Sandy Dennis

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Sandra "Sandy" Dale Dennis (born April 27, 1937 in Hastings , Nebraska , † March 2, 1992 in Westport , Connecticut ) was an American actress . In addition to a successful stage career, she appeared in over 30 film and television productions, mostly dramas. For her supporting role in Mike Nichols ' film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) she was awarded an Oscar .

Life

Training and theater work

Sandy Dennis was born in 1937 to the postal worker Jack Dennis and his wife Yvonne, a secretary. She grew up with a brother eight years her senior in Kenesaw and later with her grandparents in Hastings before the family moved to Lincoln in 1946. Dennis attended Lincoln High School, where she attended the drama company with Dick Cavett . “I spent my childhood trying to be like Margaret O'Brien , and when I was growing up I wanted to be like Gloria Grahame ,” says Dennis. She read a lot and devoted herself to poetry. She later counted Willa Cather and William Shakespeare among her favorite authors and read six to seven books a week. Despite having very good grades, she had an aversion to school, where she was considered an outsider. Nevertheless, in 1955, after graduating from high school, at the request of her parents, Dennis attended Nebraska Wesleyan University, where she studied for a semester. She spent another semester at the University of Nebraska .

Dennis was at the age of 14 years stimulated by acting as if the part of the The Philco Television Playhouse broadcast television play A Young Lady of Property (1953) with Kim Stanley and Joanne Woodward saw in the lead roles ( "A moment of truth." ). She joined local theater groups. In 1956, Dennis successfully appeared in a production of N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker at the Lincoln Community Playhouse, which earned her an Acting Award. She then left Nebraska at the age of 19 to pursue a serious acting career in New York City . Three weeks after her arrival on the east coast, Dennis, who always looked younger, was approached while window shopping by a Hungarian producer who engaged her in an off-Broadway production of Henrik Ibsen’s The Woman from the Sea when she was 13 . Then an agent noticed her who gave her the role of waitress Elma Duckworth in William Inge's comedy Bus Stop in Palm Beach . She attended the Actors Studio by Lee Strasberg and was taught by Herbert Berghof ( "From the beginning she knew into it to enable each to playing figure ..."). Soon she was a silent advocate of method acting .

Dennis made her professional debut on New York Broadway in 1960 in the play Burning Bright . In 1961 she received the Theater World Award . Her breakthrough as a stage actress paved her in 1962 the role of the sensitive social worker Sandra Markowitz in the Broadway comedy A Thousand Clowns alongside Jason Robards . In 1963 this earned her the first Tony Award , America's most important theater award. The following year, Dennis won again the award for the comedy Any Wednesday (1964), this time for Best Actress . In the play, she was seen as the lover of a successful businessman (played by Gene Hackman ) who can be lived in a Manhattan apartment and receives him every Wednesday. The blonde artist was often cast in the role of fragile, young innocence. She was not considered a classic beauty, which was mainly attributed to her "buck teeth". The American news magazine TIME compared Dennis to a young Eleanor Roosevelt . On the big screen, her successful Broadway roles were cast by Barbara Harris ( A Thousand Clowns , 1965) and Jane Fonda ( Any Wednesday , 1966).

Dennis' playing was characterized by nervous quirks. She had a shrill voice, stuttered or mumbled her lines of text to herself, bit her lip, often rubbed her hair or waved her arms, which some critics praised as an intense and original way of playing, but irritated others. At the same time, she was considered spirited. She often unsettled her co-actors through improvisations and had the peculiarity of shouting them down. One of her co-actors described Dennis as "the golden pain in the background".

Together with Kim Stanley and George C. Scott she appeared in London in 1965 in the Actors Studio production of Chekhov's drama Three Sisters as Irina, which, however, was booed by the audience and panned by criticism. Among her theater engagements also included in the 1970 Tennessee Williams -pieces Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof .

Film career

Dennis preferred stage work ("I don't care about being a film actress. I hate the long hours and I hate the flashing lights on my face. And I hate fake actors."), But appeared in over the course of her career 30 film and television productions. In her early television work, Dennis was often cast in the role of the suicidal or pregnant youth; her skill in comedies has been equated with that of young Jean Arthur or Judy Holliday .

After making her feature film debut as Kay in Elia Kazan's Fever in the Blood (1961), Dennis was given her second film role in Mike Nichols Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) known to a wide audience. In the theatrical adaptation of the same name based on Edward Albee , she slipped into the role of a superficial, hysterical nanny with money who, together with her husband (played by George Segal ), is relentlessly exposed by an older academic couple ( Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton ). Richard Burton spoke of her as "one of the greatest authentic eccentrics I know of". Elizabeth Taylor also praised her co-star for her realistic play - "Sandy made meat out of me," says Taylor. For the part of Honey, Dennis was awarded the Oscar for best supporting actress in 1967 , but stayed away from the award. "People always think that prices are very important and they are very nice ... but they were never something I thought about a lot," Dennis later said. In September 1967, the actress graced the cover of the American news magazine Time .

Even film critics were partially wrong about Dennis' game. Pauline Kael complained that her style was reminiscent of a "post-nasal drip," whereupon the actress agreed and tried to change her play. Director Elia Kazan, who had used her because of her "originality", later noticed that he had problems seeing the American in her roles. In contrast to her successes on stage, Dennis was mostly used in dramas. For this, the part included an inconspicuous lesbian in Mark Rydell's The Fox (1967), a terminally ill young woman every month a new lover takes ( Farewell, beloved November , 1968; in 2001, with Charlize Theron again filmed ) one or the role abandoned wife ( Four Seasons , 1981). With Robert Mulligan's social drama Against the Current Up the Stairs (1967), in which she can be seen as the new teacher in a New York problem district, and Arthur Hiller's comedy Never Again New York (1970) with Jack Lemmon , she could only partially match the previous ones Building on success. "She tended to be locked into the particular role of the funny neurotic, but she had skills that went way beyond that," said Keir Dullea , her film partner on The Fox . Dullea also called her one of the most selfless and "unactressy actresses" I have ever worked with. Director Mark Rydell spoke of an "emotionally fluid actress who is able to do anything".

Dennis returned to the theater in the late 1970s and was only seen sporadically on the big screen, including in Robert Altman's Come Back, Jimmy Dean (1982) and in the cameo of a cynical, alcoholic actress in Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988). Dennis made her last film appearance as the wife of Charles Bronson in Sean Penn's directorial debut Indian Runner (1991). “It's not like painting a picture or writing a book. When you finish acting, there is nothing but money. You have to persevere, give the best you can to get something intangible, ”said Dennis about acting.

Private life and death

From 1965 to 1976 Sandy Dennis was in a relationship with the American jazz musician Gerry Mulligan , before that with the actor Gerald O'Loughlin . The claim by some biographers that Dennis and Mulligan were married was denied by Dennis' last agent, Bill Treusch. The actress had a five-year relationship with colleague Eric Roberts , who was 18 years her junior, and one of her longtime friends was June Havoc . In 1989, in an interview with People magazine, she described herself as a "solitary person".

Sandy Dennis was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the late 1980s . She died of complications from the disease in 1992 at the age of 54 in the Connecticut home she shared with her mother. Dennis was very fond of animals and, together with her mother, took in stray dogs, cats and birds and passed them on. When she died, she left 33 cats and three dogs.

Plays (selection)

year Play role stage
1960 Bus stop Elma Duckworth Royal Poinciana Playhouse (Palm Beach)
1960 Face of a Hero Millicent Bishop Eugene O'Neill Theater (New York)
1961 The Complaisant Lover Ann Howard Ethel Barrymore Theater (New York)
1962 A thousand clowns Sandra Markowitz Eugene O'Neill Theater (New York)
1964 Any Wednesday Ellen Gordon Music Box Theater (New York)
1965 The Three Sisters Irina Aldwych Theater (London)
1967 Daphne in Cottage D. Daphne Longacre Theater (New York)
1971 How the Other Half Loves Teresa Phillips Royale Theater (New York)
1973 Let Me Hear You Smile Hannah Heywood Biltmore Theater (New York)
1974 Absurd person singular Eve Music Box Theater (New York)
1981 The Supporting Cast Sally Biltmore Theater (New York)
1982 Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean Mona Martin Beck Theater (New York)
1983 Buried Inside Extra Sophia Bowsky Joseph Papp Public Theater / Martinson Hall (New York)

Filmography (selection)

  • 1961: Fever in the Blood (Splendor in the Grass)
  • 1963: On the Run (TV series)
  • 1966: The Three Sisters
  • 1966: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)
  • 1967: Up the Down Staircase
  • 1967: The Fox
  • 1968: Adieu, beloved November (Sweet November)
  • 1969: That Cold Day in the Park
  • 1969: A Touch of Love
  • 1970: Never Again New York (The Out of Towners)
  • 1972 Something Evil
  • 1976: God Told Me To
  • 1977: An Unprecedented Affair (Nasty Habits)
  • 1978: Police Story - Always in action: The greatest coup (Police Story: Day of Terror, Night of Fear)
  • 1978: Ladies with white waistcoats (Perfect Gentlemen)
  • 1981: The Four Seasons
  • 1982: Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
  • 1985: The Execution
  • 1988: Another woman (Another Woman)
  • 1988: 976-Evil (976-EVIL)
  • 1989: Ugh, Daddy's a cannibal (Parents)
  • 1991: Indian Runner (The Indian Runner)

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. AP : Sandy Dennis, Oscar-Winning Actress, Dies at 54 . March 4, 1992 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft )
  2. ↑ cf. Daniels, Lee A .: Sandy Dennis, Film and Stage Veteran, Dies at 54 . In: The New York Times, March 4, 1992, p. 20
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i cf. Actresses: Talent Without Tinsel . In: Time, September 1, 1967
  4. ↑ a b c cf. Gross, Susanna: Candid Star Who Hated Cameras . In: Daily Mail, March 5, 1992, p. 43
  5. ↑ a b c d e f cf. AP: Sandy Dennis, Oscar-Winning Actress, Dies of Cancer at 54 . March 3, 1992 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft )
  6. ↑ a b cf. Biography in the All Movie Guide (accessed May 23, 2010)
  7. ↑ cf. Actress this . In: The Herald, March 5, 1992, p. 4
  8. ↑ a b c d cf. UPI : Actress Sandy Dennis dies at 54 . March 4, 1992, Westport, Conn. (accessed via LexisNexis Economy )
  9. ↑ a b cf. Shipman, David: Obituary: Sandy Dennis . In: The Independent, March 5, 1992, p. 31
  10. ↑ cf. AP: Sandy Dennis' Film and Stage Credits . March 4, 1992 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft )
  11. ↑ cf. Time cover from September 1, 1967 at time.com (accessed May 24, 2010)
personal data
SURNAME Dennis, Sandy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dennis, Sandra Dale (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Hastings , Nebraska, United States
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1992
Place of death Westport , Connecticut, United States