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Anne Jackson, Stage Star With Her Husband, Eli Wallach, Dies at 90
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Rob Cibik
Apr 13, 2016, 5:45:51 PM4/13/16
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Anne Jackson, Stage Star With Her Husband, Eli Wallach, Dies at 90
By ROBERT D. McFADDENAPRIL 13, 2016
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/theater/anne-jackson-dies.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0
Anne Jackson, who was half of one of America’s best-known acting
couples, sharing much of a long and distinguished career with her
husband, Eli Wallach, died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 90.
Her death was confirmed by her daughter Katherine Wallach.
If not quite on the same level of stardom as Alfred Lunt and Lynn
Fontanne or Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, Ms. Jackson and Mr. Wallach
came close. From the early 1950s to 2000, when they starred Off Broadway
in Anne Meara’s comedy “Down the Garden Paths,” they captivated
audiences with their onstage synergy, displaying the tense affections
and sizzling battles of two old pros who knew how to love and how to fight.
Ms. Jackson had an impressive stage career of her own. Critics hailed
her range and the subtlety of her characterizations — including all the
women, from a middle-aged matron to a grandmother — in David V.
Robison’s “Promenade, All!” (1972) and a housewife verging on hysteria
in Alan Ayckbourn’s “Absent Friends” (1977). She was nominated for a
Tony Award for her performance as the daughter of a manufacturer, played
by Edward G. Robinson, in Paddy Chayefsky’s “Middle of the Night” (1956).
But she was best known for her work with Mr. Wallach, who died in 2014.
Together they appeared in classics by Shaw and Chekhov; in dramas by
Tennessee Williams and Eugène Ionesco; and, perhaps most notably, in
offbeat comedies by Murray Schisgal.
They both won Obie Awards for their work in Mr. Schisgal’s 1963 Off
Broadway double bill, “The Typists” and “The Tiger.” They also starred
in his hit 1964 Broadway comedy, “Luv,” co-starring Alan Arkin and
directed by Mike Nichols, which ran 901 performances and won three Tony
Awards, and in another pair of Schisgal one-acts, “Twice Around the
Park,” on Broadway in 1982.
Reviewing “Twice Around the Park” in The New York Times, Frank Rich
wrote: “It would be absurd to think of a more perfect Schisgal woman (or
maybe even a more perfect woman) than Miss Jackson — who is cool, poised
and intelligent except on those occasions when she crumbles to the floor
to demand that Mr. Wallach give her a sound kicking. (Don’t worry: Miss
Jackson doesn’t deserve the punishment, and Mr. Wallach, deep down, is
far too kind to deliver it.)”
Ms. Jackson and Mr. Wallach appeared together 13 times on Broadway,
seven times Off Broadway, and occasionally in movies and on television,
where they did most of their work (both together and apart) in the later
years of their careers.
The volatility that characterized much of Ms. Jackson and Mr. Wallach’s
stage work often carried over into their dressing rooms, with life
imitating art over some technique or timing in a performance. Friends
called it candid shop talk by perfectionists who respected each other
intellectually, emotionally and professionally.
Life in the Jackson-Wallach apartment on Riverside Drive was also a
turbulent affair: a juggling of finances and schedules to meet the
demands of show business, marriage and parenthood — raising three
children in the competitive wilds of Manhattan. They hired help, tried
to smooth frictions with gruff tact and bought a weekend home in East
Hampton, N.Y., to get away from it all.
In 1979, Ms. Jackson published a memoir that surprised critics. It was
not about her career and had no spicy gossip or self-promotional
revelations. The book, “Early Stages,” was instead a frank examination
of her childhood and the years of turmoil that formed her, ending
poignantly with the deaths of her parents.
She also examined her early days with Mr. Wallach. “We had a lot in
common,” she wrote. “Neither of us could sing; both of us loved to act;
we were both ambitious and idealistic; and we endowed each other with
the most extraordinary virtues.”
Anna JaneJackson was born on Sept. 3, 1925, in Millvale, Pa., near
Pittsburgh, the youngest of three daughters of John Jackson, a Croatian
immigrant barber and an avowed Communist, and the former Stella Murray,
the Irish Catholic daughter of a coal miner.
When Anna was 7, the family moved to Brooklyn, where she slept on a
parlor couch with elevated trains pounding past the window and her
mismatched parents battled endlessly. She became a troublemaker and a
thief and once threatened to jump out a window unless she was given
movie money.
Movies were her escape. By age 11, she could do impressions of Charles
Laughton, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Shirley Temple and Jeanette
MacDonald. She excelled in drama in high school, won a talent contest
and took acting lessons.
Her mother suffered a breakdown when Anna was 14 and spent the rest of
her life in mental institutions.
Ms. Jackson attended Franklin K. Lane High School and delivered
monologues at assemblies under the guidance of a teacher who recognized
her acting potential. After graduating in 1943, she studied drama at the
New School for Social Research, won a talent contest and spent 16 weeks
in Eva Le Gallienne’s touring production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.”
She met Mr. Wallach, 10 years her senior, in 1946, when they were both
cast in a production of Tennessee Williams’s “This Property Is
Condemned.” They joined Le Gallienne’s American Repertory Theater on
Broadway, appearing in “Henry VIII,” “Androcles and the Lion” and “What
Every Woman Knows,” and married in 1948.
For years the couple studied method acting with Lee Strasberg, who also
taught Anne Bancroft, Montgomery Clift, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe
(who worked for the Wallachs as a babysitter).
Ms. Jackson won acclaim in Williams’s “Summer and Smoke” (1948) and
Shaw’s “Arms and the Man” (1950). In Edward Chodorov’s comedy “Oh, Men!
Oh, Women!” (1953), she delivered a memorable 20-minute monologue from a
psychiatrist’s couch.
She appeared with Mr. Wallach and Mr. Laughton in Shaw’s “Major Barbara”
(1957). Among the other plays in which they starred were Williams’s “The
Glass Menagerie” (1959), Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” (1961) and Jean
Anouilh’s “The Waltz of the Toreadors” (1973).
In 1978 they appeared together in an Off Broadway revival of “The Diary
of Anne Frank,” alongside their two daughters. Roberta Wallach played
Anne, and Katherine Wallach played Anne’s sister, Margot.
Ms. Jackson and Mr. Wallach also had a son, Peter, who survives her, as
do both their daughters. She is also survived by a sister, Beatrice
Marz; three grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
Ms. Jackson appeared frequently on television in the golden age of live
drama, on “Armstrong Circle Theater,” “Robert Montgomery Presents” and
other anthology shows. She was also seen on series including “Gunsmoke,”
“The Defenders” and, later in her career, “Law & Order” and “ER.” Her
movies included “The Shining” (1980), “Funny About Love” (1990) and
“Sam’s Son” (1984), an autobiographical film written and directed by the
actor Michael Landon, in which she and Mr. Wallach played his parents.
Mr. Wallach received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement
in 2010. “Lifetime achievement?” Ms. Jackson said at a crowded
celebration in Los Angeles. “Oh, my God. He’s still learning. And this
leads me to the truth of the matter: I taught him everything he knows.”
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
By ROBERT D. McFADDENAPRIL 13, 2016
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/theater/anne-jackson-dies.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0
Anne Jackson, who was half of one of America’s best-known acting
couples, sharing much of a long and distinguished career with her
husband, Eli Wallach, died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 90.
Her death was confirmed by her daughter Katherine Wallach.
If not quite on the same level of stardom as Alfred Lunt and Lynn
Fontanne or Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, Ms. Jackson and Mr. Wallach
came close. From the early 1950s to 2000, when they starred Off Broadway
in Anne Meara’s comedy “Down the Garden Paths,” they captivated
audiences with their onstage synergy, displaying the tense affections
and sizzling battles of two old pros who knew how to love and how to fight.
Ms. Jackson had an impressive stage career of her own. Critics hailed
her range and the subtlety of her characterizations — including all the
women, from a middle-aged matron to a grandmother — in David V.
Robison’s “Promenade, All!” (1972) and a housewife verging on hysteria
in Alan Ayckbourn’s “Absent Friends” (1977). She was nominated for a
Tony Award for her performance as the daughter of a manufacturer, played
by Edward G. Robinson, in Paddy Chayefsky’s “Middle of the Night” (1956).
But she was best known for her work with Mr. Wallach, who died in 2014.
Together they appeared in classics by Shaw and Chekhov; in dramas by
Tennessee Williams and Eugène Ionesco; and, perhaps most notably, in
offbeat comedies by Murray Schisgal.
They both won Obie Awards for their work in Mr. Schisgal’s 1963 Off
Broadway double bill, “The Typists” and “The Tiger.” They also starred
in his hit 1964 Broadway comedy, “Luv,” co-starring Alan Arkin and
directed by Mike Nichols, which ran 901 performances and won three Tony
Awards, and in another pair of Schisgal one-acts, “Twice Around the
Park,” on Broadway in 1982.
Reviewing “Twice Around the Park” in The New York Times, Frank Rich
wrote: “It would be absurd to think of a more perfect Schisgal woman (or
maybe even a more perfect woman) than Miss Jackson — who is cool, poised
and intelligent except on those occasions when she crumbles to the floor
to demand that Mr. Wallach give her a sound kicking. (Don’t worry: Miss
Jackson doesn’t deserve the punishment, and Mr. Wallach, deep down, is
far too kind to deliver it.)”
Ms. Jackson and Mr. Wallach appeared together 13 times on Broadway,
seven times Off Broadway, and occasionally in movies and on television,
where they did most of their work (both together and apart) in the later
years of their careers.
The volatility that characterized much of Ms. Jackson and Mr. Wallach’s
stage work often carried over into their dressing rooms, with life
imitating art over some technique or timing in a performance. Friends
called it candid shop talk by perfectionists who respected each other
intellectually, emotionally and professionally.
Life in the Jackson-Wallach apartment on Riverside Drive was also a
turbulent affair: a juggling of finances and schedules to meet the
demands of show business, marriage and parenthood — raising three
children in the competitive wilds of Manhattan. They hired help, tried
to smooth frictions with gruff tact and bought a weekend home in East
Hampton, N.Y., to get away from it all.
In 1979, Ms. Jackson published a memoir that surprised critics. It was
not about her career and had no spicy gossip or self-promotional
revelations. The book, “Early Stages,” was instead a frank examination
of her childhood and the years of turmoil that formed her, ending
poignantly with the deaths of her parents.
She also examined her early days with Mr. Wallach. “We had a lot in
common,” she wrote. “Neither of us could sing; both of us loved to act;
we were both ambitious and idealistic; and we endowed each other with
the most extraordinary virtues.”
Anna JaneJackson was born on Sept. 3, 1925, in Millvale, Pa., near
Pittsburgh, the youngest of three daughters of John Jackson, a Croatian
immigrant barber and an avowed Communist, and the former Stella Murray,
the Irish Catholic daughter of a coal miner.
When Anna was 7, the family moved to Brooklyn, where she slept on a
parlor couch with elevated trains pounding past the window and her
mismatched parents battled endlessly. She became a troublemaker and a
thief and once threatened to jump out a window unless she was given
movie money.
Movies were her escape. By age 11, she could do impressions of Charles
Laughton, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Shirley Temple and Jeanette
MacDonald. She excelled in drama in high school, won a talent contest
and took acting lessons.
Her mother suffered a breakdown when Anna was 14 and spent the rest of
her life in mental institutions.
Ms. Jackson attended Franklin K. Lane High School and delivered
monologues at assemblies under the guidance of a teacher who recognized
her acting potential. After graduating in 1943, she studied drama at the
New School for Social Research, won a talent contest and spent 16 weeks
in Eva Le Gallienne’s touring production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.”
She met Mr. Wallach, 10 years her senior, in 1946, when they were both
cast in a production of Tennessee Williams’s “This Property Is
Condemned.” They joined Le Gallienne’s American Repertory Theater on
Broadway, appearing in “Henry VIII,” “Androcles and the Lion” and “What
Every Woman Knows,” and married in 1948.
For years the couple studied method acting with Lee Strasberg, who also
taught Anne Bancroft, Montgomery Clift, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe
(who worked for the Wallachs as a babysitter).
Ms. Jackson won acclaim in Williams’s “Summer and Smoke” (1948) and
Shaw’s “Arms and the Man” (1950). In Edward Chodorov’s comedy “Oh, Men!
Oh, Women!” (1953), she delivered a memorable 20-minute monologue from a
psychiatrist’s couch.
She appeared with Mr. Wallach and Mr. Laughton in Shaw’s “Major Barbara”
(1957). Among the other plays in which they starred were Williams’s “The
Glass Menagerie” (1959), Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” (1961) and Jean
Anouilh’s “The Waltz of the Toreadors” (1973).
In 1978 they appeared together in an Off Broadway revival of “The Diary
of Anne Frank,” alongside their two daughters. Roberta Wallach played
Anne, and Katherine Wallach played Anne’s sister, Margot.
Ms. Jackson and Mr. Wallach also had a son, Peter, who survives her, as
do both their daughters. She is also survived by a sister, Beatrice
Marz; three grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
Ms. Jackson appeared frequently on television in the golden age of live
drama, on “Armstrong Circle Theater,” “Robert Montgomery Presents” and
other anthology shows. She was also seen on series including “Gunsmoke,”
“The Defenders” and, later in her career, “Law & Order” and “ER.” Her
movies included “The Shining” (1980), “Funny About Love” (1990) and
“Sam’s Son” (1984), an autobiographical film written and directed by the
actor Michael Landon, in which she and Mr. Wallach played his parents.
Mr. Wallach received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement
in 2010. “Lifetime achievement?” Ms. Jackson said at a crowded
celebration in Los Angeles. “Oh, my God. He’s still learning. And this
leads me to the truth of the matter: I taught him everything he knows.”
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
Bryan Styble
Apr 13, 2016, 8:18:41 PM4/13/16
to
What a remarkable union! And it might be mentioned that their daughter Roberta Walllach hasn't had much of a career, alas, but she was a standout at least twice:
As the troubled older daughter Ruth in the Paul Newman-directed (and possibly Joanne Woodward's most important turn short of "The Three Faces of Eve") 1972 character study unfortunately sometimes most remembered for its clumsy title "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds"; and
In 1976, as the protagonist's shy and nerdy eventual girlfriend Wanda Hickey* in the classic PBS comic drama, "The Phantom of the Open Hearth", by far the best of the three times humorist Jean Sheperd's terrific short stories of postwar working-class suburban Chicago--many of which were first published in Playboy in the early 60s before being collected into anthologies which Sheperd imprecisely labelled novels--reached screens, either large or small.
BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
* The titular character in Sheperd's most famous book, his consistently-amusing collection of stories set in Holman, Indiana stories entitled "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories (and Other Disasters)", the basis for many of the key vignettes in the vastly-more-celebrated "A Christmas Story", which now has of course achieved cult status.
As the troubled older daughter Ruth in the Paul Newman-directed (and possibly Joanne Woodward's most important turn short of "The Three Faces of Eve") 1972 character study unfortunately sometimes most remembered for its clumsy title "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds"; and
In 1976, as the protagonist's shy and nerdy eventual girlfriend Wanda Hickey* in the classic PBS comic drama, "The Phantom of the Open Hearth", by far the best of the three times humorist Jean Sheperd's terrific short stories of postwar working-class suburban Chicago--many of which were first published in Playboy in the early 60s before being collected into anthologies which Sheperd imprecisely labelled novels--reached screens, either large or small.
BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
* The titular character in Sheperd's most famous book, his consistently-amusing collection of stories set in Holman, Indiana stories entitled "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories (and Other Disasters)", the basis for many of the key vignettes in the vastly-more-celebrated "A Christmas Story", which now has of course achieved cult status.
leno...@yahoo.com
Apr 14, 2016, 2:14:16 PM4/14/16
to
Interesting - the IMDb lists her birthdate as September 3, 1926. (Granted, Wikipedia does not.) Also, FWIW, I couldn't find any articles from last year about her 90th birthday.
I really don't remember seeing her at all, sad to say - most of her movies are ones I've never seen, and in "The Angel Levine," she only had a small role. Also, I briefly had her confused with Glenda Jackson - who's a bit younger and British!
Lenona.
I really don't remember seeing her at all, sad to say - most of her movies are ones I've never seen, and in "The Angel Levine," she only had a small role. Also, I briefly had her confused with Glenda Jackson - who's a bit younger and British!
Lenona.
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