐middle‐class family living in a small Oklahoma town in the 1920s. Rubin Flood (Pat Hingle) is a harness salesman at a time when automobiles are killing the demand for his product. His wife, Cora (Teresa Wright), is the daughter of a schoolteacher and has married somewhat below her station. They have two children, teenager Reenie (Judith Robinson) and ten‐year‐old Sonny (Charles Saari). The Floods' humdrum life is shaken by three events: Cora's sister, Lottie (Eileen Heckart), comes for dinner and confesses her marriage is sexless; Reenie's date at a dance, a young Jewish boy, commits suicide after he is humiliated by an anti‐Semite; and Rubin announces that the harness company is going out of business. The incidents contrive to bring about a certain understanding and compassion and, with them, the small hope of a somewhat happier life. Reviewing the Saint Subber–Elia Kazan production, Louis Kronenberger felt that “Inge's most definite quality—his feeling for human loneliness—became too insistent,” yet most critics and playgoers applauded the semi‐autobiographical drama, which was a revision of a 1947 work, Farther off from Heaven.
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs is a 1957 play by William Inge about family conflicts during the early 1920s in a small town near Oklahoma City. It won a Tony Award for Best Play and was made into a film in 1960.
The drama centers on Reuben Flood, who loses his salesman job. While searching for a new job, he must deal with his wife, Cora, who shuns intimacy and mistakes his joblessness for stinginess, his shy daughter who prepares for her first dance and his pre-teen son who runs to his mama instead of dealing with bullies. He tries to comfort himself with childhood friend Mavis Pruitt, whom the town rumor mill believes is a loose woman. In addition to the themes of modernization (i.e., not enough demand for horse harness, and the impending arrival of the oil industry), Inge's characters all face one set of demons or another on their way to the story's conclusion.
Play
The play, directed by Elia Kazan, opened December 5, 1957, at New York's Music Box Theatre and ran for a total of 468 performances, closing on January 17, 1959. The drama was reworked by Inge from his earlier play, Farther Off from Heaven, first staged in 1947 at Margo Jones' Theatre '47 in Dallas, Texas.
It was nominated for five Tony Awards: Best Play, Best Featured Actor (Pat Hingle), Best Featured Actress (Eileen Heckart), Best Scenic Design (Ben Edwards), Best Director (Elia Kazan) and won Best Play. Timmy Everett won the Theatre World Award.
"Lights Out" (1949) •"The Philco Television Playhouse" (1949 - 1955) •"Goodyear Television Playhouse" (1951 - 1955) •"Producers' Showcase" (1955) •"Playwrights '56" (1955 - 1956) •"Ford Star Jubilee" (1956) •"Omnibus" (1956 - 1957) •"The DuPont Show of the Month" (1958) •"Playhouse 90" (1958 - 1959) •"NBC Sunday Showcase" (1959) •"Startime" (1960) •Heidi (1968) •"CBS Playhouse" (1968) •David Copperfield (1969) •Jane Eyre (1970) •She Waits (1972) •No Place to Run (1972) •The Man Without a Country (1973) •The First Woman President (1974) •The Legendary Curse of the Hope Diamond (1975) •A Girl Named Sooner (1975) •Francis Gary Powers: The True Story of the U-2 Spy Incident (1976) •Tell Me My Name (1977) •Breaking Up (1978) •Home to Stay (1978) •Tom and Joann (1978) •Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery (1978) •Torn Between Two Lovers (1979) •All Quiet on the Western Front (1979) •To Find My Son (1980) •"Insight" (1981) •All the Way Home (1981) •The Member of the Wedding (1982) •The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story (1983) •Love Leads the Way: A True Story (1984) •A Death in California (1985) •The Last Days of Patton (1986) •The Ted Kennedy Jr. Story (1976) •Tell Me My Name (1977) •Breaking Up (1986) •April Morning (1988) •Ironclads (1991) •Against Her Will: An Incident in Baltimore (1992) •Incident in a Small Town (1994) •Lily in Winter (1994)
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
